Are sustainable leaders different? – A comparison between Dutch B Corps, ISO 14001 certified firms and other firms

Abstract

Sustainability has become a hot topic in society and daily life. Social businesses arise while established firms put efforts into becoming greener and taking better care of their social responsibilities. This research investigates Dutch business leaders in terms of their personality traits and leadership styles and compares the results of sustainable and traditional business leaders. The research compares leaders of three types of business organizations: B Corps (sustainable business), ISO 14001 certified firms (environmentally conscious traditional business) and firms that are similar in terms of their core business activity, the number of employees and the age of their leader but are neither B Corp nor ISO 14001 certified (traditional business). The core of the research is based on two surveys; the first on leaders’ personality traits and the second on leaders’ leadership styles.

There is a lack of empirical (quantitative comparative) research comparing leaders of social/sustainable firms and traditional firms. Related studies suggest that there are no significant differences across different types of entrepreneurs; other scholars do propose such differences. The novelty of this study lies in the holistic comparison of businesses leaders whose firms are dinstinguished by sustainability certifications.

This study found that B Corp leaders are significantly more agreeable than ISO 14001 leaders, while no evidence was found for other significant differences relating the Big Five traits. Concerning leadership styles, B Corp leaders demonstrate higher levels of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation (all transformational leadership styles) and contingent reward (transactional leadership style) than their counterparts from other firms.