Exploring the impact of leaderful practice on the implementation of SDGs

Initiatives seeking to address UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) often involve various forms of distributed actions and contributions of multiple actors. In such contexts, leadership may not only be accomplished by a leader in control, but is likely to emerge through various practices, potentially co-constructed by diverse actors. Leadership-as-practice research has over the past decade advanced understanding of how leadership emerges through (social) practices, how this work is organized and accomplished (Raelin, 2011; Crevani, L. and N. Endrissat, 2016). The notion of leaderful practice brings to light how leadership may occur as a social process of lateral as much as vertical interactions between actors (Raelin, 2011).

We call for research proposals for a PhD project that studies how leaderful practice dynamics, relating to collaboration, collectiveness, concurrency of action or ethics of care, shape ways, or strategies, of implementing SDGs in organisations. Proposals may seek to explore and explain the constitution, enactment, interplay and consequentiality of leaderful practices in such contexts.

From a methodological perspective we would encourage candidates who wish to adopt an interpretivist and social constructionist paradigm. In terms of research design, the project offers scope for comparative case studies or an ethnographic field study, etc. The topic will require qualitative research that captures the enactments of leaderful practices, and potentially their interplay in bundles of practices (Nicolini, 2012; Crevani, L. and N. Endrissat 2016), in processes of engaging with SDGs. Sectors of choice may involve: energy, agro-food, transport, tourism, creative industries (e.g. fashion), or professional service sectors.

The project offers scope to consider how leadership-as-practice shapes organizations’ efforts to mobilise ‘corporate purpose’ (George et al, 2023; Ellsworth, 2022; Almondoz, 2023) related to SDGs. For example, scholars have recently observed how the dispersion of many activities and forms of organizing through which corporate purpose, and SDGs, is sought achieved, raises questions of how leadership emerges and is exerted through practices to influence actors (including stakeholders) to collaborate when no one has full control and responsibility over those overarching purposes and their realization (Kaplan, 2023). How can research capture the dispersed character of the firm (or other forms of organizing) and its engagement with stakeholders around purpose while recognizing that processes and practices of leadership matter (Kaplan, 2023)?

Empirically, the topic of the project may involve studies related to different SDGs. Goals of special interest, among others, comprise:

SDG 17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships? (United Nations)

For example, to what extent and how do companies and/or other actors establish bonds across the sector(s), potentially with local/regional/global communities, for strengthening partnerships that allow that ‘ecosystem’ to achieve other goals?

SDG 4.7 Education for sustainable development and global citizenship (United Nations)

For example, how do companies further contribute to nourishing this goal?