The Academy of Management Perspectives

2014, Vol. 28, No. 3, 255274.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amp.2014.0013

S Y M P O S I U M
RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND STAKEHOLDER
MANAGEMENT: INFLUENCE PATHWAYS AND
ORGANIZATIONAL OUTCOMES
JONATHAN P. DOH
NARDA R. QUIGLEY
Villanova University
The construct of responsible leadership has gained considerable traction in contemporary management scholarship. Yet defining and operationalizing how responsible
leadership manifests in organizational outcomes has posed challenges. In this paper,
we draw from stakeholder theory to offer a more fully formed view of how responsible
leadership influences organizational processes and outcomes. We provide descriptions
of two distinct pathways through which leaders and their organizations exhibit and
project their responsible leadership behaviors and actions: psychological and knowledge-based. We suggest that these two pathways constitute process mechanisms that
advance and disseminate specific signals and messages and, ultimately, actions and
outcomes. We provide brief illustrations of three companies and their leaders to
underscore the potential of our framework. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

challenges. For example, Siegel (in Waldman & Siegel, 2008) suggested that truly responsible leadership must include the strategic use of CSR, such
that leaders leverage CSR instrumentally to benefit
shareholders. Waldman (also in Waldman & Siegel,
2008) argued against such rigid instrumentality,
suggesting instead that responsible leadership must
involve multiple stakeholder groups in decision
making because doing so supports the firms longterm sustainability. These two contrasting perspectives underscore the nascent condition of the responsible leadership construct and the need to
further elaborate the processes through which responsible leadership manifests in organizational
outcomes.
In this paper, we seek to partially reconcile these
divergent perspectives (and others) by drawing
from stakeholder theory (cf. Cragg, 2002; Donaldson & Preston, 1995) to contribute to a more fully
developed theory of responsible leadership. Prior
research suggests that a stakeholder approach to
management is positively associated with longterm performance (e.g., Cragg, 2002; Rowley & Berman, 2000). Indeed, the ongoing viability and sur-

The construct of responsible leadership has

gained considerable traction in contemporary management scholarship (e.g., Doh & Stumpf, 2005;
Miska, Stahl, & Mendenhall, 2013; Pless, Maak, &
Waldman, 2012; Stahl, Pless, & Maak, 2013; Voegtlin, Patzer, & Scherer, 2012; Waldman & Siegel,
2008). Responsible leadership presents an attractive and potentially useful integration of research
on leadership and corporate social responsibility
(CSR) and offers the opportunity to provide meaningful advances in the field of leadership. Yet defining and operationalizing how responsible leadership affects organizational outcomes has posed
The authors thank symposium co-editors Gnter Stahl
and Mary Sully de Luque and AMP co-editor-in-chief
Don Siegel for their advice and guidance on the development of this article, and David Waldman and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. We also acknowledge ongoing
financial support from the Villanova School of Business
Center for Global Leadership, Rammrath Chair in International Business, and summer research support program. Both authors contributed equally to the development of this manuscript.
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vival of firms may hinge on the influence of diverse

stakeholders (Hart & Sharma, 2004; Harting,
Harmeling, & Venkataraman, 2006; Hillman &
Klein, 2001). We extend research on stakeholder
theory (Jones, 1995; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997)
and responsible leadership (Ciulla, 2005; De Hoogh
& Den Hartog, 2008; Doh & Stumpf, 2005; Maak,
2007; Maak & Pless, 2006; Miska et al., 2013; Pless
et al., 2012; Voegtlin et al., 2012; Waldman & Galvin, 2008; Waldman & Siegel, 2008) to offer a more
fully formed view of the pathways through which
responsible leadership influences organizational
processes and outcomes.
We consider multiple levels of analysis as we
build our argument. In particular, we examine how
responsible leaders can effectively leverage the
stakeholder approach in influencing others through
two specific pathways: a psychological pathway
and a knowledge-based pathway. We look at these
pathways at four distinct levels: micro/individual,
team, organizational, and societal.
At the micro/individual level, we note that responsible leaders consider their followers to be
important stakeholders, and as such may be able
to leverage their unique perspectives to generate
both motivation and creativity (e.g., Zhang & Bartol, 2010).
At the team level, a responsible leader considers
and encourages diverse perspectives in her or his
approach to stakeholders, which may lead to
team-level psychological safety and learning,
both linked to team performance (e.g., Edmondson, 1999) and improved decision options and
accuracy (e.g., Stasser & Titus, 1985).
At the organizational level, leaders with a stakeholder approach may help build an open, inclusive, and diverse internal culture by sharing and
disseminating knowledge while fostering strong
ties with external stakeholders, all of which
could lead to firm growth, innovation, and performance (e.g., Thomas, 2004).
At the societal level, leaders who are able to
consistently apply a stakeholder approach might
be better able to manage across cultural boundaries (Miska et al., 2013) and identify and anticipate critical economic and societal problems
and trends so that they can respond more appropriately (Stahl et al., 2013).
As noted above, we provide descriptions of two
distinct pathways through which responsible leadership behaviors and actions influence outcomes:
psychological and knowledge-based. We suggest

August

that these two pathways constitute process mechanisms that direct and disseminate specific signals
and messages and, ultimately, actions and outcomes. We provide brief illustrations of three companies and their leaders to underscore the potential
of our framework. We conclude with implications
for research and practice. This approach should be
viewed as a complement that can augment the classic do no harm and do good dimensions of the
responsible leadership construct that have appeared in prior literature. Before addressing the
two pathways, we first review recent research that
has explored the relationship between responsible
leadership and stakeholder management.

RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND

STAKEHOLDER ORIENTATION
Stakeholder management has garnered substantial scholarly attention since the introduction of R.
Edward Freemans book Strategic Management: A
Stakeholder Approach, which sought to describe
the potential advantages of viewing and formulating strategic management from a stakeholder perspective (Freeman, 1984). Since that time, there
have been numerous attempts to advance stakeholder theory and to demonstrate its practical implications for business management and organizations more broadly (Mitchell et al., 1997).
Stakeholder management may be viewed as both
broader than and also a component of CSR, which
itself has taken on a range of meanings and applications (Wood, 1991).

Stakeholder Theory and Leadership

An attractive feature of stakeholder management
is its elemental simplicity. It also offers the potential of a comprehensive and unifying framework for
understanding the complex interactions between
firms and their internal and external constituencies. A stake in an organization rests on legal,
moral, or presumed claims or on the capacity to
influence an organizations behavior, direction,
process, or outcomes (Mitchell et al., 1997, p.
858). Somewhat ironically, early management
scholars had already recognized the fundamental
interdependencies that firms and their stakeholders shared in the political and social arenas. For
example, Barnard (1962) introduced the notion of
business firms as cooperative organizations built
on rational thinking, and incorporated a range of

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Doh and Quigley

perspectives and influences in his understanding

of the roles and responsibilities of business.
Schwartz and Carroll (2008) and Jones and Wicks
(1999) maintained that stakeholder theory assumes
a network of connections and linkages between
corporations and their various constituencies, and
stakeholder theorists have explored the nature of
these relationships, focusing on antecedents, processes, and outcomes (Freeman, 1984). Importantly
for our discussion, some variants of stakeholder
theory include a strong normative element that presumes that the interests of all (legitimate) stakeholders have intrinsic value, and no set of interests
is assumed to dominate the others (Clarkson, 1995).
At the same time, however, stakeholder scholars
have consistently argued that the theory is or
should bepractical, and should have the ability to
inform managerial decision making (Donaldson &
Preston, 1995).
Although stakeholder theory has many attractive
features, applying it in a practical setting poses a
challenge: The list of potential stakeholders of most
modern corporations is potentially limitless. Prioritizing among these stakeholderswhich may include investors (shareowners and lenders), employees, suppliers, governments, customers, unions,
regulatory authorities, joint venture and other alliance partners, private organizations (NGOs and,
occasionally, the media), local communities and
citizens, and even future generations can be
daunting (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002). Further, in
the global setting in which contemporary leaders
operate, the stakeholder relationships may now extend to second-, third-, and fourth-order suppliers
and customers, creating obvious practical challenges to managing relationships across geographic
space and through dense and elaborate supply
chains.
To address the increasingly challenging task of
both identifying and managing the range of potentially relevant stakeholders, Post and colleagues
(2002) suggested that leaders find a way to narrow
the focus to those stakeholders whose relationships
with the firm really matter. They presented a simple depiction of stakeholders in three concentric
circles around the company that correspond to the
strategic settings of the firm, with progressive degrees of importance from those closest to the firm to
those more distant. Of more instrumental relevance, Mitchell and colleagues (1997) proposed a
model of stakeholder salience based on the relative
power, urgency, and legitimacy of stakeholder

