| Abstract |
The paper considers four main leadership approaches in relation to declining environmental natural resources and effective sustainable development. The four approaches, namely: resource-exploitive, resource-conservationist, resource-preservationist and extreme preservationist are considered from anthropocentric and ecocentric points of view in terms of leadership ethics and economic cogency. Ethical aspects of declining environmental resources are analyzed in relation to conceptions of 'hard' sustainability embracing intergenerational equity and the constant natural assets rule in addition the more conventional business criteria of environmental, social and economic triple bottom line. Ethical issues are considered in conjunction with their likely economic effects on corporate and environmental sustainability, by analyzing different types of ecocentric and anthropocentric approaches to natural resource utilization. The paper suggests that immoral (preconventional) leadership is associated with natural resource exploitation, amoral/pragmatically moral (conventional) leadership associated with 'balanced' natural resource conservation, while principled, moral (post conventional) leadership is associated with natural resource preservation, often at the cost of human capital development. Leadership associated with natural resource exploitation and preservation is fundamentally inimical to balanced natural resource utilization and 'strong' (intergenerational) corporate sustainability. |