ABSTRACT
The idea and concept of responsible leadership (RL) has gained increasing public and academic attention over the past years (e.g. Doh and Stumpf 2005, Freeman and Auster 2011, Maak and Pless 2006, Voegtlin et al. 2012, Waldman and Balven 2015, Waldman and Galvin 2008). This can be attributed to several factors and developments. On the one hand, environmental and corporate scandals have shown extensively that narrow-minded, short-term business strategies can have rather destructive outcomes on their social and ecological environments. On the other hand, worldwide media coverage of similar occurrences, as well as a general trend towards greater awareness of global systemic interconnections have put sustainability issues up front on public political, educational and corporate agendas. On this basis, the topic of responsible leadership has become an essential and logical requirement to sustainable governance in and outside of the corporate world. But what exactly does responsibility and responsible leadership mean in this context? And how can we come up with a definition of RL that is grounded in research rather than just normative ideals?
