I am researching sustainability as its achieved with competitive advantage. Not concerned with environmental a shoe store leadership

Hello Jerry

Thanks for the message.  My interests are about environmental leaders: what they think, do, act, etc.  This was the basis of my dissertation, a phenomenological study.  I believe it is included with my profile.  If not, and you'd like a copy, please let me know and I'd be happy to send you a copy.

Without more information, I'm not sure what you mean by sustainability as it is achieved with competitive advantage.  This is rather sweeping and board terminology.  I am interested in leaders, for instance, Ray Anderson founder of Interface or Yves Chouinard, founder of Patagonia.  These men exemplify that organizations not only may be profitable, but do good while being good in their industry and in respects to impacting the environment.  

In other words, I am interested in leadership that considers the environment as more important than in passing or as an externality.  There are immense opportunities in environmentally sustainable leadership and change.

My thanks for your note, again.  Are you looking for others to do some specific research?

Barbara Barnes Plourde, DM 

Hello Barbara,

my research is not exactly related to what you do, but I can see connections though. I look at organizational capabilities of manufacturing companies, and see if and how they relate to environmental and social sustainability. I am developing a maturity model to score how well these capabilities are being built.

I have updated a poster on my RG profile explaining such a model.

If there are capabilities related to environment and society, and if their maturity "score high", then it is likely that there is an underlying leadership and business model oriented to sustainability.

We can argue that a possible conclusion of one of my case studies would be connected to your starting point.

So far, I didn't find this case, though. I'd love to join your updates about it and see if there are opportunities for collaborations.

Good luck with this exciting project

Ilaria

(On top of my previous answer)

In case you did not consider in the sample of leaders you wish to analyze, I recommend taking a look at IKEA business model and its CEO Peter Agnefjäll.

In the link I provided below, you may find tons of examples related to company's commitment to environmental sustainability. 

http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_KW/pdf/sustainability_report/group_approach_sustainability_fy11.pdf

Thanks for your inquiry.  I am looking at opportunities to continue research about leadership of environmental sustainability post doctoral dissertation and program.  Ideally, I would like to locate others with similar interests to entertain future projects.

LLaria,

Your reply and attachments are quite interesting.  I'd phantom that actually my dissertation study may be considered a fore runner to your study.  Let me explain. Phenomenology is the study of lived experiences of a phenomenon through the eyes of a person(s).  As in my case, the phenomenon considered was organizational leaders' experiences who subscribe to and believe environmental sustainability as a central interest/concern/product of their organizations.  

While there is increasing talk and interest about environmental sustainability, the majority of organizations place profit and shareholder value over the environment and environmental resources. With that in mind, I believed to study leaders that do the opposite by placing the environment and environmental resources before profit and stakeholder value was worth investigating.

From doing a phenomenological study, information developed suggesting duplication(s) of my study eventually may be useful for building environmentally sustainable leadership models and instruments as leadership tools.   The industries represented by leader participants included a small segment of commerce.  I suspect replications of my study may prove useful to ascertain if interviewing more leaders from additional organizational types confirm, enlarge, or enhance my study. Naturally given time, the research might morph from phenomenology into grounded theory research to develop environmental sustainable leadership models using information garnered from phenomenology.  This is in a nutshell my area of interests and plans for the future.  

You might be interested how I found my participant leaders.  I used LinkedIn and eventually connected with over 1200 leaders with environmental interests.  I also kept a log of name of leaders cited as leader examples of sustainability in books, articles, journals, news media, and research organizations reports like Accenture.  Ikea was certainly on this list.  There are numerous leaders that have public reputations for supporting sustainability.  I'd love to find some of the more public figures allowing me to interview them, too!

Yes, I'd be interested in keeping in touch as it seems that there are commonalities to our interests. 

Barbara

Barbara so good to hear from you and what you're doing. You're studying is intriguing by the way I used to be a CCC for the University of Phoenix in South Florida. I just finished reading case about the CEO of Nestle's located in Belgium. And what he is done with regard to sustainability environmentally. I think your method of getting participants your study is most and lightning to me. It does suggest a method by which I could do some survey work. Tell me more about that please tell next time

Dear Barbara,

Any updates about your interesting piece of research? I am impressed by the number of leaders you reached out to!

