followers may strive to emulate (Western, 2008), the notion of role models in EL is about leaders constantly living the organizational values in everyday behaviour and traits (Brown & Treviño, 2006;
García-Morales et al., 2012). Although incorporating these ideas, my findings suggests that informants view leadership as simultaneously being transparent about personal shortcomings and who recognize the dilemmas connected with strong sustainability. Instead of leaders micro-managing and engaging in behavior that is expected to be replicated by followers (Brown & Treviño, 2006;
Treviño et al., 2003) the research participants perceived diversity as something that should be embraced and high levels of employee independence as a source of motivation and creativity. This understanding of the characteristics of a role model is thus more similar to ideas found in RL, which like the findings from this study, views collaboration as a way of leading by example (Pless & Maak, 2011).
6.2.2 Central points of divergence between the findings and progressive leadership
Having noted how the tentative notion of regenerative leadership converges with aspects of progressive leadership, it is similarly valuable to note the major divergences between the perspectives.
While RL seems to be most similar to regenerative leadership, it is worth noting how RL can have an instrumental and reactive approach to organizational sustainability initiatives (Maak et al., 2016). In contrast, the findings of this study suggests that leaders with the ambition of developing organizations with a strong focus on sustainability must do so with a higher societal purpose that extends beyond a purely business case rationale, giving it an in intrinsically integrative approach. While the idealist and integrative orientations within RL denotes the extended accountability that leaders may experience to multiple stakeholders (Pless et al., 2012), the omittance of planetary boundaries and macro-level conditions clearly sets them apart from the perspectives expressed by the informants. In addition, whereas RL perceives internal stakeholder relations as a way of supporting organizational objectives tied to the higher social purpose (Pless & Maak, 2011), my study suggests that regenerative leaders also see it as a supporting condition for creating personal prosperity and well-being amongst employees. While this nonetheless is perceived to increase the overall capacity of the organization to pursue its purpose, the data suggests that ensuring personal well-being isn’t always motivated by strategic considerations but rather come from altruistic ideas. With the explicit focus on work-life balance and creating organizational spaces for informal and personal talk, regenerative leaders seem to go beyond active listening in RL with its focus on stakeholder participation in decision-making processes (Patzer et al., 2018), and instead take higher responsibility for their employees prosperity.
A further interesting point of divergence is how none of the research participants in this study talked about organizational citizen behavior (OCB) as a source of employee motivation and satisfaction, which is commonly seen in RL and EL (Eisenbeiss, 2012; Voegtlin et al., 2012). As OCB is behavior that shows engagement beyond the formal job description (Voegtlin et al., 2012), one potential reason the research participants don’t focus on OCB as an important element, might be explained by the fact that the leaders actively seek to integrate sustainability initiatives within the core of the organizational practices, thus rendering peripheral OCB activities less important. Instead, the findings of this study suggests that alignment of personal and organizational purpose through stakeholder participation is a key driver of motivation for internal stakeholders. This was indicated by CS, when talking about how her employees worked intensively with sustainability in all their encounters with customers, not just a few hours a week (Appendix A, 47:50).
Furthermore, the concept of distributed leadership was only partially found in existing progressive leadership literature. My findings suggested that distributed leadership was oftentimes interlinked with (a) a high degree of individual independence to make decisions across levels and (b) placed within an organizational structure that support interdisciplinary co-creating and (c) a shared responsibility. Although TL, EL and RL seek to develop organizational cultures that encourage a degree of self-leadership under responsibility (e.g., Bass & Riggio, 2006; Brown & Treviño, 2006;
Voegtlin, 2016), the focus on cross-team collaborations does not seem to be a prevailing point in these leadership discourses, which the research participants perceived as a strong barrier for developing a sustainable organization. However, as with the empirical research that has questioned if leadership is in fact distributed in RL and is not only a theoretical idea (Maak et al., 2016; Voegtlin, 2016; Voegtlin et al., 2012), further studies need to be conducted to investigate to what extend distributed leadership is enacted in practice. Nonetheless, the way the informants perceive personal prosperity and distributed leadership as fundamental elements when aiming to create sustainable organizations with a higher purpose, it can be argued that the notion organizational leadership is extended to its logical limits, at least to a degree not yet seen in other streams of leadership literature.
