Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Charisma: Which Are the Links with Business Models Sustainability?

Leadership ethics tend to emphasise the benefits of implementing ethical practices within organisations, the importance of a leader’s values and virtues and the positive effects of a leader’s behaviour on employees’ satisfaction, the organisational culture and stakeholders’ relationships. Drawing from this premise, the work addresses entrepreneurial and managerial leadership model, such as charismatic and virtues-based leadership, and its contribution in developing sustainability-oriented strategy. Using a methodological approach which merges the inductive and deductive perspective, a critical review of leadership approaches is followed by the empirical analysis based on a case study relative to a large Italian public company—Brunello Cucinelli Spa— driving attention to the effectiveness of sustainable business models which require managers and entrepreneurs to govern the internal and external complexity and actively contribute to both the sustainability of the company and the local and global environment.