Responsible leadership: Reconciling people, purpose, and profit

Humanity is at a crossroad, faced with profound ethical tragedies: migration, extremism, climate change, and destructive leadership. Responsible leadership is a multilevel response to deficiencies in existing leadership frameworks and theories; a response to high-profile scandals on individual, organizational, and systemic levels; and a response to new and emerging social, ethical, and environmental challenges in an increasingly connected world. Responsible leadership was first used by Harvard professor George Smith in the subtitle of his 1962 textbook Business, Society, and the Individual: Problems in responsible leadership of private enterprise organizations operating in a free society. Humanity is at a crossroad, faced with profound ethical tragedies: migration, extremism, climate change, and destructive leadership. Responsible leadership thus responds to existing gaps in leadership theory and the practical challenges facing leadership including expectations to do better and more. The scope and complexity of these challenges call for responsible leadership and leaders who acknowledge their shared responsibility in tackling these grand challenges.