Organizations are facing environmental, social, and financial challenges, and leaders need to respond to and manage these differing priorities to enhance and create value in their firms. Accordingly, the concepts of leadership and sustainability have been studied extensively over the last 30 years. Theis literature is wide-ranging, with discussions on sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership linking a variety of interconnected leader behaviors, practices, and skills that achieve sustainability outcomes. However, an examination of the leadership literature reveals a lack of agreement and understanding of the types of leadership necessary for positive sustainability ^[1][2][3][4][1,2,3,4]. SIn more recent years, scholars have attempted to resolve this problem. Hallinger and Suriyankietkaew (2018) [5] conducted a large-scale systematic review of sustainable leadership, thus providing frameworks for scholars to facilitate research direction. Knight and Paterson (2018) [6] empirically investigated sustainability leadership and identified ten critical and ten prominent behaviors of sustainability leaders in five competency groupings. Their research refined a behavioral competency model that sustainability leaders require to respond effectively to sustainability challenges [6]. Boeske and Murray (2022) [7] take a step towards integrating and identifying the types of leadership required to achieve positive sustainability and develop an integrated framework of intellectual capital and sustainability leadership practices. ReThisearchers review synthesized the existing sustainability leadership literature and identified and clarified leadership constructs [7]. Eustachio, Caldana, and Leal Filho (2023) [8] (p. 7) conducted a bibliometric analysis of sustainability leadership to extend previous research and provided a definition of sustainability leadership: ‘as the person who motivates and includes followers in order to overcome sustainability barriers, addressing challenges, that meet the needs of the present without compromising future generations’. Althnayan, Alarifi, Bajaba, and Alsabban (2022) [9] researched social learning theory and stakeholder theory to study the relationship between environmental transformational leadership and sustainable performance. They found that environmental transformational leadership positively predicts environmental organizational citizenship behavior, leading to improved organizational sustainability performance [9]. By taking an altogether different approach, rethisearchers aim paper aims to identify and compare the similarities and differences between sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership, specifically to address areas of overlap in the current literature. There is a shortage of research exploring the relationships between sustainable, sustainability, and environmental leadership, and as such, researchersthis paper will seek to understand these three leadership approaches that contribute to the implementation of sustainability initiatives and influence sustainability practices, thus filling a gap in the current literature.

Research on organizations implementing sustainability into their organizations has highlighted multiple benefits ^[10][11][12][10,11,12]. Not only are cost savings recognized ^[13][14][15][13,14,15], other benefits such as increased productivity [16], improved financial performance ^{[17][18][19][20]}[17,18,19,20], increased employee morale ^[21][22][21,22]; improved organizational commitment [23]; increased efficiencies and reduced environmental impact ^[11][18][24][11,18,24]; and improved public image ^[23][25][23,25] among others, have been accomplished. The foundation for implementing sustainability practices depends on leadership [21]. Organizational change, improved performance, and growth depend on how leaders implement innovative strategies and processes ^[26][27][28][26,27,28]. Therefore, leadership is a critical factor that contributes to organizational success by setting direction and achieving organizational goals, creating a vision, and mobilizing resources. Thus, leaders require a variety of behaviors, competencies, and skills to achieve organizational success [29], particularly when implementing sustainability strategies.

Sustainability problems require leaders to direct, plan, manage, implement revised strategies, collaborate with employees, and mobilize resources to deliver desired sustainability objectives. As such, leadership is crucial in guiding employees and all stakeholders towards achieving the organization’s sustainability goals (inclusive of social, and environmental concerns) [30]. Leaders enable and inspire change, encourage novelty and innovation, and assist organizational members to make sense of their environment ^[28][31][28,31]. Leaders use symbolic narratives/stories [32] to emphasize key values and build support for new strategies and policies with stakeholders ^{[33][34][35][36]}[33,34,35,36]. Leaders directly influence employees and organizational systems such as formal policies and procedures that determine the structure and culture of an organization ^{[37][38][39][40]}[37,38,39,40]. Collectively, leaders help to realize organizational goals, create efficiencies, and pursue growth opportunities ^[20][37][20,37]. Eide et al. (2020, p. 2) [26] identify that top managers who are personally motivated and value sustainability will include integrated sustainability strategies in their firms. Moreover, innovation and change are driven by top management/leaders [41], that help to facilitate an organizational climate where firms can be a positive force for social change [42]. Consequently, understanding the types of leadership necessary for positive sustainability presents significant value for economies.

2. Framework

Sustainability practices present both risks and opportunities, and organizations will need clear and direct leadership to define how business is to be conducted to improve operational processes. ItThis review revealed a growing body of knowledge about the three separate leadership approaches, namely sustainable leadership, sustainability leadership, and environmental leadership, and aims to integrate results from numerous studies that have categorized leadership behaviors. ResearchersA combination of review, conceptual, and empirical papers were used to inform this paper. I have classified the articles as they pertain to leaders (managers/CEOs) of small, medium, and large firms that described leadership behaviors that enhanced and facilitated the implementation of sustainability initiatives, goals, and objectives. The level of analysis relates to individual leaders. The paper is organized around the integrative ‘leadership towards sustainability’ framework (see Figure 1), which illustrates the leadership behaviors required to influence individuals, teams, and work units towards achieving sustainability goals. The framework will be further discussed below. The articles discussed in this paper are representative of the key leadership findings in this domain. The world is facing great opportunities and change, and hence, leaders need to learn how to lead effectively and understand the behaviors and practices required so that sustainability outcomes can be achieved. The case for better understanding which types of leadership behaviors and practices promote sustainable enterprises is a strong one, and researchers aim this review aims to synthesize and progress research by integrating similar and unique key leadership findings.