Research Proposal: Impact of Leadership & Culture on Sustainability

This research proposal investigates the impact of organizational leadership and culture on the sustainable development of 21st-century organizations. The study aims to evaluate the role of leadership and culture, identify factors affecting sustainable development, and recommend ways for organizations to achieve sustainability. Employing a quantitative approach with a descriptive design, the research utilizes primary data collected through surveys from managers and executives across various organizations. The hypothesis tests whether leadership and culture significantly influence sustainable development. The anticipated results will provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to enhance their sustainability practices, understand cultural dynamics, and develop effective strategies for economic growth while maintaining ecological balance. The research also addresses the limitations of the study, such as potential biases and the lack of behavioral insights, ensuring a comprehensive analysis of the topic. Desklib offers similar documents and past papers for students.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Evaluating the Impact of Leadership and Culture on the Sustainable
Development of the 21st Century Organizations
The Name of the Student:
The Name of the University:
Author Note:

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
When it comes to defining 21st century organizations, sustainability is one of
the themes, which comes to the mind at first. The central research problem is that it
is important to understand the elements that affect the most on the sustainable
development of an organization. Sustainability of organizations have been the view
point of many discussions over the years as the concept of sustainable development
of an organization has been changing. The most recent concept of sustainable
development is that is an organizational goal to achieve economic growth while
maintaining ecological balance (Reid, 2013). The role of the leadership is to
influence achieving the organizational goal, and in this 21st century, sustainability is
one of the common agendas of the organizations. Customer satisfaction is way of
growing for any organizations. As these customers are part of a culture, the culture
also plays a significant part in the growth of a company. Hence, the topics that are
related to the research problem are the environmental sustainability, the leadership
and the culture. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to focus on the impact of
the organizational leaderships and culture on the sustainable development of the
organizations in the 21st century. The type of this study is descriptive study and the
researcher will follow the quantitative method to conduct the research.
Retaining the environmental balance is one of the major global concerns of
21st century. The present consumption rate of natural resources is increasing the
pollution to an alarming level. The exhaustion of these resources will arise crisis in
the market of raw materials (Bergstrom & Randall, 2016), and in consequence, the
prices will increase. Thus, sustainable development for the organizations of this
century has become more important than ever.
The research area for this study is the importance of the sustainability
environment, the leadership of the organizations and the culture of the society.

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL
According to Carley and Christie (2017), in this century where the growing
environmental issues are affecting the political, administrative and disciplinary
boundaries, it is more vital for the organizations and their managements to get a
clear apprehension of the situation in order to formulate better strategies and policies
to develop an ecologically sustainable organisation. The legal challenges that the
organizations have to deal with to make sustainable development as well as fulfil
market demands are the production, distribution and consumption. On this context,
Scherer, Palazzo and Seidl (2013) observed that there are three ways to address
these problems – changing according to the external expectations, control the
perception of the various stakeholders, debating the question of their validity. The
role of the leaderships is significant in the application of these strategies, as it
requires the expertise of the leaderships to handle the adverse situations.
Environment and development, being two crucial universal issues, demand
the international as well as local attention (McKinnon & et al., 2015). Without the help
of the local people and government, it is impossible for any organization to develop
sustainability. The people of this century is understanding the significance and value
of natural resources, and by that they are trying to develop an environmentally
sustainable culture and policies to keep the natural balance intact. The
organizations, which are involved in cultures that promotes sustainable development,
can affect the development of the organizations also. As Ghai and Vivivan (2014)
opined, that, even though governments make regulatory frameworks along with fiscal
and economic policies that encourage environmentally sustainable actions by
positive incentives, the activities of the people in the concerned culture is the major
determinant of the sustainable growth.

3RESEARCH PROPOSAL
There is no doubt that in this age of globalization and global warming, it is
crucial for the organizations to develop sustainability. Previous researches shows
different factors of achieving sustainability in social and organizational premises. Yet,
there is a gap in the literature on the impact of leaderships and the ways culture
affects the sustainable growth of the organization in the present century.
The aim of this research is to evaluate how the leadership and culture in an
organization is impacting on the sustainable development of the 21st century
organizations.
The objectives of the research are:
i. To evaluate the role of the leadership and culture on the sustainable
development of the 21st century organizations.
ii. To find out the different factors which have affected the sustainable
development of the 21st century organizations.
iii. To recommend various ways by which an organization can become a
sustainably developed in the 21st century.
The hypothesis of this research are:
H0: The leadership and culture will not have an impact on the sustainable
development of the organizations in the 21st century.
H1: The leadership and culture will have an impact on the sustainable development
of the organizations in the 21st century.
The findings outcomes of this research will be a major help to those
organizations that are struggling with originating processes to make sustainable
development. Leaderships from different organizations may go through this study to
enhance the sustainability of their organizations. The study will further help to
understand what the different factors of a culture are at play behind the sustainable

