Green Transformational Leadership promotes sustainable business

To successfully implement this required transformation to the circular economy, leaders are needed who are able to motivate and engage external stakeholders for this change. The ambitious SNSF project, "Green Transformational Leadership in the Context of the Circular Economy", aims at this task at ISM HWZ in cooperation with Judith Walls (HSG) and Christian Vögtlin (ZHAW) and Silvan Oberholzer, PhD student.

Innovation and responsibility

Green Transformational Leadership, in the context of the Circular Economy, is an innovative approach that prioritizes sustainability and environmental responsibility while recognizing the importance of operating within planetary boundaries and innovating. Green Transformational Leadership seeks to advance models such as the circular economy in a goal-oriented manner by fostering innovation and collaboration among stakeholders, including businesses, governments, and civil society.

Characteristics of Green Transformational Leaders include a vision for a sustainable future, a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, and the ability to inspire and mobilize others around sustainable and circular practices.

Change requires leadership

The aim of this research project at the HWZ, in collaboration with the University of St. Gallen and ZHAW, is to identify why, when and how leaders can optimally engage stakeholders in this process to address the identified environmental challenges in the context of the circular economy. This necessary change requires leaders with specific characteristics. It is about actual transformers:inside and appropriate mechanisms to build relationships with external stakeholders that create sustainable value for stakeholders and nature. In a first step, analyzed case studies are used to visualize the processes in circular stakeholder networks that underlie the relationship dynamics between transformative leaders and stakeholders and lead to ecologically sustainable outcomes. In addition, the characteristics and motivations of Green Transformational Leaders are elaborated.

"With its current study, the Institute for Strategic Management at the HWZ makes a sound contribution to the theory and practice of transformational, entrepreneurial leadership, environmental management and stakeholder engagement. The identified characteristics of change-minded leaders as well as the engagement mechanisms of external stakeholders in the transformation should contribute to the solution of major environmental challenges such as CO2 reduction or preservation of biodiversity," says Prof. Sybille Sachs, who has led the Institute for Strategic Management at the HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich for 20 years.

Source and further information: www.fh-hwz.ch