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claims, which can be used to better understand

nonmarket stakeholders.
In considering stakeholder theory and its potential implications for leadership, several relevant
insights emerge. First, theories of strategic leadership have naturally acknowledged and encouraged the consideration of stakeholders, reflecting
the role of leaders in considering all contextual
dimensions of their options and strategic priorities
(Hitt, Ireland, & Rowe, 2005; McWilliams & Siegel,
2001). Second, other theories of leadership that
have emphasized the leader as servant similarly
acknowledge the obligations, commitments, and responsibilities leaders have to their various constituencies (e.g., Greenleaf, 1970; Laub, 1999; Mittal &
Dorfman, 2012). Finally, an emerging stream of literature (the focus of this symposium) has sought to
leverage and integrate perspectives from CSR and
leadership studies to develop a vision of the responsible leader. This stream has emanated from
both scholarly advances and an acknowledgment of
the realities of change in the global business environment and organizations themselves (e.g., Schneider, 2002).
Responsible Leadership Scholarship: A
Stakeholder Perspective
An emerging stream of literature has attempted to
integrate studies in ethics, leadership, and CSR to
triangulate the relatively loosely defined concept of
responsible leadership (e.g., Ciulla, 2005; De Hoogh
& Den Hartog, 2008; Doh & Stumpf, 2005; Maak,
2007; Maak & Pless, 2006; Pless et al., 2012; Voegtlin et al., 2012; Waldman & Galvin, 2008; Waldman
& Siegel, 2008). An increasingly visible trend in
this literature is to incorporate some kind of stakeholder consideration in the conceptualization of
responsible leadership, perhaps in response to recent major world events (e.g., the global financial
crisis, environmental catastrophes, ethical scandals, and globalization). As Miska and colleagues
(2013) pointed out, these events have resulted in an
increased focus on ethics across the business
world, and expectations have risen with respect to
the roles that corporations and business leaders
take on as participating members of society.
In addition, the research stream on responsible
leadershipin particular that which addresses the
broader global context within which leaders operate has increasingly focused on understanding
what the concept of responsible means with respect to outcomes. For example, work on the triple

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bottom line (economic, environmental, and social

value) has indicated that leaders who are truly responsible attempt to have a positive influence
across all three types of impact (e.g., Elkington,
1997; Savitz & Weber, 2006), while other research
has considered two separate sets of responsible behaviors as outcomes of responsible leadership: do
good and do no harm (e.g., Brown & Trevino,
2006; Crilly, Schneider, & Zollo, 2008; Waldman &
Galvin, 2008). Some of this literature argues that
responsible leaders must go beyond doing no harm
to actually doing good (e.g., Waldman & Galvin,
2008). The approach we take below is in line with
the latter perspective; our conceptual model and
case illustrations underscore this emphasis on the
value of adopting a broad, inclusive approach to
stakeholder identification and consideration.
Relatedly, Stahl and colleagues (2013) described
the need for responsible global leaders to consider,
act in accordance with, and respond to the needs of
both global and local stakeholders; they noted that
four significant leadership challenges arise in the domains of diversity, ethics, sustainability, and citizenship. As another example, Miska and colleagues
(2013) linked intercultural competencies from the
Global Competencies Inventory (Bird, Mendenhall,
Stevens, & Oddou, 2010) to three CSR approaches
to decision making (globally standardized, locally
adapted, and transnational), and found that only
globally standardized approaches to decision making are not associated with intercultural competencies. Some intercultural competencies, however,
are associated with effective stakeholder management when the locally adapted CSR approach to
decision making is used, and more intercultural
competencies are relevant when the transnational
approach is used.
Consistent with Miska and colleagues (2013),
other research has considered the responsible leaders interaction with stakeholders to arrive at a
more clear understanding of what constitutes leadership responsibility given the increasing complexity of conducting business in a global, interconnected world (e.g., Pless et al., 2012; Voegtlin et al.,
2012). As Voegtlin and colleagues (2012, p. 2) asked,
[W]ho is responsible for what and toward whom
in an interconnected business world? Voegtlin and
colleagues (2012) took a process-oriented, normative
approach to these questions, incorporating Habermass theory of deliberative democracy (Habermas,
1999, 2001) as a philosophical foundation from
which to shed light on responsible leadership. In
line with this approach, they conceptualized re-

August

sponsible leadership as leadership that is open to a

broader target group (the stakeholders) with the
aim of ensuring the legitimacy of the organization
and developing symbiotic relationships with
stakeholders.
As Voegtlin and colleagues (2012) noted, however, a leader who successfully undertakes the
above steps would be considered responsible,
but there is likely a continuum of responsibility,
leaving a gray area between the responsible leader
at one end of the spectrum and the self-interested,
egotistical, instrumental leader at the other end of
the spectrum. This conceptualization of responsible leadership clearly accounts for the role and
consideration of affected stakeholders, but it is less
clear on exactly how leaders would manage the
diverse, sometimes conflicting demands of the various groups affected.
Voegtlin and colleagues (2012) also considered
the outcomes of a responsible leadership approach
across multiple levels of analysis. In particular,
they considered responsible leaderships positive
influence on macro-, meso-, and micro-level outcomes, which they proposed all lead to the ability
of the leader to tackle the challenges of globalization. At the micro level, they noted that responsible
leaders play an important part in organizations as
role models and involve employees in decisionmaking processes. As a result, followers of responsible leaders are likely to have higher levels of job
satisfaction, motivation, commitment, and organizational citizenship. While Voegtlin and colleagues
(2012) were clear that responsible leaders generate
positive outcomes, they did not explicate in detail
exactly how leaders understand and balance the
diverse views of different stakeholders.
Pless and colleagues (2012) also considered interactions with stakeholders to be a critical part of
their conceptualization of responsible leadership.
They used a qualitative analysis of 25 business
leaders and entrepreneurs to build a descriptive
taxonomy of a concept they called responsibility
orientation. In this framework, leaders can be categorized along two dimensions: the extent to which
they differ in terms of breadth of constituent group
focus (narrow versus broad) and the extent to
which they differ on the degree of accountability
toward others (low versus high). With respect to the
former, business leaders with a narrow focus hone
in on a single specific constituent or stakeholder
group (this could be shareholders/owners, for example), while leaders with a broad focus attend to

