Understanding Leadership in the Environmental Sciences

Evans, Louisa S., Hicks, Christina C., Cohen, Philippa J., Case, Peter, Prideaux, Murray, and Mills, David J. (2015) Understanding Leadership in the Environmental Sciences. Ecology and Society, 20 (1). 50. pp. 1-18.

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Abstract

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualized and analyzed 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 10 years. We found that much of the environmental leadership literature focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. The literature also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective environmental governance. Only a subset 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, more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science can be developed.

Item ID: 38051
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1708-3087
Keywords: conservation; entrepreneurship; environmental governance; fisheries; forestry; water
Additional Information:

Copyright © 2015 by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance.

Funders: James Cook University, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARC CoE Coral Reef Studies), Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems
Projects and Grants: ACIAR grant FIS/2012/074
Date Deposited: 03 Jun 2015 01:30
FoR Codes: 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050205 Environmental Management @ 50%
15 COMMERCE, MANAGEMENT, TOURISM AND SERVICES > 1503 Business and Management > 150311 Organisational Behaviour @ 50%
SEO Codes: 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9605 Ecosystem Assessment and Management > 960501 Ecosystem Assessment and Management at Regional or Larger Scales @ 100%
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