ABSTRACT The lag in embedding leaders' decarbonization competences into sunset industry businesses (oil, gas, and petroleum), particularly in Middle Eastern hydrocarbon economies, poses an existential environmental and institutional challenge. In many such contexts, leaders' decarbonization competences remain subordinated to resource utilization and cost‐efficiency logics, limiting the strategic depth of sustainability‐oriented business transformation. This study addresses this competence–sustainability gap through an in‐depth qualitative investigation of eight multinational energy cases operating in Bahrain's oil and gas sector, drawing on 26 semi‐structured executive interviews. The analysis examines how leaders frame decarbonization as an institutional and environmental challenge and how decarbonization competences are reconfigured into a new leadership identity under conditions of accelerated transition pressure. Building on established leadership literature, the study advances the concept of leadership re‐ontologization to capture shifts from static, trait‐based leadership paradigms toward a more fluid, identity‐driven, competence‐oriented and responsive leadership. Empirically, four analytical frames emerged from a systematic coding across multiple cases highlighted in representative and deviant interview quote blocks: leadership threat, leadership opportunity, leadership competence, and leadership as sociocultural alliance. A process model: the Humanization Model is developed from threats/opportunities to competence enactment to outcomes highlighting leadership identity's transformation. The enacted leadership competences are: open‐mindedness to change, network synergy, sociocultural knowledge, and strategic training. The study's novelty lies in its integration of competences into leadership identity and practice under decarbonization‐related ontological strain. The paper discusses implications for leadership theory, business strategy, and environmental sustainability in state‐led sunset‐industry transitions.
Mendy et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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