Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences

Evans, Louisa S.; Hicks, Christina C.; Cohen, Philippa J.; Case, Peter; Prideaux, Murray; Mills, David J.

Abstract

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.

Citation

Evans, L., Hicks, C., Cohen, P., Case, P., Prideaux, M., & Mills, D. (2015). Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences. Ecology and Society, 20(1), 50. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07268-200150

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Journal: Ecology and Society
• Print ISSN: 1708-3087
• Publisher: Resilience Alliance
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 50
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07268-200150
• Keywords: conservation, entrepreneurship, environmental governance, fisheries, forestry, water
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/841831
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07268-200150