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Doh and Quigley

the needs of multiple constituents or stakeholder

groups.
With respect to the degree of accountability dimension, Pless and colleagues (2012) defined the
low-accountability end of the spectrum as leaders
who direct accountability toward shareholders/
owners. As they noted, with this end of the dimension, the assumption is that the businesss objective
is to maximize profit in the short and/or long term;
this accountability to shareholders is viewed as
actually benefiting society (Pless et al., 2012). Leaders with a high degree of accountability, in contrast,
perceive their accountability to go beyond the
shareholders/owners. These leaders may be skeptical of the ability of the market and government to
provide socially optimal outcomes, and therefore
may believe that considering the needs of nonbusiness stakeholders is legitimate and morally relevant. Mapping these two dimensions together creates a matrix of four orientations toward
responsible leadership: (1) the traditional economist (low accountability, narrow breadth of stakeholder focus); (2) the opportunity seeker (low accountability, broad breadth); (3) the integrator (high
accountability, broad breadth); and (4) the idealist
(high accountability, narrow breadth).
In further explicating each of the responsible leadership orientations, Pless and colleagues (2012) noted
that each orientation is likely to have a different approach to CSR. Because of the traditional economists
emphasis on short-term value creation targeted toward shareholders, leaders with this orientation are
likely to exhibit little commitment to CSR and
would, at best, follow industry standards and
norms regarding CSR activities (Pless et al., 2012).
The opportunity seeker is likely to engage in CSR if
there are instrumental reasons for doing sofor
example, if the leader believes that social responsibility could be part of a strategy of longer-term
value creation (e.g., Orlitzky, Schmidt, & Rynes,
2003). Both of these orientations focus clearly on
the idea of accountability toward shareholders/
owners.
In contrast, the integrator proactively engages
with a broader range of stakeholders and attempts
to deliver results along multiple bottom lines by
integrating objectives across these groups (Pless et
al., 2012). This particular orientation toward responsible leadership is also likely to be perceived
by others as visionary or transformative (e.g., Sully
de Luque, Washburn, Waldman, & House, 2008).
Last, Pless, Maak, and Waldman (2012) noted that
the idealist orientation toward responsible leader-

259

ship is most likely to occur among social entrepreneursthose individuals who believe that the purpose of their business is to create innovative
solutions to societal problems (Mair & Marti, 2006;
Nicholls & Cho, 2006) while maintaining some
level of self-sustainability (rather than necessarily
profits).
These leaders must balance their emotional concern for a targeted group of stakeholders who are in
need with the rational demands associated with
running the organization, which often proves to be
difficult. In any case, the idealists approach tends
to be very servant-based, in that he or she is serving
the needs of a set of targeted stakeholders (e.g.,
Mittal & Dorfman, 2012; Sendjaya, Sarros, & Santora, 2008; Van Dierendonck, 2011). Interestingly,
Pless and colleagues (2012) did not explicitly tie
the different orientations toward responsible leadership to leadership effectiveness, likely because
there are few empirical studies to support this connection. Moreover, the literature to date has not
fully specified the pathways through which responsible leaders exert their unique abilities to influence organizational processes and outcomes.
Beyond Shareholders: The Responsibilities of
Responsible Leaders
In considering the emergent work on the connection between responsible leadership and stakeholder management, the literature is converging on
the idea that responsible leaders have a view of
their personal accountability that goes beyond serving the needs of shareholders/owners alone. Responsible leadership also likely requires a proactive dialogue with other stakeholders who will be
affected by the actions of the organization. This
kind of an approach requires a particularly open,
transparent, and confident leadership orientation,
such that the leader is able to both interact with and
prioritize stakeholders effectively and detect cues
and emergent trends so that they can be incorporated
into firm strategy and organizational processes. In the
next section, we discuss how responsible leaders may
influence organizational dynamics and, in so doing,
shape organizational outcomes.
RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP, INFLUENCE
PATHWAYS, AND ORGANIZATIONAL
OUTCOMES
Leaders clearly can influence multiple levels of
analysis in and around organizations (e.g., Yukl,

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2012). While Voegtlin and colleagues (2012) considered the positive outcomes associated with responsible leadership at the macro, meso, and micro
levels, here we explicate how leaders may influence such outcomes through stakeholder engagement. We highlight two pathways through which
responsible leaders using a stakeholder approach
may engender positive outcomes: psychological
and knowledge-based (see Figure 1).
Pathway 1: Psychological Benefits of Responsible
Leadership
While research that explicitly examines how the
stakeholder approach works at the individual level
is scarcefor the simple reason that the literature
on stakeholder theory has tended to be more macro
in nature (e.g., Donaldson & Preston, 1995)a responsible leadership approach that is more inclusive of the needs of various stakeholder groups is
likely to resonate psychologically at the individual
level, resulting in higher levels of engagement with
the organization. The broader leadership literature
within organizational behavior has much to add to
our understanding of why a stakeholder-oriented
approach may be particularly effective in terms of
psychologically motivating and influencing employees. Sully de Luque and colleagues (2008), for
example, using a cross-cultural sample of CEOs and
their followers, provided convincing evidence that
when leaders assign a greater level of importance to
stakeholders, subordinates perceive them as more
visionary (rather than autocratic). This, in turn,

August

motivates followers to exert extra effort, which then

positively influences firm performance. In contrast,
they noted that leaders who place more economic
emphasis on values (more of a stockholder/owner
prioritization approach) are more likely to be perceived by followers as autocratic, a leadership style
that may have short-term benefits in terms of efficiency but likely erodes employee motivation and
engagement over time (e.g., Appelbaum et al., 2004;
Bass, 1990; Gastil, 1994).
The research stream on empowering leadership
has also emphasized the motivational and individual performance benefits of a leadership style that
is inclusive of various employee perspectives, particularly with respect to influencing individual creativity. Zhang and Bartol (2010), for example, noted
that empowering leadership creates conditions that
enable employees to become more engaged with
their work, perhaps through delineating the significance of the job, providing autonomy in decision
making, expressing confidence in the employees
capabilities, and removing barriers to performance.
Empowering leadership, by definition, is a leadership style that is inclusive and welcoming of different employee perspectives clearly related to
the idea of a responsible leader trying to meaningfully engage various stakeholders within the organization. Logically, a leader who embodies this kind
of open approach is likely to create a climate of
psychological trust and respect, which in turn has
many positive benefits for affected stakeholders.
Indeed, Zhang and Bartol (2010) found that empowering leadership was positively related to

FIGURE 1
Proposed Model: Responsible Leadership, Pathways, and Outcomes

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Doh and Quigley

higher levels of employee creativity, operating in

part through the mediating mechanisms of psychological empowerment, engagement in the creative
process, and intrinsic motivation.
The literature on servant leadership also suggests
a link between the consideration of stakeholder
needs and psychological benefits to followers.
While there are many recent definitions and interpretations of servant leadership, as with the literature on responsible leadership, scholars have yet to
converge on a single consensus regarding its precise definition and theoretical framework (Mittal &
Dorfman, 2012). The first empirical study to measure the servant leadership concept was Laub
(1999); subsequent work has validated many of the
dimensions found in that piece. Most pertinent to
the discussion of responsible leadership is the servant leadership dimension of creating value for
the communitya natural point of integration. As
Mittal and Dorfman (2012) noted, this involves
building strong personal relationships both inside
and outside the organization by working collaboratively with others (and valuing their differences;
Goffee & Jones, 2001). From a normative perspective, this dimension of servant leadership also requires the leader to recognize that organizations
have a moral duty not only to consider the impact
of organizational action on the larger communities
in which they operate, but also to constructively
improve those communities as well (Reed, VidaverCohen, & Colwell, 2011) (Mittal & Dorfman, 2012,
p. 557).
Van Dierendoncks (2011) review piece on servant leadership noted that empirical (though crosssectional) support exists for the positive relationships between servant leadership and employee
satisfaction, commitment, and performance. The
main theoretical mechanisms through which this
process occurs are the development of a high-quality leaderfollower relationship and the development of a psychological climate of trust and fairness (Van Dierendonck, 2011). Although this
literature is in its infancy, it lends some logical
support for the idea that a stakeholder-oriented approach in which a leader is cognizant of the broader
community in which his or her organization operates (and cognizant of the organization itself as a
community) would lead to positive individuallevel outcomes through psychological mechanisms
such as trust and ownership. In this regard, Carmeli, Gilat, and Waldman (2007, p. 972) linked
employee identification to actions on the part of the
firm pertaining to CSR, finding that perceived so-

