A Theory of Environmental Leadership

Leading for the Earth

Mark Manolopoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367474003
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000360974
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

In A Theory of Environmental Leadership, Mark Manolopoulos draws on his original model of leading outlined in his cutting-edge book Following Reason to derive and develop the first properly systematic model of eco-leadership.

Suppose humanity's relation with the Earth may be described in terms of leadership "stages" or modalities: once upon a time, the Earth led or ruled humanity, and now we humans rule or lead the Earth. When the Earth led, the Earth flourished; now that humankind leads, the Earth flounders - ecological crises multiply and intensify. However, there might be a third stage or modality of leadership: humanity leading for the Earth, leading in a way that allows the world, including humans, to re-flourish. What would be the nature of this truly environmental form of leadership? A Theory of Environmental Leadership identifies and critically analyzes the two basic and incompatible positions associated with the way we construe and interact with the non-human: anthropocentrism (human supremacism) and ecocentrism (ecological egalitarianism). By rigorously analyzing and leveraging this polarity, this book outlines an innovative theory of eco-leadership together with some of its confronting-but-necessary measures.

Expansive and incredibly timely, A Theory of Environmental Leadership is ideal for a range of audiences, from scholars and students of environmental leadership studies to activists and policymakers. The book's remarkable clarity and engaging character also makes it suitable for the general public.

1
FROM GENERAL LEADERSHIP TO ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP

This chapter accomplishes two basic tasks: (a) it provides a summary of the general definition of leadership I develop in my book Following Reason: A Theory and Strategy for Rational Leadership (2019), with some additional comments relating to the present work; and (b) it reiterates how this general definition may be utilized in order to theorize more specific modes of leading, including rational and ecocentric modes. While the second task shall merely remind us of the study’s method outlined in the Introduction, the first task involves quite an extensive retracing of my general model, as we proceed with the assumption that readers may be unfamiliar with it, and given that the environmental model of leadership that I outline is predicated on the general one, then a sufficient grasp of the fundamental model is required in order to comprehend the specific eco-centered one.

The review begins by re-emphasizing the difficulty of the task of conceiving a general definition. I then summarize the “obvious”-yet-innovative way in which I pursue a definition by re-observing both mundane and historically significant instantiations of leadership. I then recall the outcome of applying this approach: acts of leading appear to involve efforts by leaders and followers to transform existing situations into sufficiently different situations or preserve situations from competing leadership seeking to change them. I foreground the ambiguity and problematic nature of the definition’s elements (“situation,” “sufficient change/maintenance,” etc.). I also briefly address the element of followership in my general formulation, and I explain that the specific question of ecocentric followership is bracketed in the present work because it exceeds the study’s limits. I end the section by explaining that I offer an elementary ecocentric ethic/ethos because the focus of the project is the outline of a theory of eco-centered leadership “rather than” a comprehensive ecocentric ethic/ethos. In the subsequent section, I rehearse how the general definition allows us to differentiate leading from managing, two phenomena that have often been fused or confused in leadership and management studies. By the end of the study, we might be able to conclude that what often passes for “environmental leadership” is actually human-centered-environmental management. In the final section of the chapter, I explain how the proposed general formulation of leading appears to open up the possibility of theorizing more specific forms of leading, including ecocentric leadership.

Retracing the Pathway

Perhaps one way of differentiating “the modern” from “the (purportedly) post-modern” is the former’s predilection for definition, and the latter’s suspicion of it (or at least complication of it). For “the scholar,” the first task is to define the terms of one’s argument. This is meant to lead to clear and cogent argumentation. Philosopher Nuel Belnap insists that “[d]efinitions are crucial for every serious discipline” (1993: 115). And yet, as I emphasize time and again in Following Reason (2019: 3–4, 8, 53, 70), the word “leadership” belongs to a category of words and phenomena – like “love,” “beauty,” “Reason,” and so on – that apparently defy definition: we think we know what they are, and yet we’re confounded when we’re pressed to conceptualize them. Perceptive leadership theorists have been aware of the difficulty of defining leadership for quite a long time (e.g., Miner 1975; Pfeffer 1977: 105; Bennis 1989: 1). While there are the optimists (e.g., Burns 1978: 3, 448; Blake and Mouton 1982: 275; Bass 1997; Robinson 2001; Goethals and Sorenson 2006; Dugan 2017: 3, 5), some of the most prominent contemporary leadership thinkers remain suspicious about the possibility of finding/conceiving a general model of leading (e.g., Ciulla 2004: 305; Zoller and Fairhurst 2007: 1338; Ladkin 2010: 2–3). In Following Reason, I recognize but also critically respond to these suspicions (2019: 8–17), thus paving the way for re-opening this venture in a tentative and epistemically humble manner.

