Leadership in the North American Environmental Sector: Values, Leadership Styles, and Contexts of Environmental Leaders and their Organizations

Examined (1) the nature and strength of environmental leaders' personal and environmental values as motivating principles for transforming leadership behavior, (2) whether leaders performed transformational leadership behaviors in their organizations, and (3) whether environmental organizations were receptive or antagonistic contexts for the operation of transformational leadership. Interview and questionnaire data obtained from 73 leaders of 38 nonprofit environmentalist and for-profit environmental product and service organizations show that these leaders' personal values were more ecocentric, open to change, and self-transcendent than those of managers in other types of organizations. These leaders also acted as "master managers," performing both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors. As hypothesized, nonprofit environmentalist organizations were highly receptive contexts for transformational leadership, whereas for-profit environmental organizations were at least moderately receptive in this regard. The authors used these findings to develop a preliminary model of environmental leadership.