4RESEARCH PROPOSAL
growth of the organizations. In addition, this research will provide information on how
different cultures in 21st century are applying strategies to make their culture
environmentally sustainable.
The reason for selecting quantitative approach for this study is that it will allow
generalizing of the results and give scope for a wider study (Neuman, 2013). The
researches that have less number of variables use this type of approach to conduct
the study on a larger sample size to make the data more accurate and reliable.
Descriptive design of research allows the researcher to make a proper analysis of
the data (Simonsohn, Nelson & Simmons, 2017). This design will be chosen to
conduct the study, as it will be the appropriate design to produce a detailed and
analytical knowledge about the concepts and different theories on the topic in order
to effectively address the research problem.
As per Flick (2015), data collection process is one of the most important parts
in a research process. The researcher of this study will use only primary data. In
order to collect the primary data for this study, the researcher will conduct a survey
with close-ended questions. The researcher will also use government offices and
other organizations as the source of the primary data to get the statistical information
on the organizations. The researcher will conduct a survey to get a broader
perception of the topic. This primary method of data collection will depend on the
close-ended survey questionnaire arranged by the researcher for surveying the
managers and the executives of multiple organizations (Panneerselvam, 2014). The
sampling technique that the researcher will use to perform this study is random
probability sampling technique. The researcher will choose this sampling technique
to ensure that everyone in the framework gets an equal opportunity to participate in
the survey (Mickey & Gass, 2015). This sampling technique will keep the data

5RESEARCH PROPOSAL
impartial. In order to collect the data 10 organisations of various level of sustainability
and different cultures will be chosen. Then the survey will be conducted among 30
managers and 10 executives taken from the chosen organisations equally. The
target population, which can also be termed as theoretical population, for this study
will be narrowed down to the managers and the executives in every kind of
organizations. In order to conduct this study in quantitative method, equipment such
as surveys, questionnaires, different types of measuring tools will be used.
The quantitative data that will be collected through the survey will be derived
into statistical charts and then transformed into graphs for a better understanding of
the impact by also comparing them. The primary data collected from different
organizations and government offices will be processed under quantitative analytical
technique to construct a pattern in the impact of leaderships and cultures on the
organizational sustainability. The process of this data analysis technique will help in
determining the themes that are at play in the topic under discussion. The result of
the analysis will help to effectively answer the research question. The research
operation will be a close-ended survey, and the results of the data will be interpreted
in to statistical charts to understand how the leadership and culture affect the
sustainable development of the organizations.
The research design of this study may lead to a few barriers, pitfalls, and
limitations. In order to avoid legal issues, the researcher will take an NOC certificate
from the organization in advance, and also will provide a letter of authorization.
Challenges may come regarding the participation and the anonymity of the survey.
Therefore, force will not be applied on anyone to participate in the survey and
anonymity will be strictly maintained. The limitations in this study will be that it will not
provide enough information on behavioural aspects of the samples, and numerical

6RESEARCH PROPOSAL
interpretation of preset answers will not provide proper human perception (Gast &
Ledford, 2014). The level of control on the variables is also in question since the
survey will take place in an artificial environment.
The impact of leadership on the growth of the organizations has been a
common topic of discussion. This research will extend the existing knowledge about
the magnitude of the impact of organizational leaderships. It will also help
understanding the role and importance of culture in the development of the
organizations in 21st century. After the completion of this research, the anticipation is
to find that the leadership and culture indeed plays a crucial part in affecting the
sustainable development of the organizations in the present century. The anticipated
results of the research will develop new theories about the sustainability of the
organizations. Along with those theories, this research will help future scholars as
the source of their literature review on related topic.
Sustainable development of the organizations in the 21st century means that
the organizations are able to maintain their economic growth along with the
ecological balance. The research objective is to understand how leadership and
culture plays significant role in the sustainable development of the 21st century
organizations. The study will be conducted in quantitative method using the process
of survey. The expected outcome of this research is that find that there are multiple
ways in which the leadership and culture affects the sustainable development of the
organizations in the current century. This will prove to be helpful to the organizations,
which are looking for a way to achieve sustainable development.

7RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Reference List
Bergstrom, J. C., & Randall, A. (2016). Resource economics: an economic approach
to natural resource and environmental policy. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Carley, M., & Christie, I. (2017). Managing sustainable development. Routledge.
Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a
research project. Sage.
Gast, D.L. and Ledford, J.R. eds., 2014. Single case research methodology:
Applications in special education and behavioral sciences. Routledge.
Ghai, D., & Vivian, J. M. (2014). Grassroots environmental action: people's
participation in sustainable development. Routledge.
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and
design. Routledge.
McKinnon, A., Browne, M., Whiteing, A., & Piecyk, M. (Eds.). (2015). Green logistics:
Improving the environmental sustainability of logistics. Kogan Page
Publishers.
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative
approaches. Pearson education.
Panneerselvam, R., 2014. Research methodology. PHI Learning Pvt.Ltd..
Reid, D. (2013). Sustainable development: an introductory guide. Routledge.
Scherer, A. G., Palazzo, G., & Seidl, D. (2013). Managing legitimacy in complex and
heterogeneous environments: Sustainable development in a globalized world.
Journal of Management Studies, 50(2), 259-284.
Simonsohn, U., Nelson, L. and Simmons, J., 2017. Research Methodology, Design,
and Analysis. Annual Review of Psychology, 69(1).