Exploring sustainability-related cognitive competencies of strategic leaders in South Africa

Abstract

Strategic leadership discipline, anchored on the Upper Echelons Theory, is evolving and expanding, more strategic leadership styles are identified and added to the strategic leadership discourse. The rise in prominence of ESG and sustainability globally, stakeholders are increasingly demanding organisations to respond to the social pressures and the climate emergency. Responsible strategic leadership style, and its associated sustainability-related cognitive competencies, and shared value creation have emerged in response to these pressing societal issues. This study explored the adequacy of sustainability-related strategic leadership competencies to drive shared value creation in emerging markets, with South Africa as the chosen setting. The study sought to qualitatively explore the perceptions that professionally trained strategic leaders have of sustainability-related competencies required for shared value creation in the South African context. To achieve this, 16 strategic leaders drawn across different industries were interviewed to collect experiential data on shared value creation in South Africa. A thematic analysis was conducted on the data collected and evaluated against extant literature on responsible leadership as a driver of shared value creation. The results indicate an apparent lag in extent of shared value created in emerging markets compared to developed markets, however, strategic leaders in South Africa perceived the cognitive sustainability-related strategic leadership competencies of emerging markets strategic leaders to be on par with their counterparts in developed markets.