How, then, do I proceed to identify/construct a general definition or model of leadership in Following Reason? I commence by recalling the most famous quotation in leadership studies, written by the great James MacGregor Burns: “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth” (1978: 2). The simultaneous force and familiarity of this remark have the effect of obscuring the opening: its descriptive power continues to overwhelm us, often preventing us from “mining” it, while its familiarity also tends to foster the assumption that there is nothing to be mined (Manolopoulos 2019: 15). But the opening is there: leadership is a phenomenon that is observed; it is observable. Observing is not merely a passive receiving of sensory data: the process involves not only perceiving the phenomenon but paying sustained attention to it; observation therefore involves perception, analysis, and reflection, resulting in grounded speculation (Norris 1984, 1985; Daston 2008; Eberbach and Crowley 2009, 2017). Hence, by more closely observing leadership phenomena, I claim that we might be able to better understand them, especially in terms of identifying them and differentiating them from other, often apparently similar phenomena (2019: 15–16).

Following Reason therefore invites readers to participate in the act of observing “as if for the first time,” attempting to carefully describe and analyze purported leadership phenomena. While observing or re-observing these events, the following kinds of questions are posited to assist in the task (2019: 16): what is occurring? What is being done? What do leaders (i.e., leadership groups or networks, often personified or epitomized by one or several agents) do when they lead? Do these leadership phenomena exhibit certain elements or features that are common across the range of leadership experiences? If so, might these be identified or construed as common or universal conditions or characteristics that may therefore be co-opted into a general formulation of leadership? And could this fundamental formulation allow us to identify leadership phenomena and differentiate them from others?

One can already discern that this “largely-phenomenon-centered” method differentiates itself from more conventional approaches, which focus on agency, character, virtue, etc. (e.g., Weber 1947; Stogdill 1948; Tucker 1968, 1977; Burns 1978; Bennis and Nanus 1985, 1997; House, Spangler and Woycke 1991; Bass and Steidlmeier 1999; Sankar 2003; Chun 2005; Sosik 2006; Crossan and others 2017), and especially male agency (for excellent critiques, refer to, e.g., Sinclair 1998; Gronn 2000; Ospina and Sorenson 2006; Uhl-Bien 2006; Ladkin 2010; Case and others 2015; Liu 2015; Grint, Jones and Holt 2016). The pathway developed and applied in the book focuses our attention on the act itself more so than the participants, their characters, motivations, etc. The focus lies more with “the doing” than the “doer” – on the action more than the actors – though the question/element of leaderly subjectivity is not completely suspended.

Why is a “more-than-agent-centered” approach laid out in Following Reason? First of all, the conventional pathway has not sufficiently progressed our understanding of leading, so why tread down that well-worn path again? Pursuing a relatively novel path seems to have produced new/renewed insights. And so, a fundamental part of the approach used in Following Reason (2019: 16–17) was to try to temporarily suspend or bracket received notions of leadership. (Once again, my approach mirrors Cartesian and phenomenological methods.) Attempting such a procedure was necessary because predominant notions were likely to obscure or distort our observations. We also reiterate that the suspension was temporary because the study recalled and compared certain landmark scholarly formulations and everyday “understandings” with the proposed theory, a process that reinforced and refined the formulation.

The Basic Conception

What, then, might be disclosed by carefully observing purported acts of leadership? In Following Reason, I commence with a mundane (and therefore relatively straightforward) example (2019: 17–18). Why an everyday example? Several scholars insist that leading takes place at this level. For instance, Burns rightly contends that “leadership … is far more pervasive, widespread – indeed, common – than we generally recognize” and that “Leadership begins earlier, operates more widely, takes more forms, pervades more sectors of society, and lasts longer in the lives of most persons than has been generally recognized” (1978: 426, 427). Another prominent leadership scholar, John Kotter, confirms the phenomenon’s prevalence: “Leadership in a modest sense – i.e., leadership with a lower-case (little) ‘l’ – is far more prevalent and far more important than most people realize. Not flashy or dramatic, it rarely attracts much attention, and often goes unnoticed” (1990 a: 83). And eminent leadership ethicist Joanne B. Ciulla prudently instructs: “scholars might be missing something about leadership when they study only exceptional types of leaders” (2004: 320). So we observe even banal cases of leadership.