261

cial responsibility and development had a larger

effect on organizational identification than perceived market and financial performance, which
in turn resulted in enhanced employees work outcomesadjustment and job performance.
This review of transformational/visionary, empowering, and servant leadership styles, while not
exhaustive, lends some level of support to the idea
that leadership that is more inclusive of various
stakeholders within and outside the organization
has important individual-level effects through various psychological pathways. Stakeholders with
higher levels of trust, psychological ownership in
the organization, and commitment to the organization are likely to engage more with the organization
at the individual/micro level, which is likely to
have important long-term individual-level benefits
for all involved.
At the team level, the literature on psychological
safety in work teams (e.g., Edmondson, 1999) suggests that when team members share a belief that
the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, teams
may be better able to learn and perform. Recent
work by Nembhard and Edmondson (2006) suggests that the concept of leader inclusiveness is a
key antecedent of psychological safety. Leader inclusiveness is the extent to which a leaders words
and deeds indicate an invitation and appreciation
for others contributions (Nembhard & Edmondson,
2006). It seems clear that leader inclusiveness is
conceptually related to responsible leadership that
emphasizes a stakeholder-based approachleaders
who are more sincerely interested and invite others contributions would be considered high on
leader inclusiveness and likely to engage multiple
categories of stakeholders in a given discussion.
It should be noted that we assume here that inclusive leaders are aware of the existence of various
stakeholder groups, to include them. Inclusiveness
may actually have multiple dimensions, however,
such as depth of inclusion and breadth of stakeholders included; future research should examine
whether leader inclusiveness does, indeed, consist
of multiple dimensions. In any case, based on the
literature on psychological safety in work teams,
there is a psychological benefit to leader inclusiveness, which then results in greater levels of engagement and team learning (e.g., Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). This provides further support at the team
level for the idea that responsible leadership using a
stakeholder approach would result in psychological
benefits that would then translate into positive outcomes at multiple levels of analysis.

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Another stream of research at the team level that

points to the psychological benefits of a more stakeholder-oriented approach for responsible leaders is
the literature on shared leadership in teams. Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone (2007) defined shared
leadership as an emergent, team-level property reflecting the distribution of leadership influence
across multiple team members. In a sample of 59
consulting teams, shared leadership predicted team
performance, such that teams with higher levels of
shared leadership were able to perform better (Carson et al., 2007).
While we do not think it necessary for responsible leaders to share leadership with stakeholders to
be considered responsible, we do see a connection
between leaders who are open to the idea of sharing
leadership responsibilities and the qualities that
have been attributed to responsible leadership.
While this openness may have an important impact
on the task outcome, there is also likely a psychological process occurring that helps to solidify team
members trust in the leader. A leader who can
admit what he or she does and does not know and
can confidently seek out those who are able to provide the necessary knowledge and perspectives on
the issue is likely to be perceived by followers as
more honest, trustworthy, and effective (e.g., Ancona,
Malone, Orlikowski, & Senge, 2007), resulting in a
further psychological boost. The psychological benefits of an inclusive approach to leadership are also
supported by the literature on participative leadership (cf. Bass, 2008).
At the organizational level, a responsible leader
who values stakeholders beyond merely those in
the stockholder/ownership category can have an
important impact on the culture of the organization
through psychological means. As noted above,
Voegtlin and colleagues (2012) explicated the impact that responsible leaders can have on mesolevel issues as they shape organizational culture
and performance (e.g., through building an ethical
culture, boosting the corporate social responsibility
of the organization, creating opportunities for social entrepreneurship for themselves, and possibly
contributing directly and/or indirectly to the firm
performance). Here, we suggest that the psychological benefits of a more stakeholder-oriented approach create a virtuous cycle at the organizational
level. As leaders are more inclusive of the perspectives of various important stakeholders, those
stakeholders are more likely to trust the leader, feel
committed to what the organization is trying to
accomplish, feel more psychological ownership

August

over the tasks at hand, perhaps feel more of an

emotional connection to the work and to the organization, and be more motivated at the individual
level as a result.
Organizational culture can be thought of as both
a bottom-up emergent phenomenon and a topdown contextual phenomenon (e.g., Kozlowski &
Klein, 2000). We argue that the responsible leader
creates a cascade of positive influence from the top
down by being inclusive with various stakeholder
groups; this inclusive, open culture is then reinforced from the bottom up as employees of the
organization feel the impact of this leadership approach. Over time, because the nature of the stakeholder approach is to build bridges and community
with other groups outside the organization (i.e., not
just employees), this culture will both be an extension of and reinforce the connections that the responsible leader has made with the broader community of stakeholders (e.g., suppliers, customers,
trade groups, etc.). The connection between organizational leadership and culture, of course, is both
robust and complex (e.g., Cameron, Quinn, Degraff,
& Thakor, 2006; Schein, 1992).
As the organization interfaces with a global, diverse set of stakeholders, it is important to note the
likely psychological benefits of the responsible
leaders stakeholder approach cross-culturally as
well. Although to our knowledge no studies have
directly examined the psychological benefits of a
stakeholder approach in terms of cross-cultural
leadership effectiveness, it would seem that responsible leaders with an inclination to include
stakeholders would be more effective in leading
across cultures. Leaders who are focused solely on
stockholders and short-term profit-oriented concerns may miss opportunities to create long-lasting
connections with stakeholders across cultural
boundaries. By contrast, responsible leaders who
can navigate cross-cultural challenges with acumen
likely understand the importance of an inclusive
approach to successful cross-cultural leadership.
Mittal and Dorfman (2012), for example, offered
strong support for the idea of servant leadership
across cultures, suggesting that this may be an effective leadership style to use in cross-cultural situations. It is important to note that their results are
somewhat nuanced, however, in that not all groups
of cultures examined found the dimensions of servant leadership to be similarly effective (for example, the humility dimension of servant leadership
was not highly endorsed in Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland; in contrast, this dimension was

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Doh and Quigley

strongly accepted in many of the Asian countries

included in the study). In any case, as leaders conduct increasingly more business with a diverse
group of stakeholders, one dimension of that diversity is likely to be culture, and the more practice the
responsible leader has with respect to building
bridges to various communities, the more skillful
he or she will become, building other stakeholders
trust and confidence in his or her leadership skills
along the way.
Pathway 2: Knowledge-Based Benefits of
Responsible Leadership
In addition to the psychological pathway, a second, equally important route that responsible leaders can take to influence outcomes is the knowledge-based pathway. Adopting the perspective that
organizations are open systems (e.g., Allport, 1955;
Giddens, 1993), we assert that responsible leaders
with high consideration for stakeholders are likely
well positioned both to navigate the context within
which organizations operate and to encourage
knowledge to flow in a functional manner within
and across the boundaries of the organization
among employees and external stakeholders.
Knowledge flow and management in organizations has been a topic of great interest in the
broader management literature over the past two
decades (e.g., Hansen, Mors, & Lovas, 2005; Nonaka
& Takeuchi, 1995; Spender & Grant, 1996; Tsai,
2001), in large part because knowledge is an invaluable source of the firms ability to innovate and
deliver value (cf. Grant, 1996; Nonaka & Takeuchi,
1995). We define the concept of knowledge sharing
somewhat broadly, in keeping with Srivastava, Bartol, and Locke (2006), as any sharing of task-relevant ideas, information, and suggestions among the
parties involved. Additionally, we adopt Nonakas
(1994) theory that new knowledge is created when
interaction occurs between two basic types of
knowledge (tacit and explicit), giving rise to four
types of knowledge creation (internalization, socialization, articulation, and combination). Thus,
knowledge sharing between and among organizational stakeholders is critical for knowledge creation and, more broadly, innovation. Despite the
need for integration between theories of responsible leadership and the literature on knowledge
sharing and creation, as Bird and Oddou (2013)
noted, there is a surprising dearth of research addressing the connection between these two topics.
We assert that a knowledge-based pathway is the

