Leadership for Creating Sustainability Within the Organization: An Empirical Study

Effective leadership is a predominant necessity for every organization to sustain in the global market. The increasing rate of change we face today triggers the importance of nurturing a new skill of leadership with a wide vision and practicality. This all new concept of leadership gives rise to a new phase in the world of leadership, i.e., “sustainable leadership”. Sustainable practices are becoming compulsory day-by-day for every organization, which encourages the managers to start thinking widely and become a sustainable leader. Sustainability education plays a significant role in changing the leadership concept. Leadership for sustainability denotes a new and expanded understanding of the role of the leaders to deal with the sustainable challenges by creating an inclusive, collaborative and reflective leadership process leading towards sustainable competitive environment. Today’s organizations not only focus on their profit but also maintain sustainable competitive advantage by taking into consideration the organization’s internal resources along with economic, environmental and societal factors. It is viewed as a comprehensive set of policies and programs that are integrated into business operations, supply chains and decision-making processes throughout the company, providing a superior and long-term position over their competitors. This paper focuses on the empirical explanations on the literature of leadership, its effectiveness in creating a sustainable culture within an organization by encouraging sustainable leadership practices and how it fosters a change within and around Kolkata-based Indian IT organizations to gain sustainable competitive advantage.