I believe we both have the same vision, which is enabling more companies to be environmentally sustainable (even though I look at economic and social aspects too) but in different ways. I am right now trying to differentiate between organizational aspects (which comprise leadership) and “harder” and more measurable aspects like process conformance, KPIs and data. It would be interesting to see how business people consider the importance of these aspects as key to foster sustainability performances in their own company, which is the reason that motivates the need for defining the degree of improvement needed and the maturity of them.

Moreover, I understand that the purpose of your research is to describe the characteristics of environmental sustainable leadership models from a phenomenological study. Is it right? if so, I am curious to know about the followings:

• How to you consider your sample? In greater detail, how about companies (and therefore leaders of them) that are not explicitly “labeled” as environmentally sustainable yet their activities impacts on environmental outcomes (e.g., ride-hailing companies and all the companies under the umbrella of the sharing economy). Are they still part of your sample?
• Can you give some examples of the characteristics of business models are you looking at in your study? (e.g., size of the company, growth per year, environmental KPIs, etc).

Looking forward to hearing from you!

All the best

Ilaria

Hi Illaria,

Thanks for the note. I will try and answer your questions. I cut and pasted your text and reply to one under the questions.

Moreover, I understand that the purpose of your research is to describe the characteristics of environmental sustainable leadership models from a phenomenological study. Is it right? Yes, my dissertation was a heuristics phenomenological study. You can review it as an attachment to this message.  if so, I am curious to know about the followings:

How to you consider your sample? In greater detail, how about companies (and therefore leaders of them) that are not explicitly “labeled” as environmentally sustainable yet their activities impacts on environmental outcomes (e.g., ride-hailing companies and all the companies under the umbrella of the sharing economy). Are they still part of your sample?

My dissertation has a section about how I selected my population. In a nutshell, I used mainly LinkedIn. I developed a connection community of mostly organizational leaders that run sustainable business where sustainability is a core part of their organization and culture. My connections now exceed 1300 so I had a large pool to select potential participants.

I sent out invites (about 300) using LinkedIn. It astounds me the character, reputation, knowledge, and reputation of some of these connections because some possess international recognition. I've found leaders typically review my profile and for the most part accept my invitation. These leaders are generous individuals with real environmental sustainability passion that permeates their whole life and not just careers.

When I went to recruit potential study participants I used a pre-prepared letter asking them to volunteer and providing information about the study. I followed all the proper rules established by the Federal government for using human subjects in studies. Eventually, I had I think around 12 volunteers. I ended up ending the study at seven participants because the interview information was saturated (no new information). This follows a phenomenological methodology. 

 Can you give some examples of the characteristics of business models are you looking at in your study? (e.g., size of the company, growth per year, environmental KPIs, etc). 

     I did not use or create a model because this is not the purpose of phenomenology. The purpose is to examine experience. In my case, I wanted to find out the experience of leaders who believe in and deeply incorporate environmental sustainability in organizations. My dissertation has a section laying out the purpose and problem statements providing more details. 

Chapter 4 and 5 discuss my findings. Of the seven leaders, they were from different fields albeit some were similar in nature. If I was to repeat or modify the study again, I would expand the professional fields than what I used in this study. What I believe I discovered is character traits the seven share. Eventually, I could evolve the study into a grounded study, which WOULD develop a leadership model. I believe that is my ultimate goal. Perhaps a model would benefit creating a template that would enable leaders who are not sustainably inclined to start. To me, the sustainability issues of society is a leadership problem. 

Are you researching or have interests in Environmental Sustainability Leadership?.        This is exactly my interest area.

Are you, too? May it behooves us to further discuss this with a possible co-authored study together? 

I look forward to your reply.

Barbara Barnes Plourde, DM

Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_you_researching_or_have_interests_in_Environmental_Sustainability_Leadership?596c801cf7b67e40e847ccb9 [accessed Jul 17, 2017].