263

second route through which responsible leaders

with high consideration for stakeholders can function effectively across levels of analysis; in the following section, we briefly review existing research
that supports this claim.
One central focus of the knowledge sharing and
transfer literature at the individual and dyadic levels of analysis has been to better understand how to
encourage individuals within organizations to
share the knowledge they have with others to form
the basis of innovative new ideas (e.g., Nonaka,
1994). Motivating factors such as incentives, goals,
trust between knowledge provider and recipient,
and norms regarding reciprocity of communication
have been examined in the knowledge sharing literature (e.g., Bartol & Srivastava, 2002; Davenport &
Prusak, 1998; Hansen et al., 2005; Quigley, Tesluk,
Locke, & Bartol, 2007), but as noted above, relatively few studies in the knowledge sharing literature or in the leadership literature have examined
the role of leadership as a motivating factor in the
knowledge sharing process. We would expect that
responsible leaders taking a CSR approach would,
in fact, affect whether organizational stakeholders
choose to share or not share knowledge.
This was indeed the case in a field study conducted by Srivastava and colleagues (2006), who
found that empowering leadership was positively
related to knowledge sharing and subsequent performance of management teams. In other words,
knowledge sharing was a key mediating variable
through which empowering leadership influenced
performance. While responsible leaders taking a
CSR approach would not necessarily adopt an empowering leadership style, we expect that responsible leaders who communicate with and balance
the needs of various stakeholders would likely
model and (either intentionally or unintentionally)
encourage knowledge sharing among organizational stakeholders themselves. Recent research in
the domain of leader-member exchange (LMX) similarly suggests that leaders who have high-quality
relationships with followers encourage employee
knowledge sharing (e.g., Carmeli, Atwater, & Levi,
2011). Therefore, we expect that responsible leaders who effectively involve multiple stakeholders
will likely help to motivate those stakeholders,
both within and outside the organization, to share
knowledge with one another, thus improving individual-level outcomes at work.
The knowledge sharing pathway will also aid
responsible leaders who take a more CSR-oriented
approach in that we expect there to be a positive

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impact on processes and outcomes at the work

group/team level. Some stakeholders are likely to
be more or less formally organized in groups or
teams, and the issues associated with knowledge
sharing become more complex as responsible leaders consider interactions among team members.
Stasser and Titus (1985), for example, developed
the concept of hidden profiles to describe the
problem of group decision making when some information is shared among group members and
other information remains unshared, creating
shared information biases and leading to poor decisions. This literature has revealed that individuals are more likely to exchange information they
already share rather than information that is unique
and could lead to better decisions (see MesmerMagnus & DeChurch, 2009, for a review).
One solution to this problem is the deliberate
integration of the unique knowledge of individual
group members to allow optimal decisions to be
realized. Unshared information is more often
novel, and thus incorporating it into decision making leads to more fully informed and innovative
outcomes. Although no published studies to date
address this, the hidden profile issue likely also
exists between stakeholder groups. For responsible
leaders to fully leverage the latent knowledge
within and among stakeholder groups, they must
first be aware of this issue, and consider ways in
which different groups might communicate more
effectively with the leader and among themselves
to lead to the development of new knowledge and
innovation.
Groupthink is another example of a classic process loss issue in the teams literature that might be
effectively mitigated with a responsible leaders
CSR approach (Janis, 1972). Groupthink is caused,
in part, by the conformity of thinking that arises
from a lack of cognitive diversity among team members. We would expect a responsible leader taking a
CSR approach to be better able to integrate diverse
perspectives in decision-making processes, leading
to knowledge sharing within and across various
teams and ultimately circumventing the process
loss issues caused by groupthink. Our discussion of
the impact a responsible leader may have on team
processes and outcomes because of the knowledgeoriented pathway is somewhat limited here, but we
believe this could be an extremely fruitful avenue
for future research.
At the organizational level, responsible leaders
taking a CSR approach serve in a boundary-spanning capacitya sort of external liaisonto iden-

August

tify, calibrate, and process information and cues

coming from the external environment generally
and key stakeholders in particular. In their role as
boundary spanners, responsible leaders leverage
the knowledge-based pathway to improve organizational outcomes. Such a role is especially valuable considering the increasing interaction between
firms and nongovernmental stakeholders (NGOs).
These interactions may be conflicting, with NGOs
seeking to call attention to the shortcomings of
corporate social and environmental performance.
They might also cooperate with firms and NGOs,
engaging in some form of partnership or collaboration (Yaziji & Doh, 2009). Closer relationships with
NGOs may provide corporations with access to different skills, competencies, and capabilities than
those that are otherwise available within their organization or that might result from alliances with
for-profit organizations.
According to Rondinelli and London (2003),
cross-sector alliances collaborative relationships
among NGOs and corporationsmay offer opportunities for corporations to achieve the legitimacy
and develop the capabilities needed to respond to
increasing pressure from stakeholders to address
environmental and social issues (Waddock, 1988,
1991). For example, Doctors Without Borders provides a reliable, efficient, and trustworthy partner for
pharmaceutical companies in distributing medications in developing countries and conveys potential reputation benefits (or costs) that are idiosyncratic to its status as a nonfirm, nongovernmental
stakeholder. Yet, to identify and recognize the potential value of these relationships, a responsible
leader must be attuned to signals from the external
environment and able to identify opportunities that
emanate from those signals. The leader must also
listen to and/or share leadership with other organizational members who might also be in tune with
such signals.
Some scholars have even advocated for engagement with fringe stakeholders to develop more
imaginative and creative approaches to tackling
major challenges (Hart & Sharma, 2004), arguing
that the knowledge required to engage in competitive imagination increasingly exists outside of the
firm and even beyond traditional corporate communities. By reaching for these sometimes marginal fringe stakeholders, firms can develop a differentiated perspective that is attuned to social
movements and trends and position themselves on
the leading edge of these transformations in ways
that create economic and social value (Hart &

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Doh and Quigley

Sharma, 2004). Hart and Sharma (2004) suggested

that empathy with those on the margins is both
good social policy and a potential contributor to
long-term competitive advantage. Interestingly,
they explicitly advocate moving beyond large,
powerful salient stakeholders to those that are less
visible, prominent, and explicitly influential. Another way to describe these stakeholders is as latent, in that their immediate power and urgency
is not apparent but rather is in an embryonic phase
or form, poised to emerge at some subsequent period (e.g., Mitchell et al., 1997).
Responsible leaders who are oriented toward
serving as a pathway through which knowledge
and insight flow are clearly in a stronger position to
capitalize on the engagement with external stakeholders who might otherwise go unnoticed (at least
until they pose challenges or threats to the firm).
These latent stakeholders may provide cues to help
leaders and their firms increase awareness and appreciation of important trends. Through engagement with these peripheral stakeholders, firms and
leaders may be less likely to be blindsided by unforeseen developments that are outside the scope of
their typical perspectives. As part of this early
warning system, engagement with these stakeholders may provide partial insulation from social
movement action and NGO advocacy (Doh, Lawton, & Rajwani, 2012; Lawton, Doh, & Rajwani,
2014). Responsible leaders who see their role as
brokering information and knowledge and creating
more permeable firm borders have the capacity to
acquire and distribute knowledge that can be helpful and supportive of firm goals and of a culture of
social responsibility and sustainability. Once that
knowledge is assembled or aggregated, responsible
leaders can also serve as an internal advocate and
carrier for knowledge flow and distribution; sharing this macro-level knowledge internally within
their organizations with the appropriate individuals and teams will assist in the decision-making
process at lower levels of analysis.
Hence, responsible leadership can create value
and improve decision making at the organizational
level through the process of boundary spanning
with external actors and engaging with latent stakeholders, and then incorporating the perspectives
and knowledge from those stakeholders into firmlevel decision making. In addition, as discussed
above, responsible leaders foster internal information sharing, including uncovering and disseminating novel hidden knowledge, promoting multiple
creative options, and creating a culture of overall

