Leadership styles and sustainable performance: A systematic literature review

The aim of this paper is to synthetize and critically analyze the linkage between leadership styles and sustainable performance (SP) through application of the rigor of systematic literature reviews. Bibliometric characterization of articles indexed in the Scopus database, network analysis and a manual in-depth review were carried out. The final sample consisted of 47 documents. The most discussed leadership styles were sustainable leadership and transformational leadership. The former was mostly linked with general SP, whereas the latter was linked with environmental performance. In 41 out of the 47 papers, the authors provided empirical research. Upper echelon theory and resource-based view theory have been used in most of previous papers. This study synthesizes how leadership influences SP (directly and indirectly) and reveals that the authors of the analyzed papers did not establish a consensus regarding their empirical evidence. The prospects for future research are shown in terms of research topics, methodology, and variables, as well as, i.a., terminological clarity and a holistic approach to SP.