Moral and Virtues-Based Leadership for Enhancing Integral Ecology

This chapter focuses on the care of our “common home,” emphasizes the complexity of the crisis, and suggests the path to overcome it through renewed environmental, economic, anthropological, and social ecology. Starting from the premise of the Encyclical Letter Laudato Sı` (Pope Francis, 2015), the chapter discusses the role of leadership models based on virtues and moral constructs to promote a new business culture. Which leadership models and which business models are necessary to guide companies toward the integral development? After a review of the Encyclical Letter, the chapter traces the theoretical framework of leadership theories connected with the emergence of a sustainability- oriented business model. The empirical analysis explores three cases of exemplary Italian companies which show how entrepreneurs can promote cultural reorientation, can help others to unlearn the bad habits of “turbocapitalism,” and place value on humanity, relationships, and the love of the place in which they do business. This chapter contributes to the development of leadership approaches and models incorporating the orientation toward the common good. Accordingly, it highlights the “roots” of entrepreneurial and managerial behavior which appear to inspire a profound rethinking of business conduct. From the business examples analyzed, the chapter shows models that make integral development possible.