265

knowledge sharing. Therefore, the knowledgebased pathway clearly represents a set of mechanisms that responsible leaders taking a broad approach to stakeholders can use to positively
influence outcomes at multiple levels of analysis.
We acknowledge that this perspective is somewhat
idealized; in reality, it must be balanced with time
management, resource constraints, and bounded
rationality (Voegtlin et al., 2012).
Last, we note that the psychological and knowledge-based pathways are not entirely discrete or
mutually exclusive, although we have discussed
them separately here for the purposes of clarity.
Rather, they can and do coexist, either in a temporally concurrent or sequential fashion. That is, behavior and action resulting from the psychological
pathway may precede that which emanates from
the knowledge-based pathway (e.g., the Walmart
example we discuss below) or vice versa (the Coke
and DuPont examples, also below). Moreover, as
shown in Figure 1, these cases underscore the reality that these pathways are often mutually reinforcing, dynamic, and recursive, such that movement on one begets action on the other and
vice versa.
In the next section we provide three brief examples from the world of corporate sustainability to
illustrate our perspective and the explanatory
power of the psychological and knowledge-based
pathways.
RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP PATHWAYS:
EXAMPLES FROM CORPORATE
SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP
Sustainability has emerged as an important societal issue and one that corporations have begun to
incorporate into their business strategy and their
broader social engagement (Bansal, 2002; Orlitzky,
Siegel, & Waldman, 2011). Organizational leaders
are recognizing that addressing sustainability challenges may improve their standing with their stakeholders and potentially translate into a stronger
reputation (Flammer, 2013). Significant variance
exists, however, in what firms and leaders believe
are the potential benefits of committing to sustainable management practices (Aguilera, Rupp, Williams, & Ganapathi, 2007). Anecdotal evidence suggests that individual leaders can have a profound
impact on a companys decision to move affirmatively toward a more sustainable business model.
Often, a crisis or personal epiphany is the catalyst that drives a leaderand the companyin the

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The Academy of Management Perspectives

direction of a sustainable future. In both cases, the

psychological and knowledge-based pathways are
likely at work. A personal epiphany may occur
because of new knowledge or insight the leader has
acquired, perhaps from an external stakeholder.
The psychological pathway is also involved, beginning with the CEO or top management team member(s) undergoing a change of perspective and then
appealing to different levels of the organization to
support that shift (e.g., Walmart). In the case of a
crisis or watershed event, the knowledge-based
pathway may prompt a leader to initiate or accelerate actions (e.g., Coke and DuPont). As responsible leaders attempt to galvanize support for their
decisions, the psychological pathway becomes critical. In most instances, these processes are initiated
at the level of the organizational leader and trickle
down, but in some instances they emanate both
from senior levels and from the bottom up. As we
noted above, the psychological and knowledgebased pathways are not mutually exclusive; indeed, they likely coexist and may even be mutually
reinforcing.
In this section, we briefly highlight three companies and their leaders, each of whom demonstrates
some of the mechanisms we described above regarding pathways of responsible leadership, through either knowledge sharing/dissemination or psychological enrichment or both. Notably, these examples
are somewhat stylized, as they are intended to provide practical illustrations of the pathways described above. In addition, much of our discussion
focuses on the knowledge-based pathway (or some
combination of psychological and knowledgebased), because these cases are based on secondary
data, and the knowledge pathway is more easily
observable from that perspective.
Walmart, the Walton Family, and Lee Scott
The story of Walmarts conversion to sustainability is legendary. Although Walmart introduced
green product labeling beginning in the late 1990s,
those steps backfired when consumers perceived
Walmarts commitment to be superficial and cursory (Plambeck & Denend, 2008).
According to lore, the real change happened
when Rob Walton, son of founder Sam Walton, was
confronted at the end of a scuba diving trip in Costa
Rica by Peter Seligmann, co-founder and CEO of
Conservation International, who said, We need to
change the way industry works. And you can have
an influence (Gunther, 2006, p. 43). As it turns

August

out, there was a strong conservationist streak in the

family already: The family often took camping vacations, younger brother John was a conservationist, and Robs son Sam, who worked as a Colorado
River guide, sat on the board of the Environmental
Defense Fund. A few years earlier, after a trip to
Africa, Rob Walton had begun setting aside family
resources for conservation causes, but Seligmann suggested that Walmart could do more by leveraging the
power of its commercial influence (Gunther, 2006)
to become a catalyst for environmental change
across its industry peers and among its extensive
supplier base, the largest in the world (Gunther,
2006). This interaction reflects the sometimes powerful role a key outside stakeholder and a personal
relationship can play in transforming the way companies and their leaders gain knowledge and insightand a resulting reorientation.
According to Plambeck (2007, p. 18), Walmarts
first outside CEO, Lee Scott, strongly supported
this agenda. Some of this support reflected the deep
Christian religious beliefs of the Waltons and Scott:
In October 2005, in an auditorium filled to capacity,
Wal-Mart President and CEO Lee Scott made the
companys first speech to be broadcast to 1.6 million
employees in all 6,000-plus stores worldwideand
shared with its 60,000-plus suppliers. Scott announced that Wal-Mart was launching a sweeping
business sustainability strategy to dramatically reduce the companys impact on the global environment. . . . He argued that being a good steward of
the environment and being profitable are not mutually exclusive. They are one and the same. Scott
also committed Wal-Mart to three aspirational goals:
to be supplied 100% by renewable energy, to create
zero waste, and to sell products that sustain our
resources and the environment.

Walmart made its biggest sustainability impact by

requiring its thousands of global suppliers to sign
on to stringent environmental requirements. Development of these standards took place as part of
broad cooperation with environmental NGOs, particularly the Environmental Defense Fund. Tyler
Elm, Walmarts vice president and senior director
of corporate strategy and business sustainability,
remarked at the time, We recognized early on that
we had to look at the entire value chain. If we had
focused on just our own operations, we would have
limited ourselves to 10 percent of our effect on the
environment and eliminated 90 percent of the opportunity thats out there (Plambeck, 2007, p. 18).
Since that time, Walmart has embarked on what
some consider to be a profound transformation of

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Doh and Quigley

its operations and those of its suppliers, initiating a

series of global environmental initiatives that have
had broad and deep direct and secondary effects on
its internal organization, customers, suppliers, and
other stakeholders. According to Walmarts (2012)
Global Responsibility Report, company achievements included reducing waste by 80%, expanding
locally grown produce sold, expanding the Womens Economic Empowerment Initiative, using 1.1
billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy (more
than 38 U.S. states combined), developing an integrated sustainability index, expanding its global
direct farm program, and increasing diversity and
inclusion for women and minorities (Walmart,
2012). Walmart now ranks supplierslarge and
small on their sustainability efforts and has become an active participant in global efforts to support sustainably sourced forest products, marine
fish and aquatic species, and palm oil, reflecting a
level of responsibility that goes beyond the companys own organizational boundaries. Most recently, Walmart has embarked on an effort to green
the production and packaging of childrens toys.
Walmarts leadership around sustainability demonstrates elements of the psychological and knowledge-based pathways of responsible leadership.
The family founding of the company and its religious motivations for conservation suggest strong
psychological pathways through which the firm
influenced its internal and external stakeholders at
multiple levels. The initial process occurred at the
most senior level of the organization and within the
founding family and top executives. Subsequently,
however, the move toward responsible leadership
cascaded down and across the organization to include even the retail stores and suppliers. While
the psychological pathway remained strong and
salient, Walmart and its leadersthe Walton family and Lee Scottleveraged the knowledge-based
pathway to engage external stakeholders such as
the Environmental Defense Fund and transfer and
disseminate the knowledge and insights of those
stakeholdersand the powerful logic of moving to
a more sustainable futureto both internal and
external constituencies (e.g., employees, customers, and suppliers).
Coca-Cola and Neville Isdell
In the mid-2000s, Coca-Cola was accused of using water that contained pesticides in its bottling
plants in Kerala, India, and of illegal water discharges and diversion. An environmental group,