The example provided in Following Reason is a parent taking their child on a walk (2019: 17ff). The parent leads the child; the child follows. But what is the parent doing, “exactly”? The parent leads the child from one physical location to a sufficiently different one (due to any number of reasons – which are irrelevant for our purposes of identifying any general conditions). Several remarks are required at this point. First of all, the notion that the parent classifies as a leader might appear strange or weird to us (Manolopoulos 2019: 18) because we typically identify leadership with grander acts; we normally associate leadership with “high-end” political, military, or business activity. But, as noted earlier, outstanding leadership scholars emphatically claim that mundane acts of leading are still leading. Next, we focus on what the parent is doing: the parent leads the child from one physical location or “situation” to another location or situation.

Before proceeding, we should briefly define “situation.” In Following Reason, I predominantly employ this word – though synonyms may include “phenomenon,” “act,” “event,” “state of affairs,” etc. – to describe a set of circumstances, ranging from “simple” banal scenarios to what I call “mega-situations” (2019: 23), such as complex global systems like neoliberalism (which is traversed in the fourth and fifth chapters). As stated in the Introduction, I employ an orbit of words for key concepts in this work not only to minimize repetition but also to suggest that no one word perfectly describes or “captures” what is being signified. But the term “situation” appears to be quite useful as the keyword because it easily encompasses trivial settings (such as leading a child on a walk) and “middle-of-the-road” phenomena (such as cultural events) but it may also be “stretched” to name the most serious social formations (such as political-economic states of affairs). As will be shown, “situation” is an integral element of the definition of leadership that I develop in Following Reason. (In that work [2019: 17], I also register my recognition that the notion of “situation” as a conceptual lens for understanding leadership phenomena is not a new one [e.g., Stogdill 1948; Hemphill 1949; Sanford 1950; Hersey and Blanchard 1977; Bass 1990a], but the earlier research doesn’t employ the concept of “situation” in the service of developing a general definition of leading in the sustained and systematic way that I do.)

Returning to our example, one observes that the parent–leader leads the child–follower from one situation to a sufficiently different one. By observing the mundane example of a parent leading a child, could it be that one discovers a condition or criterion of leadership phenomena? (Manolopoulos 2019: 17). Might the leadership act involve the attempt to guide the follower/s (in this case, the child) from one situation (in this case, one particular location) to a sufficiently different situation/location?

As stated earlier, we must also observe historic examples to determine whether they confirm the proffered condition of “sufficient situational difference.” The first “historic” example I identify and discuss in Following Reason is that of Moses (2019: 19; it remains irrelevant for our purposes whether the Mosaic exploits actually occurred). One can straightaway confirm that the Mosaic exodus is an exemplary case of leadership: to begin with, as with the case of the parent, there is a literal leading of followers from one physical location to another; moreover, the Mosaic leadership group also leads the followers from the economic–political situation of Egyptian bondage to the radically different one of liberation and freedom (Wildavsky 1984; cf. Sinclair 2007). Moses certainly meets the condition of sufficient situational change and even “surpasses” it, i.e., the situational change is not only sufficient but radical. And so, I posit that leading appears to involve attempting to sufficiently change the situations of followers.

There is obviously much overlap between this criterion and mainstream definitions, which emphasize movement and direction (e.g., Burns 1978, 2003; Bass 1990b, 1997, 2007; Graham 1988, 1995). This conventional set of conceptualizations is nicely summarized by Ciulla with the formulation: “leadership is about a person or persons somehow moving other people to do something” (2004: 306). However, the crux of my definition is whether this “doing something” has led to a different situation for those involved. The concept of sufficient situational transformation somewhat “thickens” the standard definition (but not to the extent that this thicker conception no longer applies as a general formulation). We’re now on the way to developing a general definition of leading: one of its conditions appears to be sufficient situational change.

So far, I’ve shown how some leadership phenomena, from the banal to the historic, reveal that a basic criterion is sufficient situational alteration. But attempting to precisely circumscribe what constitutes “sufficient alteration” is problematic. Consequently, in Following Reason, I propose that sufficient situational difference is determined by the situation itself. For mundane cases, the sufficient difference is minimal, while the difference would be more substantial as the situation becomes more expansive and complex (Manolopoulos 2019: 22). While this general rule may assist us, we recognize that the question of what constitutes sufficient situational change remains quite a vexing one. In Following Reason, I return to the relatively clear example of the parent-and-child (2019: 22). We recall our proposition that what suffices as situational difference is a different location, i.e., the parent will have led the child if the parent has guided the child from one location to an adequately different one. But is there any line or border that demarcates when the parent and the child have passed from one location to a sufficiently different one? At what point in space-time have they moved from one physical site to an adequately different one? A few yards from the point of origin? A mile away? These sorts of questions recall us to the fact that the task of determining whether leading has taken place is often unavoidably imprecise and ambiguous – even when we analyze everyday states of affairs. However, I would add here that we may somewhat mitigate our concerns by noting that the imprecision associated with this measure might be counteracted when engaging with specific modes of leadership, such as ecocentric leading (i.e., whether anthropocentric situations have been sufficiently transformed into eco-centered ones).

