Leadership and communication in sustainable management of local governments – a perspective of Slovak mayors

With the release of the 2030 Agenda, sustainability is becoming a progressively more debated topic in public life.Municipalities expected to develop sustainably in line with the Sustainable Development Goals are no exception.The essence of implementing sustainability in municipal management is the knowledge of this concept and, above all, the will to continue to learn and improve.The carriers of this will are mainly mayors and other local government leaders who can influence the perception of sustainability issues in local government and encourage municipal staff to further their education.Our research focused on Slovak local governments of different sizes and conducted structured electronic interviews with 21 of their representatives.Based on our theoretical findings, we established one hypothesis closely linked to the five research questions.The main finding is that mayors are interested in sustainability issues and want to consider them in their governance.However, they feel only moderately informed, perceiving a need for more interest in these topics, especially from the state.