There are increasing calls for responsible leadership, but how exactly is the research on responsible leadership relevant for the intersection of business and society? Can this form of leadership truly address the grand challenges confronting the world? In this e-conversation, the Editors of a Special Issue at Business & Society on Responsible Leadership Action for Business and Society: Addressing the Grand Societal Challenges of Our Time give deeper insights on these and more questions.

Read on to understand the vision of this Special Issue from the Editors themselves: Mary Sully de Luque (Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, USA), Christof Miska (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria), Christian Voegtlin (Audencia Business School, France), Alexander Newman (Deakin University, Australia), and Jill Brown (Bentley University, USA).

What motivated this Call for Papers?

This call for papers emanated from a discussion we had at the Academy of Management (AOM) special conference on ‘Responsible Leadership’ held in Slovenia in 2019. In that conference, we discussed the need for greater scholarship on responsible leadership from a variety of different perspectives and at different levels of analysis. This call also aligns with recent support for Responsible Research in Business & Management (RRBM) with the idea that business can be a force for good when informed by knowledge for responsible research. At the same time, we realized that there is limited knowledge of how business leadership and society interact to address the grand societal challenges of our time; however, responsible leadership might in fact be the lever to help bring us forward in tackling these challenges.

How is responsible leadership research relevant for business-society linkages?

Responsible leaders affirm that businesses are committed to meeting the needs and providing value to all of their stakeholders that make up the broader society. Leaders make decisions on behalf of the organization, and with societal implications. For example, the allocation of limited resources towards causes related to social good are left up to the leaders in organizations to decide, or at least, to endorse. It is presumed that responsible leaders are those with strong moral values who have a positive impact on the development of not only their corporations, but also of society.

When looking at the papers from the AOM special conference, the topics for responsible leadership research ranged from micro-level leadership characteristics and behaviors that influence work and social outcomes to more macro-level issues around institutional and socio-structural factors that influence leader-organization-societal relationships. Thus, responsible leadership as a phenomenon is a natural linkage between business and society.

How can responsible leadership help in addressing grand challenges?

Hopefully, this call will help to identify and answer this question! Corporations’ social goals are often seen as paradoxical in coexistence with their core business goals. However, in part because of stakeholder demands and pressures, leaders are now being called upon to address grand challenges—many outlined in the UN’s SDGs. Responsible leaders are those who identify grand challenges as part of their corporate responsibility strategies and find novel and innovative ways to leverage their businesses’ capabilities to address these societal issues. There is anecdotal evidence of this with leaders in companies like Patagonia and Unilever taking on issues like climate change and the circular economy. More research evidence will help us understand better how responsible leadership tackles these grand challenges.

What are the limitations of responsible leadership scholarship/frameworks addressing business-society relationships? Are there any limitations in current theory?

At present, we have witnessed limited large-scale quantitative research that examines differences in the drivers and outcomes of responsible leadership across diverse institutional and cultural contexts. We have also witnessed limited qualitative research on what motivates people to engage in responsible leadership and the importance of context. Research needs to integrate multi-level frameworks to explore the drivers and outcomes of responsible leadership. For theory advancement specifically, this poses questions about how processes across levels of analysis unfold and can best be explained. In the same vein, understanding how context shapes responsible leadership and, vice versa, how responsible leaders shape contexts is a promising way forward.

To what extent does responsible leadership research require the insights of multiple disciplines?

Traditionally, responsible leadership research has deep roots in business ethics, specifically virtue ethics. In the last few years, research with a focus on the inside of organizations – specifically HR – has advanced the disciplinary bandwidth of responsible leadership research. Equally though, the interlinkages with society are an important component of responsible leadership. This is where disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, political sciences, and economics can add.

We therefore believe that the topic is one that is predestined for cross-disciplinary research and for thinking beyond established boundaries. Complex problems require complex answers, and we therefore encourage the dialogue between scholars from a variety of disciplines to engage with responsible leadership research.

What are your hopes for this special issue – for theory and practice?

We hope that researchers submit papers drawing on a variety of methodologies to explore the topic of responsible leadership. We are looking for a diverse range of papers at different levels of analysis that draw on diverse theoretical perspectives coming from multiple disciplines. For theory, we are hoping for papers that extend existing approaches to understand better processes, contexts, trade offs, and paradoxes associated with responsible leadership. For practice, we would like the special issue to showcase the full scope of the responsible leadership phenomenon; not only within, but also outside organizations and including the interlinkages with society. We hope that the special issue provides backing for practitioners who embrace responsible leadership on a day-to-day basis.

Any pointers for interested authors who might have good ideas on contributing to this call?

We do not expect that authors follow a predetermined school of thought associated with responsible leadership. Instead, we find disciplinary diversity and theoretical multiplicity worthwhile. However, authors should clearly pinpoint their assumptions of leadership and in which way they look at it: as an individual, a collective, a process, or any other form. In the same way, the ‘responsible’ part can have various facets, which is why authors should equally articulate clearly their takes on this aspect.

In addition, please see the editorial insights and previous special issues available at our journal (in general) and, more specifically, 12 Tips for Getting Published in Business and Society. While the topics vary for special issues, and this one is specific to responsible leadership, the same contributions to theory in our domain are necessary for publication in the journal.