Chapter 2: THE Eco-Leadership Paradigm in the Classroom and Beyondg

What are the ends of education? The answer one gives will depend on the contingencies of time and place. A systems view of education would suggest that it makes no sense to be educating ourselves on topics and in ways that are at odds with planetary well-being, at a time in history when the biosphere as a complex and self-sustaining web of life is seriously under threat (yet capable of regeneration and renewal). Many educators know this, and curricula everywhere are undergoing a “greening” process. But are we doing enough, and are we doing it systematically?

Many colleges and universities are developing new avenues of study oriented towards addressing the growing ecological crisis, yet the greening of the college and university curriculum is far from complete. This is apparent in the field of leadership studies, as it has only recently begun to awaken to the urgent need to start thinking about the inherent connections between the construct of “leadership” and concern for the natural environment (Case et al., 2015; Gallagher, 2012; Redekop, 2010a, 2010b; Western, 2013). The fact that the modern study and understanding of leadership has been premised on an unsustainable form of industrial capitalism has largely gone unnoticed by leadership scholars, aided by the fact that most of the founding figures and leading scholars in the field, many of whom find their home in business schools, have subscribed to the reigning neoliberal economic paradigm and a political system that is heavily influenced by corporate wealth and power.¹ If our concepts and understandings of leadership emerged as part of an extractive industrial system (Rost, 1991), we are going to need to rethink what leadership looks like in an ecologically sustainable biological system.