Social Sustainability,Leadership and Human Resource Management

Overview of the Sustainability Debate

The notion of sustainability became popular largely as a result of the Brundtland Report published by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, which was later concretized in Agenda 21 of the Declaration of the United Nations Environment Summit in Rio in 1992 (Malaska, 1997). According to the Brundtland Report—which was named after the Commission’s chairwoman, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland—sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). The report stresses environmental concerns and welfare, viewed from the perspective of intergenerational equity.

As summarized by Malaska (1997), four main cornerstones of sustainability were presented in the Brundtland Report. First, inequality between people should be eliminated. Second, the destruction of the environment should be stopped; the protection and renewal of the environment is necessary. Third, instead of seeing people only as resources or means to gain short-term economic goals, people’s long-term well-being must be considered. Finally, the goal of sustainable development is to be just, equal and caring as well as environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.

After the Brundtland Report and the Summit in Rio, a notable and more recent roadmap to sustainable development was introduced: the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The guidelines offered in this roadmap were accepted by all United Nations member states in 2015. Peace and prosperity for the planet and people are at the core of the agenda. The agenda involves 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are aimed at ending poverty and other deprivations, improving health and education, reducing inequality and spurring economic growth in all countries.

Businesses and business schools have started to adopt SDGs into their strategies and practices to increase their legitimacy (Ajmal et al., 2018; Miotto et al., 2020). The role of business schools is seen as especially important because they train students to become future leaders who can contribute positively to society, people, the environment and the planet (Ghoshal, 2005; Lämsä et al., 2008). According to Halme and Laurila (2009), who see sustainable development from the viewpoint of businesses, such development can be integrated into business strategies and practices, and furthermore, innovations concerning sustainable development can be at the core of business. In other words, sustainability can be a source of business, and there is a need to do things differently to address failures in sustainable development (Bolsø et al., 2018).

Over time, the idea of sustainability has changed and become more multiple in meaning. The Brundtland Report identified three dimensions that have been crucial in the understanding and practice of sustainable development in organizational life. The dimensions acknowledged by the report are social, economic and environmental sustainability and their harmony. Traditionally, the economic dimension and profit making have been the dominant paradigms stressed by business organizations. Moreover, the environmental dimension has been popular in discussions on sustainability, but there is a particularly notable scarcity of theoretical and empirical studies regarding topics on social sustainability in the context of work organizations. Human behaviour is difficult to study due to its complexity, uncertainty and context dependence. Case study approaches are important because they offer the potential to build relevant and multiple understandings of socially sustainable leadership and its interlinkages to HRM. Researchers (e.g., Ajmal et al., 2018; Hargreaves & Fink, 2012; Kramar, 2014; Omidi & Dal Zotto, 2022; Roca-Puig, 2019) have increasingly begun to reflect on and discuss what sustainability means when dealing with people in and around organizations. In these discussions, the social dimension of sustainability in relation to the leadership and HRM literature plays a crucial role.

A Road to Sustainable Leadership and HRM

The scientific discussion on socially sustainable leadership and HRM is rather recent, yet it is of increasing interest (Heikkinen et al., 2021; Macke & Genari, 2019; Nie et al., 2018; Omidi & Dal Zotto, 2022). The field is interdisciplinary by nature, drawing on various debates and viewpoints and lacking coherent frameworks and definitions. The tradition of corporate social responsibility (CSR) focus on leadership and HRM as connected can especially be seen as a key element to increase our knowledge and understanding of the topic.

In general, the idea of social sustainability in the organizational context can be understood to refer to strategies and practices that produce important social and human effects on people, who then affect the organization’s future conditions and environment (Ehnert & Harry, 2012; Macke & Genari, 2019). Thus, the temporal dimension of an organization’s actions is one key constituent of social sustainability, and decision-making and activities in leadership and HRM should be viewed not only from a short-term perspective but especially from a long-term one. According to Hargreaves and Fink (2012), length is a key principle of sustainable leadership. Sustainable leadership maintains and promotes the most valuable elements of people’s lives and environments over time (Tideman et al., 2013). Another fundamental principle linked closely to the social sustainability of leadership and HRM is continuous learning and renewal (Hargreaves & Fink, 2012). Hargreaves and Fink (2012) and Tideman et al. (2013) stressed that the ability to learn, find creative and innovative ideas and identify ways to continuously solve problems and learn from experiments are necessary.

