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On February 21st of this year the Detroit Free Press carried an article about an act that “appalled” some people in southeastern Michigan. The story claimed that citizens and politicians were “ready to throw the book at Macomb County library officials for pitching 20,000 volumes” from their collections in Mount Clemens. As a result of this action, some public officials suggested that “the county cut in half the library's $500,000 for new books.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of authentic leadership on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a less researched environment. This study set out to fill that gap in researching the direct influence of employees’ perceptions about the authenticity of their leaders as well as indirect effect through participative decision-making on strategic CSR which means the genuine intention to benefit society.

A quantitative research approach was followed, with an online survey to employees in large South African corporations across various industries that were mostly more than 10 years old. There were 1,417 useable questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was used to test proposed hypotheses of mediation effects.

The results revealed that authentic leadership has a significant indirect effect through participative decision-making on employees’ perceptions around strategic CSR – that is, whether their corporations are genuinely socially and environmentally responsible.

The data collected were cross-sectional, and survey-based in the South African corporate environment; therefore, limited generalisations can be made, and causality could not be claimed.

Authentic leadership and participative decision-making are required to significantly influence employees’ perceptions about companies’ genuine interest in benefiting external stakeholders. Consistency between leaders’ words and deeds is important for employees, and therefore, companies must be socially responsible towards employees.

The main contribution of this research lies in showing that perception of leaders’ authenticity was enhanced when employees were allowed to participate in decision-making, which then increased positive perceptions about the organisation’s CSR focus. The study highlights similarities between authentic leadership and the African humanism philosophy of Ubuntu.

Risk governance is being successfully inserted into scientific and political agendas as a way to understand and address complex problems, such as health problems that have both social and ecological dimensions. However, to date, the debate on risk governance has remained rather conceptual. This chapter addresses these lacunae through describing research that was conducted on the Flemish environmental health governance arrangement and draws on this empirical case study to suggest ways that risk governance can be put into practice.

The case study analysis was conducted through a mixed methods study that combined document analysis and data gathered through 22 in-depth interviews with environmental and health scientists as well as policymakers.

This research shows that the Flemish environmental health risk governance arrangement has succeeded in increasing the exchange of information between: (1) governments at a variety of levels; (2) scientists, policymakers and the general public and (3) environmental and public health civil servants. The analysis also provides insights into some shortcomings and makes recommendations for ameliorating this arrangement: (1) the integration of environmental health objectives into all relevant policy domains, (2) the need for additional research into environmental health indicators and (3) the facilitation of the co-production of knowledge and multi-actor governance.

Empirical contributions and analysis about risk governance and policy formation processes are not often conducted. The added value of this Flemish case study is that it presents an example of good practice from which lessons for future risk governance arrangements can be drawn.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

This chapter explores the strategic responsiveness of commodity multinationals operating in developing countries to the uncertainties raised by the emergent European Union (EU) sustainability regulation. The study applies deductive theory triangulation to derive five response propositions, subsequently contrasted with inductive insights from an exploratory single-case study. The research involves in-depth interviews with a mix of senior and middle management and numerous external stakeholders. Empirical findings are discussed through storytelling and retrospective sensemaking and cross-checked against corporate documents, archive material, and online articles for added validation. This chapter concludes that an authentic commitment to corporate social responsibility and creating shared value can enhance the multinational enterprise (MNE)’s resilience and responsiveness to regulatory uncertainty, especially when combined with early signal scanning and real options reasoning. Through varied, first-hand insights, the case study demonstrates the role of reputation, core values, and ethical leadership in support of effective stakeholder engagement capabilities and the MNE’s ability to develop viable collaborative solutions to uncertainties implied by evolving sustainability regulation and stakeholder expectations. Taking an evolutionary view, this chapter introduces a process perspective on sustainability transition, relevant to firms seeking a shift in focus from mere compliance toward strategic responsiveness founded on adaptability and renewal.

This paper seeks to situate the green economy (GE) within the broader history of sustainable development (SD), bringing related lessons and insights into its fold.

We critically examine the history of SD, focusing on the relationship between SD outcomes and a variety of theoretical and political influences, such as demodernization theories, ecological modernization, neoliberalism, and state theory. We situate the GE within this broader history and identify emergent pathways to successful GE development.

We suggest that a strong GE discourse, one that prioritizes both people and the environment, provides an opportunity to revitalize the state, combat neoliberal primacy, and drive progressive economic and environmental policy.

A critical examination of SD history can provide important lessons for GE actors seeking progressive social and environmental change.

As social and environmental crises deepen, the need for developing and propagating discourses that engender economic reform and ecological protection becomes ever more evident.