Volume 31, Issue 2, 2012
EABIS Decennial Issue
Richard Straub, Mollie Painter-Morland
Pages 349-361
From CSR to Sustainable Business—Transformational Leadership in Action
With Academic Response by Mollie Painter-Morland
This contribution to the Decennial volume brings together the insights of a seasoned business practitioner on the sustainability imperatives that corporations face, and a response from an academic who works in the field of sustainability and business ethics. Dr. Straub draws on Peter Drucker to reassert the importance of fulfilling the economic mission of the enterprise, but argues that it needs repositioning. Business must be responsive to customer and employee needs, and in order to do so, transformational leadership is required. In her response, Prof. Mollie Painter-Morland argues that in order to succeed in building sustainable enterprises, an urgent evaluation of what is meant by “need” is required. She also contends that in mainstreaming the sustainability agenda, systemic leadership is needed in addition to transformational leaders.