Responsible leadership on the way to sustainable development: environmental education and volunteering as practice fields

Abstract

This article focuses on the idea of responsible leadership and the ways to promote and implement sustainable development through education systems and volunteer practices. The main idea of this research is to describe key characteristics of several leadership types and emphasize specific ideas of responsible leadership. One of the main assumptions relies on the possibilities of responsible leaders to foster sustainable changes in different areas. Therefore, this article, first, analyzes how responsible leaders can define, distribute and support sustainable initiatives, innovations and ideas at the levels of school, university and business education. Secondly, the article concentrates on the ways of responsible leaders in business to include sustainable agendas in organizational processes. Thirdly, the article explains the importance of responsible leadership in volunteering which is usually connected to social and environmental challenges. Thus, special attention is given to the responsible leaders’ characteristics to deal with sustainable challenges and solutions.