Ehnert and Harry (2012) argued that the Brundtland idea of sustainability has meant that the responsibilities of businesses and other organizations, typically discussed under the construct of CSR, are crucial to consider when the social sustainability of leadership and HRM is the focus. Following the tradition of CSR, we can say that the idea that organizations have economic and legal responsibilities as well as ethical and philanthropic responsibilities is embedded in social sustainability (Carroll, 1991, 2000). According to Waldman et al. (2006), CSR refers to ‘actions on the part of the firm that appear to advance, or acquiesce in the promotion of some social good, beyond the immediate interests of the firm and its shareholders and beyond that which is required by law’ (p. 1703). From this point of view, it can be said that ethics and morals are core characteristics of socially sustainable leadership and HRM. Hargreaves and Fink (2012) reported that the ethical principles of caring for others and social justice are especially crucial. Moreover, maintaining and developing trust is also of importance (Lämsä & Keränen, 2020; Lämsä & Pučėtaitė, 2006).

According to the tradition of CSR, an organization’s internal resources and conditions—such as maintaining and advancing employee’s competencies and skills, work–family balance, work safety and work well-being—are of importance. Moreover, organizations should pay attention to and consider their impact on the community and external environments. Thus, community development and stakeholder engagement with the community are important factors that reflect how organizational leadership views its role in the social sustainability agenda (Ajmal et al., 2018). In particular, stakeholder theory is a significant approach in the tradition of CSR and is an important way to deal with different groups of actors in the environment. The theory focuses on a company’s value co-creation with stakeholders and adopts a moral dimension as an inseparable part of stakeholder relations and management (Freeman et al., 2007).

According to Kujala et al. (2022), businesses are currently expected to humanize their stakeholder engagement to advance human well-being. This expectation means that the value of employee and stakeholder well-being should go beyond economic measures and economic value. Achieving people’s well-being is of moral significance in any context (Nussbaum, 2011). The empowerment of diverse groups of people to support them in developing and realizing their potential is one crucial factor in sustainable leadership and HRM. In other words, in an organizational context, sustainable leadership and HRM aim to eliminate restrictions that prevent people from realizing their potential and to advance people’s opportunities to achieve well-being, quality of life and a life that they value (Sen, 2009; Sten, 2017).

According to Ehnert and Harry (2012), the idea of sustainability in organizations and management can be connected to the classical human relations school of thought from the 1930s and the Harvard approach to strategic HRM, called the soft HRM model, from the 1980s. These approaches acknowledge the importance and role of people in the achievement of results. People should not be exploited to achieve short-term efficiency; managing and leading people in a sustainable way can be a source of competitive advantage (Beer et al., 1985). According to these traditions, human and social outcomes (e.g., commitment and team spirit) are important to achieve organizational goals (Legge, 2005). Moreover, people’s human and social capital, shared leadership, collaboration among organization members, a system-wide approach and a stakeholder approach are important. Although these models can be seen as a significant approach destinated to developing the idea of sustainable leadership and HRM, some main challenges can be mentioned here. For example, these approaches do not clearly acknowledge the role of HRM and leadership in affecting the natural environment and generating ecological consequences. Moreover, Ehnert and Harry (2012) stressed that the value of human and social outcomes is understood as a key contribution to organizational results and performance. Consequently, these outcomes are easily interpreted as solely instrumental to organizational achievements and performance.

Finally, as suggested in various studies (e.g., Hallinger & Suriyankietkaew, 2018; Hargreaves & Fink, 2012; Tideman et al., 2013), the social sustainability of leadership and HRM needs to be linked to the societal context in question. Thus, social sustainability occurs and is maintained and developed within broader social systems (Hallinger & Suriyankietkaew, 2018). Therefore, depending on the context, the expectations and requirements of socially sustainable HRM and leadership tend to vary.

In summary, the following features are crucial to the conceptualization, maintenance and development of socially sustainable leadership and HRM:

Long-term orientation

Articles in This Special Issue

Developing the knowledge linkage between social sustainability, leadership and HRM is about understanding multiple types of groups and different levels in and around organizations concerning the advancement of sustainability (Macke & Genari, 2019). It is also about understanding the realities of different types of contexts to promote the agenda of social sustainability and the challenges to attaining it (Ajmal et al., 2018).

By applying an instrumental case study in ‘Microentrepreneurs as Socially Responsible Leaders’, Simunaniemi et al. explore how Finnish microentrepreneurs perceive the concept of social responsibility and responsible leadership in their business. The authors’ main finding is that the groundwork for social responsibility in microenterprises is based on a strategically sustainable business that is in line with the entrepreneur’s values. Moreover, leadership with a long-term societal purpose greater than their short-term profit-seeking is crucial. It is uncommon for microentrepreneurs to verbalize their values and responsibility activities, although communication and interaction with staff and other stakeholders are constantly used in these activities. Hence, it is suggested that microentrepreneurs would benefit from tailored training concerning social sustainability communication. This study contributes to discussions on sustainable development at the business level (Bolsø et al., 2018; Halme & Laurila, 2009). It is concluded that an understanding of business strategy and practices and innovative leadership approaches—ones that do things differently—concerning the sustainable future are necessary.

