Sustainability, Fairness and Caring: Three Essential Imperatives

Raphael H Cohen ()

Chapter 2 in Driving Employee Engagement, 2026, pp 15-38 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter establishes fairness, caring, and sustainability as fundamental leadership imperatives that underpin trust, dignity, psychological safety, and engagement. It demonstrates that fairness and caring function as strategic necessities rather than as optional luxuries, creating work environments where employees feel valued and motivated to contribute their best efforts. The content reveals how leaders who prioritize performance metrics while neglecting fairness and caring generate unsustainable success that eventually collapses. The Performance–Fairness–Caring (PFC) model is introduced as a holistic governance framework enabling leaders to balance these imperatives, avoiding destructive excesses while ensuring long-term viability. The chapter emphasizes collective success through team synergy and collaboration, producing extraordinary results that exceed individual achievements. It explains how fairness establishes psychological safety essential for peak performance, whereas genuine caring serves as a practical requirement for sustained engagement rather than idealistic sentiment. Hidden costs of unfairness are exposed, showing how perceived inequity triggers toxicity leading to disengagement, rule-breaking, and sabotage. The distinction between caring and superficial kindness is clarified to prevent credibility-destroying leadership traps. Practical measurement tools are provided, including the Performance–Fairness–Caring Score (PFCS), which reveals authentic leadership perception. Real-world examples demonstrate how teams achieve exceptional results through these imperatives rather than despite them, creating sustainable competitive advantages built on genuine human engagement.

Keywords: Leadership imperatives; Fairness in management; Caring leadership; Sustainable performance; Team trust; Psychological safety; Leadership balance; Organizational culture; Employee well-being; Performance management; Dignity; PFC model; PFCS; Performance–Fairness–Caring Score; Fairness; Caring; Employee engagement; Organizational performance; Collective success; Leadership strategies; Workplace productivity; Workplace incivility; Fair and Caring Leadership Framework; Leadership levers; Performance imperative; Fairness imperative; Caring imperative; Leadership behavior; Governance conditions; Trust building; High-performance teams; Leadership assessment; Leadership development; Sustainable leadership; Viability; Governance framework; Leadership governance; Holistic governance; Team synergy; Team collaboration; Collaborative leadership; Workplace toxicity; Employee disengagement; Rule-breaking; Sabotage; Superficial kindness; Authentic caring; Authenticity; Leadership measurement; Leadership metrics; Leadership assessment tools; Sustainable competitive advantage; Human engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:mgmchp:978-3-032-05172-1_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-05172-1_2

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