Executive Summary
In an attempt to succeed in addressing the issues of purpose and sustainability, the leaders ought to have a vision, which they share with the stakeholders as well as strong moral and ethical values. The approaches to leadership, which will enable a leader to address the issues of purpose and sustainability include the place leadership approach, host leadership approach, authentic leadership approach, and transformational leadership approach. The place leadership approach facilitates the mobilization and coordination of the sustainability activities. As a result, this helps the organizations reach their sustainability goals and, as a consequence, achieve their purpose. The host leadership approach helps the business enterprises create long-lasting, robust relationships with all their stakeholders. Consequently, these relationships facilitate the success of the organizations in attaining their sustainability goals. The leaders who utilize this approach, thus, attain their sustainability purpose through creating relationships with the stakeholders. The authentic approach to leadership facilitates the formation of leader-subordinate relationships. These relationships, in turn, contribute to the implementation of the sustainability actions within the organizations. Lastly, the transformational leaders make the employees see the need for changing the unsustainable business practices in the organizations and effectively guide them.
Definitions of Leadership, Purpose, and Sustainability
Sharma and Jain (2013) describe leadership as a process by which a person influences other individuals to attain an objective and guides the organization in a manner, which makes it more coherent and cohesive. Consequently, the process of leadership entails a person influencing others towards the realization of a set of objectives or goals or vision. Place leadership is essentially a hidden form of leadership. It involves understanding a place, developing a vision for that place, and making partnerships function through transparent and effective governance. Host leadership entails creating relationships at home, at work, in the community, or, in the society to engage others. Ideally, this leadership helps the leaders address the particular needs of the individuals who work with them. Besides, host leadership builds engagement and, therefore, results in good performance.
Purpose can be described as the motive for which something is done. For instance, attaining results through others is one of the main purposes of leadership. In an attempt to get the anticipated results and fulfill the purpose of leadership, a leader is required to guide the team members effectively. In other words, offering the direction and modeling the anticipated performance is one of the main purposes of leadership. The other main purposes of leadership include supporting the team members and bringing out the best in them so as to achieve a common goal. Holloman Jr Rouse Jr, and Farrington (2007) describes a purpose-driven leadership as a model of leadership, which challenges the organization to uphold integrity, define its purpose, inspire character, and sustain vitality. A purpose essentially describes a leader’s vision, mission, and strategies. In particular, a vision defines where a leader wants to go. Mission describes what a leader does. Strategies outline the courses of action that the leader takes to reach his/her destination.
Sustainability can be described as the capacity to endure or the capability to sustain. Ideally, sustainability assumes that resources are limited and, thus, ought to be used wisely and conservatively for the sake of the future generations. A sustainable society encourages the activities, which facilitate the conservation of what is present, restoration of what has been destroyed, and prevention of imminent harm (Viederman, 1993). The economy, society, and environment are the three main sustainability pillars. Economic sustainability is about the economy’s ability to support a well-defined economic production level for an indefinite period. Social sustainability is the capacity of society to create structures and processes that satisfy the needs of its present members as well as support the upcoming generations’ capability to maintain healthy communities. The environmental sustainability is about the maintenance of the practices, which facilitate the quality of environment on a permanent basis.
How Leaders Should Lead
Sustainability calls for the business leaders to adapt activities as well as strategies that help them satisfy the present needs of their shareholders while sustaining, protecting, and improving both the natural and human resources required in the future. The recently increased call for the contemporary organizations to focus more on the issue of sustainability is due to some factors. One of these factors is the recent rise in corporate frauds, resulting in questionable integrity, ethics, and values. The other factor is climate change. In particular, the contemporary organizations are called upon to implement the business practices that help in reducing the global warming. The rise in the industrial accidents, resulting in immense environmental damage as well as loss of life have also increased the call for sustainability within the contemporary organizations. The other factor, which has resulted in the increase in the demand for sustainability in the modern organizations is the rise in corporate business failures. There has been an increase in poor corporate governance within the present-day organizations, which has led to the increase in the call for sustainability.
According to Petrini and Pozzebon (2010), leadership plays a vital role in the adoption of the sustainability practices by the corporations. It is important to note that effective leadership is vital for the accomplishment of sustainability initiatives in any organization. For this reason, business leaders ought to play a leading role in delineating as well as implementing the sustainability initiatives in their organizations. They must make a tradeoff between the interests of their organizations and the larger good of the society. Besides, these leaders should collect the information on the environmental, social, and financial advantages of sustainability so as to succeed in forming convincing business cases. Additionally, these leaders ought to communicate their vision, mission, and strategic directions to all the stakeholders to demonstrate to them that they are totally committed to sustainability. What is more, all the leaders need to use their power to persuade everyone in their organizations the importance of engaging in sustainability.
