Antecedents of Responsible Leadership: Proactive and Passive Responsible Leadership Behavior

Xinyue Zhang, Dian Li and Xintong Guo
Additional contact information
Xinyue Zhang: Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China
Dian Li: Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China
Xintong Guo: College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211800, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: Due to the massive global impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the call for social and environment responsibility has grown stronger, and discussion regarding responsible leadership has been aroused. Agreement on the antecedents of responsible leadership has not yet been reached, however, and most studies are theoretical and focus on the personal characteristics of leaders. In this paper, we explore the antecedents of responsible leadership behavior at the organizational and situational level, through case studies of companies in China. Based on the organizational strategy, organizational ownership, mass media, crisis, local community, and other influencing factors, we determine two types of responsible leadership behaviors: Proactive responsible leadership behavior, which involves leaders showing initiative in dealing with relationships with stakeholders both inside and outside the organization, as well as voluntarily striving to assume relevant responsibilities in order to achieve economic and/or social development goals; and passive responsible leadership behavior, which involves acts of being responsible to some stakeholders under pressure from external circumstances or when unexpected events occur, even though this behavior may go against the actor’s original intention. We further explore the influence mechanism of these factors on responsible leadership and discuss the development trend from passive to proactive responsible leadership behavior.

Keywords: responsible leadership; corporate social responsibility; proactive; passive (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/14/8694/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/14/8694/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:14:p:8694-:d:863791

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().