Academic leadership in a warming world
How can business school academics influence climate change action
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12883136 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Nyberg (0000-0002-7144-1343, The University of Queensland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Leadership (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1742-7150 • E-ISSN: 1742-7169 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/17427150251393067 |
| OpenAlex | W4415481780 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 40 |
This Leading Questions article explores how academics in business schools can contribute to mobilising action on climate change. Given the pressing nature of this issue and the magnitude of the ongoing crisis, inaction merely perpetuates an economic system that fuels increasing greenhouse gas emissions, leading to an uninhabitable planet. Given the urgency of actions, what responsibilities do scholars have in their research and teaching? By addressing the question, ‘What am I supposed to do?’, the article presents four potential roles for academics—the Provocateur, the Catalyst, the Dissident, and the Rebellion—all aimed at raising awareness of this critical challenge and fostering collective climate activism on campus and within civil society. These activities do not centre on individual responsibilities for environmental issues; rather, they represent academic leadership in mobilizing collective responses aimed at challenging the structural injustices of fossil fuel-dependent corporate capitalism
Action (physics · Action research · Business as usual · Civil society · Climate change · Collective action · Global warming · Neoliberalism (international relations · Precarity · Sustainability in Higher Education
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars
Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations
From Higher Aims to Hired Hands
Shut Down the Business School
Questioning Neoliberal Capitalism and Economic Inequality in Business Schools
Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
Three perspectives on leadership in higher education
Passion, care, and eros in the gendered neoliberal university
Changing the World? The Politics of Activism and Impact in the Neoliberal University
The business school is racist
Breaking isolation
Fools, jesters and the possibility of responsible leadership
‘… The point is to change it’ – Yes, but in what direction and how? Intellectual activism as a way of ‘walking the talk’ of critical work in business schools
Subtle activism
Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education
Blackboxing leadership
What does it mean to be responsible? Addressing the missing responsibility dimension in ethical leadership research
Reimagining ethical leadership as a relational, contextual and political practice
Relational leadership
Answering the crisis with intellectual activism
Careering through academia
Are we all in it together? Constructions of responsible leadership through speechmaking at COP26
Responsible Leadership in a Stakeholder Society - A Relational Perspective
Anarchy, war, or revolt? Radical perspectives for climate protection, insurgency and civil disobedience in a low-carbon era
Making green extreme
Planetary Boundaries
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |