Leadership for What, Why, for Whom and Where? A Responsibility Perspective

ABSTRACT

A major assumption for both leadership researchers and practitioners is that the relationship between leaders and followers is the pivotal concern for leadership. Viewing leadership through the lens of responsibility, however, changes the pivotal relationship substantially. The principal relationship concern becomes the relationship between leaders and their stakeholders. To better understand this relationship the article seeks to explore the question Leadership for what purpose? The article offers an initial answer to this question by looking at the responsibilities of those who lead in the corporate world. In particular, we argue that leaders need to give primary attention to what they seek to achieve, why, for whom, and where. In this way the article seeks to (re)centre the concerns of leadership scholarship to address the challenges and responsibilities of those who seek to lead. The article offers an inter-disciplinary theory rooted in an inter-complementary perspective on capitalism, purpose and responsibility that enables organizational leaders to understand how the fiduciary duty of generating value for shareholders can be aligned with other stakeholder interests including employees, communities, societies, the environment and indeed humanity. This theory we describe as the ‘The theory of Good Dividends’. MAD statement This article seeks to Make a Difference (MAD) through challenging how we consider leadership in order to address the perfect storm of societal challenges that threaten humanity. In the recent past, our most pressing challenge was Climate Change;but this has been overshadowed by Covid 19. And this too will be overshadowed by other more compelling challenges. Corporate leadership has the power and influence to address and tackle these challenges. The article argues that leadership scholars need to fundamentally shift our focus away from the leader-follower relationship that has traditionally dominated our field of inquiry to the leader-stakeholder relationship. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.