267

the Center for Science and Environment (CSE),

found that 57 bottles of Coke and Pepsi products
from 12 Indian states contained unsafe levels of
pesticides (Mather, Johnson, & Kumar, 2003). Keralas minister of health, Karnataka R. Ashok, imposed a ban on the manufacture and sale of CocaCola products in the region. Although subsequent
tests suggested that the amount of pesticides found
in Pepsi and Coca-Cola drinks was harmless to the
body, Coca-Colas reputation had been tarnished.
In May of 2007, a team of investigators led by the
India Resource Center released a report on violations by a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Sinhachawar,
Uttar Pradesh, documenting wastewater discharges
into surrounding agricultural fields and a canal that
feeds into the Ganges River as well as illegal dumping of sludge on the plants property. As such,
Cokes move toward responsible leadership began
at the societal and organizational levels, with broad
political, economic, and cultural forces exerting
specific pressures for change.
These developments also had a profound impact
on Cokes then CEO, Neville Isdell. Although Isdell
had a strong personal commitment to environmental sustainability, the company had not launched
any major initiatives until this crisis. While Isdell
had not operationalized his personal psychological
commitment to sustainability, this crisis channeling new knowledge and insight from external parties helped activate the dormant psychological
pathway.
One early move was to establish an in-house
team of sustainability advocates, operating almost
as an in-house NGO. According to Kert Davies, then
research director at Greenpeace, this initiative was
genuine and authentic: The inspiration and the
perspiration are real (Gunther, 2008, p. 68). Such a
step was a somewhat radical acknowledgment of
the need to broaden the knowledge-based pathways
available to the organization and widen the scope
of knowledge and expertise available to the firm as
it tackled this crisis.
Isdell underscored the need to include multiple stakeholders to address challenges of this
type to leverage the knowledge these parties
could bring to the table. Shortly after the India
debacle, he remarked:
No single company or organization has all the answers or holds ultimate responsibility, but we all
can do our part to conserve and protect water resources. . . . Our company will need time and cooperation from our bottlers, our suppliers and our conservation partners to accomplish the goal of

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replacing the water we use. We will be open about

our progress and engage others to better understand
what it takes. (World Wildlife Fund, 2007)

During the remaining years of his tenure at Coke,

Isdell undertook a series of sustainability initiatives that engaged internal and external stakeholders and, according to former critic Greenpeace, had
a measurable impact on the worlds environment.
These included providing financial support to bottlers to finance new wastewater equipment, engaging with NGOs such as Greenpeace, World Wildlife
Fund (WWF), and others, and moving toward water
neutrality in its global operations. The company
also undertook a global risk assessment to persuade
its bottlers to join the initiatives and forestall another crisis such as the one in India. Muhtar Kent,
Isdells successor as the CEO of Coke, has continued this legacy of environmental sustainability and
has tried to instill an ongoing culture of sustainability at the organization, suggesting some activity
through the psychological pathway we describe.
Kent built on Isdells initiatives by deepening
Cokes partnerships with bottlers and suppliers,
engaging employees in sustainability efforts, and
integrating sustainability with Cokes other CSR
initiatives. In the meantime, Isdell became chairman of the board of the World Wildlife Fund and
has devoted his retirement to advancing the sustainability cause; Kent and Isdell continue to work
together, as Coke and WWF have now forged a
comprehensive partnership around climate change,
called the Climate Savers campaign. Interestingly, Kent frequently remarks that he is Cokes
chief sustainability officer: I say that the chief
sustainability officer of the Coca-Cola Company is
me. . . . Thats my responsibility. It starts at the top,
and it is driven and permeates through the entire
organization from the top (Shapiro, 2010).
Coca-Colas leadership around sustainability
demonstrates both the knowledge-based and psychological pathways as mechanisms through which
responsible leaders effect change. Although the catalyst was primarily knowledge-based, the ensuing
organizational changes employed both pathways.
Both Isdell and Kent assumed responsibilities for
harnessing external cues and interests in addition
to marshaling internal information and knowledge
exchanges to leverage and influence employees and
other stakeholders. Moreover, Cokes relationship
with bottlers, on which it was and is mutually
dependent, also reflected this important knowledge-sharing and influencing process. In terms of

August

the psychological pathway, the personal experiences and dedication of Cokes leaders offered the
potential to spill over to the organizations culture,
although it is difficult to discern the depth and
breadth of that effect from secondary sources alone.
It is clear, however, that both Isdell and Kent embodied a deep personal commitment to sustainability, and that those psychological commitments
were increasingly used to galvanize Coca-Colas
employees. Ultimately, the knowledge-based and
psychological pathways appear to have converged
in these two leaders ability to mobilize CocaColaand many other individuals and organizationsto this mission of responsible environmental leadership.
DuPont and Chad Holliday
DuPont was one of the codevelopers of ozonedepleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerants and aerosol spray cans, and in the 1980s
the company was one of the largest producers of
CFCs in the world, with a 25% market share. It was
also the target of aggressive criticism from NGOs
such as Greenpeace, whose members scaled one of
its plants facing a highway (on which thousands of
drivers passed each day) to hang a banner that read,
Number 1 in contributing to destruction of the
ozone layer. Like Coca-Cola, DuPont faced a serious crisis, and leaders sought to change the context
and process for decision making. Again, both the
knowledge-based and psychological pathways provided mechanisms to facilitate change.
DuPont has made a great deal of progress toward
sustainability in the ensuing years, first under the
leadership of Chad Holliday and then under Ellen
Kullman. The companys recent strong commitment to environmental sustainability has included
phasing out the production of CFCs, dramatically
improving energy efficiency at its plants around the
world, substantially reducing water use and waste,
and developing new energy-saving products and
services such as Tyvek building insulation. DuPont
has since received a number of awards for its sustainability accomplishments. For his part, Holliday
has served on numerous NGO boards and government committees, including the ClimateWorks
Foundation, and acted as co-chair of the UN Secretary-Generals High-Level Group on Sustainable
Energy for All.
From 2000 to 2010, when he retired, Holliday
frequently commented on his philosophy and rationale for moving DuPont toward a more sustain-

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Doh and Quigley

able future. His approach reflected elements of the

information pathway we describe above. After his
retirement from DuPont in 2010, Holliday gave an
interview in which he discussed his commitment
to sustainability, how he engaged the entire DuPont
organization, and how he looked outside of traditional organizational boundaries for new ideas
(Rogers, 2012).
Regarding the overall sustainability challenge, he
remarked, In the United States . . . we have to do
something different. Somewhere along the line,
people will wake up to the reality that the world
has changed and that they need to adapt (Rogers,
2012, p. 4). Regarding the need to infuse the organization with new and diverse information, he
suggested:
Once ideas reach a certain point of development,
you have to find ways to disseminate them, because
you limit their growth if you keep them protected.
DuPont handled this by moving people around its
organization. . . . Its critical to start with concrete
examples. If you do that, people will be more likely
to listen to your theoretical approach. All my experience at DuPont suggests that its the stories that
really capture peoples imagination. . . . At DuPont,
we recognized great achievements and really highlighted good ideas so people would understand
what the company valued. We gave out sustainablegrowth awards every year. We had hundreds of submissions, and we established an external board to
evaluate a short list of about 12 ideas. (Rogers, 2012,
p. 6)

As a responsible leader, Holliday used the knowledge-based pathway to increase the psychological
commitment of DuPonts employees to his sustainability initiatives. Like Coke, DuPont also recognized the need to open up its organizational boundaries and engage with nontraditional stakeholders,
such as NGOs. Holliday noted:
Twice a year, DuPont invited about 10 NGOs to a
meeting with about 10 of the companys business
leaders. . . . The first meeting we had was tough, but
it was amazing how the experience opened us up. It
helped us understand the sensitivities in a variety of
areas, as well as how NGOs thought, and we went
about accomplishing our strategy differently as a
result. Sometimes we actually identified market
opportunities because of the dialogues. . . . These
experiences also enabled us to avoid a lot of conflicts because we learned where the hot spots
were. And we developed such good relationships
with NGOs that they were willing to help us. When
DuPont did face a situation and the press called
these NGOs, they were able to explain our views