The reoccurring tendency of research participants to rethink both the leadership role, organizational structures, and the fundamental purpose of an organization, could suggest that regenerative leaders may have a stronger willingness to question previously held assumptions, which paves the way for new forms of enactment (Weick et al., 2005). This also differentiates it further from concepts such as EL, as breaking with normative assumptions indirectly is discouraged within this perspective. Future research on regenerative leadership could study whether this is an antecedent of regenerative
leadership or if the willingness to rethink gradually increases due to other factors, e.g., organizational culture.
While the tentative notion of regenerative leadership converges with the progressive leadership literature streams on certain points, it is worth nothing the distinctions that sets it apart.
The idea of seeing distributing leadership, rethinking organizational structures, focusing on personal prosperity and the integration of a higher purpose as interconnected parts of an organization that aims to have strong sustainability approach, serve as arguments for recognizing the merit of regenerative leadership as separate leadership discourse.
6.2.3 Evaluating my findings against the emerging notion of regenerative leadership
Having noted the divergence and convergence of the findings with the sensemaking in established leadership discourses, it is interesting to briefly compare the findings of this study with the general ideas from the emerging literature on regenerative leadership to assess to what extend the two notions of the concept are compatible. Firstly, the emphasis on integrating an authentic purpose that creates societal benefits beyond the organization and utilizing it as a way of creating strategic clarity that allows for internal alignment, is a central tenant in the existing regenerative leadership literature (Hardman, 2013; Hutchins & Storm, 2019; Sanford, 2017). It is also worth noting how personal resonance with the organizational purpose can be a strong driver of motivation and increased efficiency (Hutchins & Storm, 2019). Secondly, where TL, EL and RL literature is devoid of mentions regarding the importance of personal well-being and informal talks about feelings in the workplace as an interconnected part of a developing a sustainable organizational output, regenerative leadership authors seem to acknowledge this by including a focus on diversity, inclusion and the importance of showing vulnerability at work (Hutchins & Storm, 2019). Thirdly, the distributed leadership, interdisciplinary focus and the encouragement of co-creation found in this study, mirrors the self-organizing advice process and the call for breaking down silos that feature heavily within existing literature (Hutchins & Storm, 2019). Conversely, the idea of individual and collective consciousness as a strong antecedent of developing a regenerative leader mindset (Hardman, 2013; Hutchins &
Storm, 2019), is not evident in the research participants responses. Neither did the research participant of this study perceive biophilic design ideas such as cradle-2-cradle (McDonough & Braungart, 2010) as an integrated part of their leadership approach, which seems to be an important feature within existing literature (Hutchins & Storm, 2019). By adding the theoretical notion of TBD and the macro-level conditions, my study adds an important dimension so far missing in the emerging regenerative
leadership literature. Noting the significant similarities between my findings and the emerging literature on regenerative leadership, the merit of adopting regenerative leadership as a distinct leadership discourse becomes further evident.
6.2.3.1 Discussing how personal prejudices may have influenced the findings
Despite the primarily inductive approach of my study and the use of open line-by-line coding to overcome personal prejudices, I acknowledge that my prior knowledge of the emerging literature on regenerative leadership may have affected my research design and findings. However, while there is a significant correlation between the findings of this study with the existing notion of regenerative leadership, it is worth nothing that the focused codes, 2nd order concepts and the core categories are linguistically distinct from the language found in the current literature (Hardman, 2013; Hutchins &
Storm, 2019). Although referring broadly to the same ideas, the literature makes use of concepts such as self-organizing and locally attuned (Hutchins & Storm, 2019), where my codes are named distributed leadership and interdisciplinary approach. Noting that most of the literature review centered around different leadership discourses, and that the distinct codes were generated in thorough grounded theory approach, I would argue that my findings are relevant and give credence to the conceptual validity of regenerative leadership.