Sustainable development: The colors of sustainable leadership in learning organization

Sustainable development has emerged as a field of applied research across multi-discipline. Sustainable leadership is a new domain of effective leadership, which has been established recently to cope with issues related to sustainable development. On the subject of natural resource-based view (NRBV) and dynamic capability theory, this study examined methods of embedding sustainable leadership into sustainable performance and investigated the mediating effect of organizational learning to sustainable leadership and sustainable performance. The data in this study were collected from a total of 369 small and medium-sized enterprises in Pakistan using a purposive sampling technique. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results revealed (a) a significant positive effect of sustainable leadership on organizational learning; (b) organizational learning significantly influences sustainable performance; (c) organizational learning partially mediates the relationship between sustainable leadership and sustainable performance. The present study offered an in-depth theory of NRBV, dynamic capability, and sustainable development. Effective management advices are proposed for organizations encountering sustainable development challenges.