Leaders do not emerge from a vacuum: Toward an understanding of the development of responsible leadership

• Author: Margarita M. Castillo,Iván D. Sánchez,Sebastian Dueñas‐Ocampo
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12214
• Date: 01 September 2020

Bus Soc Rev. 2020;125:329–348.

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329

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/basr

Received: 19 April 2020

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Accepted: 22 May 2020

DOI: 10.1111/basr.12214

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Leaders do not emerge from a vacuum: Toward an

understanding of the development of responsible

leadership

Margarita M.Castillo1

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Iván D.Sánchez2

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SebastianDueñas-Ocampo1

© 2020 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University

1Business Administration Department,

School of Economics and Management

Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,

Bogotá, Colombia

2School of Business and Economic Studies,

Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia

Correspondence

Margarita M. Castillo, Business

Administration Department, School of

Economics and Management Sciences,

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Kr.7

#40B-36, Edf. Jorge Hoyos Vasquez S.J,

Bogotá, Colombia.

Email: margarita.castillo@javeriana.edu.co

Funding information

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Grant/

Award Number: 00005782

Abstract

The worldwide problem of corruption is one that requires

greater knowledge about responsible leadership. Based

on the literature on responsible leadership, developmental

psychology, and moral development, the purpose of our

study is to understand the constructions of the motivational

drivers behind the behaviors of a responsible leader. Using

biographical and narrative methodologies, we analyzed

the individual motivational drivers of Carlos Cavelier, a

recognized responsible leaders who grew up and works in

Colombia, a social/economic context characterized by insti-

tutional fragility and corruption. Our findings suggest that

the coherence between the immediate environments of de-

velopment of the future leader, configured optimal environ-

ments in which the leader developed the moral conscience

that guides his behavior as a responsible leader. Our study

points out the need not to take the development of responsi-

ble leaders for granted, and presents propositions that allow

for a deeper understanding of the micro-foundations of

responsible leadership, highlighting the importance of the

contexts in which leaders are raised and in which they de-

velop. Thus, our study has the potential to be heuristic and

generative of future studies.

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CASTILLO eT AL.

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INTRODUCTION

The past two decades have witnessed growing interest in the topic of responsible leadership (RL)

(Maak, Pless, & Voegtlin, 2016; Waldman, 2011). This is the result of the r ising number of cor-

porate scandals and their significant global financial, social, and environmental repercussions (e.g.,

Odebrecht, FIFA, Petrobras, etc.). According to Voegtlin, Patzer, and Scherer (2012), scandals of

this kind have led to a decline in public trust, the destruction of social capital, and an overall loss of

legitimacy for corporate organizational systems. This loss of legitimacy and trust persists (Waldman,

Siegel, & Stahl, 2020).

Other reasons to be interested in RL are the global environment of new businesses, the active role

of stakeholders, and the complex environmental and social challenges as we transition to a more sus-

tainable economic model (Throop & Mayberry, 2017; Witt & Stahl, 2016). According to Freeman and

Auster (2011), organizations and their leaders are coming under increasing pressure to enact new val-

ues, such as responsibility and sustainability, and to pay more attention to the effects of their actions

on their stakeholders. This implies that if organizations want flourish, “leaders will need to behave in

new ways consistent with a finite, complex, uncertain, changing, collaborative, connected, and caring

world” (Throop & Mayberry, 2017, p. 222).

The sheer expansiveness and growth of organizations focused on sustainability such as the

Association of Sustainability in Higher Education, the Principles for Responsible Management

Education (PRME); and the Academy of Management, among others, is reflective of the increasing

recognition of the importance of integrating sustainability in business education (Palthe, 2013) to train

the leaders needed by society in the present. Thus, RL is today a pertinent research topic (Freeman,

2017; Maak et al., 2016; Stahl & Sully de Luque, 2014).

RL literature is a relatively new area of research. However, it encompasses approaches that reflect a

developing theoretical construct (Voegtlin et al., 2012; Waldman & Balven, 2014). Despite its novelty,

general models (e.g., Maak et al., 2016; Stahl & Sully de Luque, 2014) have cast some light on the

antecedents of RL, but they have begun to focus principally on its consequences, seeing it as a source

of competitive advantage or success in the implementation of social responsibility strategies (Siegel,

2014; Waldman & Balven, 2014). Although this type of knowledge is important, we consider, as also

Waldman et al. (2020) do, that it is equally vital to understand RL's antecedents and to analyze them

in-depth. This is because only by doing so that it will be possible to instill the principles of RL in

organizational leaders.

Given the focus on the consequences of RL, the literature has begun to take the development of

leaders (i.e., their antecedents) for granted, even in models such as the one developed by Stahl and

Sully de Luque (2014) that place the leader at their center. For example, Miska and Mendenhall (2018)

found three studies on the micro level of RL. Although these authors suggest “a shift from the study

of RL as a micro-level phenomenon toward multiple levels of analysis” (Miska & Mendenhall, 2018,

p. 123), we believe that this proposal has not been the result of a full understanding of the phenomenon

at its micro level, but because the individual characteristics of the responsible leader were taken for

granted. As a result, researchers have stopped studying how responsible leaders develop the individual

characteristics that are the basis of their behaviors (Pless, 2007).

KEYWORDS

corporate social responsibility (CSR), developmental psychology,

leadership, moral development, responsible leadership