The business case for sustainable HRM is argued in Järlström et al.’s study ‘Practices of Sustainable Human Resource Management in Three Finnish Companies: Comparative Case Study’. Their study highlights the positive societal and business outcomes of sustainable HRM in the long-term, particularly regarding well-being issues such as career duration, low turnover, low absence rate and late retirement. By using a practice-based model of sustainable HRM, the authors investigated why and how companies implement sustainable HRM and what kinds of results they achieved. In line with Ehnert (2009), it is argued that sustainable HRM develops as a result of a customized business strategy. According to the authors, as a functional strategy, sustainable HRM needs to take into account social sustainability objectives and respective actions, such as work–family integration and equal pay. It is stressed that sustainable HRM needs to consider the external environment of an organization, as suggested by Ajmal et al. (2018). In this study, the societal context of Finland was the focus. The high level of equality and importance of social welfare in public policy in Finland were mentioned as especially impacting the form and relevance of sustainable HRM. The findings lend support to the ‘soft’ HRM model (Beer et al., 1985) for sustainable HRM.

Another important contribution in the field of sustainable HRM was made by Pitkänen et al.’s study ‘Sustainability Project Champions as Environmental Leaders in a City Organization: Driving the Urban Circular Economy’, which was conducted in a public sector organizational context. In this action-research-driven case study, a period of more than two years was of interest. The study goes beyond the social dimension of sustainability and focuses on project champions’ environmental leadership for sustainability when the target is to initiate and drive change. This study adds to the sustainable HRM literature by demonstrating how projects and individuals contributing to them may drive organizational change for sustainability. Hence, the study addresses Bolsø et al.’s (2018) determination that more research evidence for positive actions towards sustainable development is needed. It was found that the personal characteristics of the project’s key leaders—such as internal motivation to pursue challenging goals, open communication, trust-based relationships and collaboration with the organization’s stakeholders in environmental strategy—enabled the city to become more environmentally sustainable and, consequently, to contribute to SDG 11.

The noted scarcity of research on sustainable leadership in developing country contexts that was noted by Hallinger and Suriyankietkaew (2018) is addressed by Shaikh et al.’s study ‘Collaborative Leadership in the Institution of Higher Education—A Sociocultural Context of Pakistan’. In their single-case study, Shaikh et al. focused on collaborative leadership in an academic organization in the societal context of Pakistan. The authors argue that collaborative leadership—an approach to conceptualizing shared leadership—can be a useful alternative to autocratic leadership, which is typically followed in the studied organization and in Pakistani organizational life in general. It is stressed that collaborative leadership has the potential to promote an inclusive work environment and ethical values in leadership (Hallinger & Suriyankietkaew, 2018; Hargreaves & Fink, 2012). An important outcome of this study is that it found that collaborative leadership is challenging to understand and apply in the study context. Specifically, SDGs 5 and 10 (United Nations, n.d.), which aim to reduce gender inequality, seem to be challenging to follow in the study context due to the existence of traditional masculine sociocultural values and practices.

Hatami et al.’s case study, ‘Creating Social Sustainability through Distributing Leadership and Co-responsibility in Corporate Volunteering’, also focuses on shared leadership, which the authors argue is a method for developing a more responsible and people-focused approach to leadership. To highlight shared leadership, the concepts of distributed leadership and co-responsibility are adopted. The concepts refer to a leadership process wherein responsibility is co-created among participants through a distributing form of leadership, which can advance social sustainability in organizational life. The study focuses on corporate volunteering—one significant form of CSR (Carroll, 1991)—by providing insight into the topic using two companies with headquarters in Finland as case studies. In both cases, cooperation between the companies and non-governmental organizations was conducted to support socially challenged groups in society as beneficiaries. As revealed by Carroll (1991, 2000) and Waldman et al. (2006), corporate volunteering is a form of corporate philanthropy that embraces businesses’ voluntary activities to promote the social good. In this study, it is shown that certain individuals in the studied organizations tended to take the lead in corporate volunteering activities, and their actions then created collective action and a sense of collective responsibility among the participants.

Social networking is in the spotlight in Shaymardanov et al.’s study, ‘Social Networks of Women in Organizations: Evolution of Research and Research Agenda’. In this study, a literature review of research on social networks regarding women’s careers in the context of organizations and management from 1970 to 2021 is presented. The review focuses on understanding the idea of a social network, gender in social networks and the effect of social networks on women’s careers. The evolution of these aspects during the study period is highlighted. One of the key suggestions is that an improved understanding of the role of leadership in social networking is needed because leadership has the potential to contribute to equal opportunities and the just treatment of people. To promote social sustainability with the help of leadership and HRM, it is vital to connect diverse people to enable the establishment of multiple social networks. This review article contributes knowledge to SDGs 5 and 10 (United Nations, n.d.), as well as possibilities to realize human capabilities in organizations and management from a gender viewpoint (Nussbaum, 2011).