Leadership in Natural Capital Accounting

Abstract

Leadership research has transitioned from studying the character traits, position and background of individuals towards an exploration of the process of leadership. This transition has been welcomed by many scholars who claim that leadership is an ongoing combination of actions that are socially co-constructed by several actors (Crevani, Lindgren & Packendorff, 2010). Previous scholarship has recognised that co-construction of leadership emergence has taken place through the pursuit of common goals, meaning-making and joint outcomes (Bennis, 2007; Drath, McCauley, Palus, Van Velsor, O’Connor & McGuire, 2008; Uhl-Bien, 2006). Research on how leadership is co-created was insufficient to understand how co-creation was happening within the processes of leadership.

The study investigated how leadership was co-created within a specific case context. This research was conducted on a global scale but undertaken in South Africa. It was further decided to locate the research during the evolving process of the concept of Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) (the emergent case context), which is one of many multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development. NCA, however, has been pitched as an innovative tool to bring about well-needed systemic transformative change in society. Relational leadership theory, which is the study of both relationships and relational dynamics of leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006), in the same breath, has been earmarked as an important mechanism for improving our understanding of the growing need for integration of processes, actions and tenets across disciplines in sustainability research (Nicholson & Kurucz, 2019). Relational leadership was the chosen theoretical frame for the study which provided the evidence of how co-creation happened.

Five (5) key themes that underpinned relational leadership were identified and provided the structure for the emerging results of the study. These included “Context”, “Value creation”, “Communication”, “Partnerships and relationships”, and “Emotion.” Key experts from around the world within the emergent case context of NCA were interviewed to provide insights into the micro-dynamics of co-creation. Five (5) key tenets have emerged from the study. These were “Ambiguity”, “Credibility”, “Conversation and/or dialogue”, “Structures and systems”, and “Optimistic”. These tenets, interacting with each other and with other identified elements, contributed to our understanding of how co-creation in relational leadership was taking place. Relational leadership theory has been advanced by presenting a construct of co-creation, where the key tenets and other interacting elements identified were developed into a co-creation model that served as a modest theoretical contribution specifically to the relational leadership trajectory and to other relationship centred leadership theories and philosophies. The model served as an integrated mechanism to improve understanding of leadership and advance the implementation of NCA.

Key words: Relational, leadership, Natural Capital Accounting, co-creation