269

because they knew us. But you have to put some

chips in the bank with NGOs. Its a multiyear process: they need time to really get to know the company, and companies need to know NGOs as well.
(Rogers, 2012, p. 8)

Holliday indicated that he was committed to gaining diverse outside perspectives:

Leaders should spend quality time with people outside their industriespeople who think differently. . . . At DuPont, we looked for opportunities to
send senior businesspeople into communities
where there were conflicts between commercial interests, civil society, and government. The idea was
to help our people develop leadership skills by
helping communities reach solutions. DuPont had
no stake in these conflicts; we just wanted our staff
to get experience dealing with complicated issues
where multiple stakeholders had differing interests.
(Rogers, 2012, p. 8)

This passage underscores a fairly substantial reorientation in the process through which DuPont as an
organization acquired, processed, and disseminated knowledge from and to its stakeholders.
Based on Hollidays comments, it seems that DuPont was actually engaging in an organization-wide
responsible leadership development initiative with
the explicit purpose of training leaders to be able to
incorporate the views of multiple stakeholders in
their decision-making processes.
Ellen Kullman, who succeeded Holliday as chair
and CEO of DuPont, has maintained DuPonts commitment to sustainable enterprise. In a recent interview with Leaders magazine (2012, p. 20), she
remarked:
When I joined DuPont in the 1980s, sustainability
was very important to the then CEO. He called himself a chief environmental officer he was a real
pioneer. Chad Holliday also championed sustainable development, so its embedded now in what we
do. We not only think about footprint reduction
when we think about sustainability; we think about
it from a numerator standpoint, how we create products that keep the environment or the world safe.

DuPonts experience with sustainability leadership

exhibits mostly elements of the knowledge-based
pathway, although the psychological pathway
played an important role as well. As a sciencebased organization where knowledge and information are paramount, and in the face of a change
in broad, external conditions and expectations,
DuPont demonstrated an openness to outside information and influences even when these external

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ideas presented as potentially threatening and critical. This willingness to engage with critical external stakeholders was a hallmark of DuPonts sustainability experience. Indeed, DuPont appeared to
sometimes engage with fringe stakeholders to
gain important knowledge (Hart & Sharma, 2004).
In addition, DuPont pursued several innovative
mechanisms for sharing knowledge and encouraging participatory development of the sustainability
program. The personal commitment and interest of
DuPonts leaders also suggest activity along the
psychological pathway, although that influence,
again, is not as clear or evident as the knowledgebased pathway.
It is important to reiterate that the examples
above reflect only the positive attributes of responsible leadership exhibited by these leaders. Each
has also been faulted for several mistakes, errors,
and even transgressions. We have deliberately and
intentionally included only those leadership attributes that help to reveal the pathways of influence
of responsible leadership that we outlined above.
Table 1 provides a summary of these cases, noting the leaders involved, the primary impetus that
resulted in an increase in responsible leadership,
the main pathways through which responsible
leadership had an impact, and the levels of affected
outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
It is clear that our understanding of the concept
of responsible leadership is evolving and becoming
more defined as more scholarship appears on the
subject. We have tried here to further link the responsible leadership (and the broader leadership)
literature to stakeholder theory by explicating the
pathways through which responsible leaders influence outcomes at multiple levels of analysis within
organizations. Further, we have attempted to show
how responsible leaders who take an open and
inclusive approach to understanding and incorpo-

August

rating the views of a diverse set of stakeholders into

executive decision making may have a positive impact. We have built on prior recent work in this
area (e.g., Miska et al., 2013; Pless et al., 2012; Stahl
et al., 2013; Voegtlin et al., 2012) by proposing the
pathways (psychological and knowledge-based)
through which this process occurs. We reviewed
literature from related fields (e.g., leadership, decision making, etc.) to help support our arguments.
Last, we used three recent examples of leaders at
Walmart, Coca-Cola, and DuPont to further illustrate the theoretical pathways we proposed.
It should be noted that several scholars have
proposed that CSR is most effective when it ties
closely to the business capabilities of the company
and complements the firms business and corporate-level strategies (Siegel, in Waldman & Siegel,
2008). As noted by Porter and Kramer (2006, p. 89
90), the most strategic CSR occurs when a company adds a social dimension to its value proposition, making social impact integral to the overall
strategy. Further, Pearce and Doh (2005) suggested
that collaborative social initiatives work best when
they leverage the core business competencies of the
firm. The pathways approach we have described
provides one specific set of mechanisms that may
be used to advance this approach.
Much work remains to be done as we continue to
grapple with understanding the essence of responsible leadership. We encourage future scholarship
in this area to focus on process issues: If responsible leaders are, indeed, more effective, how do they
manage these processes? As we noted in our discussion of Voegtlin and colleaguess (2012) work,
the discursive decision process to reach consensus
that responsible leaders use seems somewhat tenuous and inconsistent with some leadership theory. In our ever-changing, fast-paced, global world,
leaders are increasingly asked to make real-time
decisions without the luxury of consultation. Given
these kinds of demands on their time (and other
resources), how can responsible leaders effectively

TABLE 1
Corporate Sustainability and Responsible Leadership Pathways at Walmart, Coca-Cola, and DuPont
Company
Walmart
Coca-Cola
DuPont

Leaders
Rob Walton
Lee Scott
Neville Isdell
Muhtar Kent
Chad Holliday
Ellen Kullman

Initial prompt

Pathway

Relevant levels of action

Personal and individual

Primarily psychological

Meso and individual

Event-driven but subsequently embedded

Psychological and knowledgebased

Primarily knowledge-based

Macro, meso, and individual

Event-driven but subsequently embedded

Macro and meso

2014

Doh and Quigley

communicate with the stakeholders who are critical to their ability to make good decisions?
Finally, future work should examine empirically
whether the pathways we have proposed here are
as important as theory would suggest critically,
the linkages and interactions among these pathways, leadership characteristics, and outcomes
need attention. In particular, we have suggested
that our model portrays a reflexive and dynamic
process, but we have provided only anecdotal evidence of that. We also make some inferences about
succession and the influence of prior leaders on their
successors (e.g., Holliday and Kullman, Isdell and
Kent, and Walton and Scott), although this very important process deserves more comprehensive analysis and scrutiny.
Future research should also examine whether
there are best practices or preferred methods by
which leaders can manage the flow of knowledge
with critical stakeholders. Even more broadly, we
still need to know more about how responsible
leaders prioritize stakeholder groups such that they
can manage communication and knowledge-sharing in a logical fashion. It is clear that much work
remains to be done on the practical side of responsible leadershipwhich leads one to ask, what can
we do, on the academic/research side, to provide
advice and/or assistance to those leaders who wish
to be considered as responsible as part of their
legacy? These and other questions must continue to
be examined in future research on responsible leadership. We hope to have provided a start in this
direction.

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Jonathan P. Doh (jonathan.doh@villanova.edu) is Rammrath Professor in International Business, faculty director

of the Center for Global Leadership, and professor of
management at the Villanova School of Business. His
research interests include strategies for emerging markets, corporate-NGO interactions, and global corporate
responsibility. His most recent book, Aligning for Advantage: Competitive Strategies for the Political and Social
Arenas (with Thomas Lawton and Tazeeb Rajwani),
was published by Oxford in April. He is 2014 program
chair for the Academy of Management Organizations and
Natural Environment Division and incoming editor in
chief of Journal of World Business. He received his PhD
in strategic and international management from the
George Washington University.
Narda R. Quigley (narda.quigley@villanova.edu) is an
associate professor and chair of the Management and
Operations Department at the Villanova School of Business. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior from
the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University
of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include
emergent and cross-cultural leadership, multilevel issues, knowledge sharing, and groups and teams in
organizations.

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