18: Sustainability Leadership Theory

Sustainability leadership theory (SLT) emerged to organize and metatheorize sustainability for leadership studies. The four refractive knowledge processes of SLT are captured as embodying, embedding, envisioning, and enacting, with visible modulations or expressions that direct the dynamic nature of knowledge moving into and out of individual, intersubjective, and social spaces. By mapping these movements and their effects as leadership modes, this theory aims to enable non dualistic thinking and ecological reflexivity centered on the Earth System, forming for leadership studies a partial connection for Indigenous knowledge and relational ontologies. This chapter explores the history and context around the sustainable leadership theory, defines the theory, and concludes with strengths and opportunities of the theory.