In Following Reason, I underline another feature of the partially complete definition: leading involves an attempt to guide followers from one situation to an adequately different one (2019: 24–27). The word “attempt” is explicitly included in the formulation, and necessarily so: I contend that leadership may occur even when adequate situational transformation does not take place. The intent might exist and serious material effort might be made, but the leader or leadership group fails in the task of transforming the followers’ state of affairs. The task may be obstructed, for example, by competing leaders and followers who are more powerful. How do I substantiate this contentious proposition in Following Reason? I return to the parent-and-child example (2019: 25): the parent attempts to lead the child from one location to another but is impeded by inclement weather. It would be unreasonable to assess the parent as being “unleaderly”: the parent tries to lead the child to another location but is hampered. Failed leadership is still leadership. The leaderly action occurs even though it may be ineffective in terms of outcome. I also recall some historical examples to reinforce the argument that ineffectiveness does not annul leaderly phenomena. One of the examples I provide is Napoleon at Waterloo: does Napoleon’s loss imply that the Napoleonic leadership team was no longer leaderly by virtue of the fact of its loss at Waterloo? While Napoleon failed to win, he did not fail to lead (2019: 25). The fact that this leading involved losing doesn’t annul it.

Of course – and once again – a certain ambiguity marks the element of “attempted situational change.” What constitutes “a sufficient attempt”? But, as I explain in the book, the difficulty of determining whether a serious, genuine effort has been made does not nullify the necessity of including this feature in our definition: otherwise, cases like Napoleon-at-Waterloo would not classify as examples of leadership (2019: 26).

There are obviously leadership theorists that would contest the proposition of “attempted change” and insist on “real change” (Burns 1978: 413–421; Zaleznik 1977/1992; Bass 1985, 1990a; Kotter 1990a, 1990b, 1996). As the present work unfolds, it becomes apparent that I, too, am very much in favor of leadership that produces real situational change (i.e., transforming anthropocentric situations into ecocentric ones and preserving ecocentric situations from anthropocentric contestation). However, any excessive privileging of transformational leadership leads to the distorted notion that actual change is the only/fundamental measure of leading (cf. Schedlitzki and Edwards 2014: 145). For if it becomes the overarching criterion, then we cannot continue to assert that phenomena like Napoleon-of-Waterloo are leaderly because they failed to create situational change. Indeed, as I’ll now show, sometimes leadership involves the exact opposite of situational alteration. How so?

In Following Reason, I repeatedly note that attempted situational difference is an incomplete formulation. So what else needs to be “added” to our formulation, which, in its present form, could (somewhat unfairly) be conceived as yet the following variation of “a person or persons somehow moving other people to do something.” In my book (2019: 27–28), I recall another WWII example of leadership to show the insufficiency of the formulation: Churchill (the name “Churchill” stands for the individual, the broader leadership team of which he was a part, and the group’s followers). Now, according to the first criterion of leading (sufficient situational alteration), it would be questionable to describe the wartime Churchill as leaderly: Churchillean leadership did not adequately change what may be approximately described as “the British situation.” What the leadership team accomplished was the defense of Britain from the competing Nazi leadership. In other words, Churchill maintained a state of affairs. Does Churchill’s maintenance of the British situation mean that he was not leaderly? No: the Churchillean defense is one of our most vivid examples of leadership.

Hence, what presents itself is the seemingly paradoxical proposition that an additional or alternative criterion of leading is situational maintenance – but this condition, on its own, would contradict the first condition. (I return to this significant point in the next section.) Therefore, something more should be added: recalling the Churchillean example, we observe that the Nazi l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “Leading for the Earth”?
• 1 From General Leadership to Environmental Leadership
• 2 The Nature of Anthropocentrism (Human Supremacism)
• 3 The Nature of Ecocentrism (Ecological Equality)
• 4 The Nature of Earth-Centered Leadership
• 5 Reviewing the Literature, Situating the Theory
• Conclusion: Loose Ends and Openings
• Bibliography
• Index