Theoretical Foundations for a Sustainability and Climate Change Strategic Leadership Typology: Towards Regenerative Leadership

Abstract The interlinked climate and ecological crises have profound implications for future human success. Temperatures are set to rise by 3–4 0 C by the end of the century and there is already a sixty-nine per cent global average biodiversity abundance loss since 1970. Most of our business and management literature continues to rely on traditional, anthropocentric, leadership and strategy theories as a route to change without considering the embedded, systemic, heterogeneous, and future-orientated nature of the problem. Given this multifaceted grand challenge, and the compounding lack of adequate business and management theoretical foundations for such research investigations, we propose six strategic leadership types (and their underpinning values and capabilities) that help to differentiate leadership for the complex climate and ecological crises we face. The leadership types, greenwash, resilience, eco-innovation, ecocentric visionary (sustainability), degrowth and regenerative leadership, are calibrated against known ontological and strategic perspectives, which provide plurality and fluidity of thought, allowing connection between the natural and social sciences, to aid understanding of research towards sustainability and climate change. We reframe the leadership literature by locating our theoretical contribution within environmental ethics, linking our understanding of the natural world, human ethics, and related business ethics, identifying regenerative leadership as the most ethical and most promising type.