The implementation of sustainable actions into an IT Shared Service World requires the leaders to have a vision, which they can share with all the stakeholders as well as robust moral and ethical values. For this reason, place leadership is one of the leadership styles that are required for the implementation of the sustainable actions into the IT Shared Service Center world. Place leadership is essentially characterized by the mobilization as well as co-ordination of the activities of the autonomous actors to attain regional, local, or community aspirations (Sotarauta and Beer, No date). As a matter of fact, achieving sustainability is not only a goal of a single person, but it is also a goal of the whole society. Consequently, this demonstrates why place leadership is a required leadership style to implement sustainable actions into an IT SSC world.
It is crucial to note that the place leadership actions of mobilization and coordination will hasten the putting into practice of the sustainable actions into an IT Shared Service Center organization. The success in the implementation of sustainable actions by any organization depends on whether the leaders can create trust, consensus, and collaboration. It is worth noting that the aim of place leadership is increasing trust, consensus, and collaboration between the leaders and the subordinates. As a result, this style of leadership is needed to implement the sustainable actions into the IT SSC world. The IT Shared Service Center organizations require influential and competent leaders so as to succeed in implementing the sustainability actions. These leaders should also possess developed leadership capacities.
The second leadership style that is needed to implement sustainable actions into an IT SSC world is host leadership style. It is imperative to note that the implementation of the sustainable actions calls for the involvement of numerous individuals, organizations, communities, and the entire society. For this reason, the host leadership style will be needed to implement the sustainable actions into an IT SSC world since it involves the creation of relationships at home, at work, in the community, or, in the whole society. Relationship creation is the main activity involved in host leadership. The success in the implementation of the sustainable actions depends on whether the organizational leaders create relationships with the stakeholders. Consequently, host leadership style will facilitate the success of the IT Shared Service Center organizations in implementing sustainable actions. The leaders of these organizations will easily form relationships with the stakeholders and, thus, facilitate the implementation of the sustainable actions.
The other leadership style that is needed to implement the sustainable actions into the IT SSC world is authentic leadership style. Ideally, the authentic leadership style underscores the creation of the legitimacy of the leader through the establishment of honest relationships between the leader and the subordinates. These relationships are created on an ethical foundation. Kruse (2013) maintains that most theorists agree that authentic leaders concentrate on the long-term, lead with their heart, and are self-aware, focused on the outcomes, and mission driven. All these approaches help the leaders in the world of IT Shared Service Center address the issues of sustainability. According to Diamond (2012), the authentic leaders show a passion for their purpose, utilize their values constantly, and use their heads and hearts when leading. The implementation of the sustainable actions into an IT SSC World calls for the leaders who are passionate. As a result, this shows why the authentic leadership style is necessary for the IT Shared Service Center organizations wishing to implement sustainable actions.
The transformational leadership style is also required to implement sustainable actions into and IT SSC world. The transformational leaders are those leaders who work to produce economic and human transformation (Givens, 2008). These leaders work with the team members to find out the required change and form a vision to direct the change. The implementation of sustainable actions into an IT SSC world involves the change of the status quo. Consequently, the transformational leadership style is needed by the IT Shared Service Center organizations wishing to implement sustainable actions. In essence, the transformational leaders in the IT SSC world engage the employees in identifying the need for being sustainable and guides them during the implementation of the sustainable actions. According to Fien (2014), the theories of transformational leadership seem to be most consistent with the sustainability goals. As a result, this demonstrates why transformational leadership style is needed to implement the sustainable actions in an IT SSC world. It is imperative to note that the authentic and transformational approaches to leadership incorporate all the values of a sustainable approach.
Taking part in the green IT is a sustainable action that can be implemented into an IT Shared Service Center organization. Green IT can be described as the ecologically sound practices, applications, and information technologies. An IT Shared Service Center organization can, thus, improve its sustainability through harnessing the information technology to promote green initiatives and increase consciousness among the stakeholders, use the information systems and IT to empower environmental initiatives, as well as design and use the communication systems and software with minimal or no effect on the environment. In essence, these efforts can help an IT Shared Service Center organization decrease its costs and environmental footprints. They can also help the organization conserve resources through energy saving. The design of communication systems and software with no or minimal effect on the environment will make an IT Shared Service Center organization develop new business opportunities as well as attract, motivate, and retain talent. The implementation of green IT into an IT Shared Service Center organization would attract social and capital investment and facilitate the satisfaction of customer needs.
Reference List
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Givens, R.J., 2008. Transformational leadership: The impact on organizational and personal outcomes. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 1(1), pp.4-24.
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Kruse, K., 2013, May 12. What Is Authentic Leadership? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/#239779692ddd
Petrini, M. and Pozzebon, M., 2010. Integrating sustainability into business practices: learning from Brazilian firms. BAR-Brazilian Administration Review, 7(4), pp.362-378.
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