1. Introduction
The term “sustainability” is understood in the literature in different ways, so it is a multi-vocal concept with various meanings. In some cases, it could seem ambiguous; for this reason, it is useful to clarify its evolution and perspectives.
The interest in sustainability and sustainable development is increasing in the 21st century due to new global economies characterized by acceleration and complexity, an emerging awareness about environmental issues, and the use and exploitation of resources and the related risks for future generations.
The word sustainable, originating from the Latin “sub-tenēre”, refers to something that can be maintained and upheld, and figuratively pertains to something tolerable that can be stated with certainty. In politics, technology, economics and ecology, the term sustainable traditionally denotes the ability to achieve current aims without endangering future ones. Since the Brundtland Report [
1], the traditional perspective of sustainable development has introduced the defense of future generations’ right to enjoy the environment and natural resources as much as the current generation. The economy, equity, and ecology (3Es) rule supports this perspective [
2]. Furthermore, new contributions have enriched the concept by broadening its horizons. For example, the term sustainability has been interpreted as involving not only matters concerning the economic, social and ecological environment, but also psychological issues about the quality of human life [
3]. Among the 17 sustainable development goals set by the United Nations [
4], good health and wellbeing represent fundamental aims to ensure the prosperity of all. Thus, the psychology of sustainability [
3,
5,
6] has emerged and gradually acquired the connotation of paying attention to “positive sustainability”. Traditionally, the verb sustain means to maintain something as it is in the present and forward it to the future without losing any qualitatively or quantitatively inherent characteristics and properties. From this perspective, the current generation attain realization over resources without jeopardizing possible future uses of those resources, therefore ensuring their fair use. At any rate, before the positive shift [
3,
5,
7], the literature only had the perspective of not damaging resources. On the contrary, the new perspective also demands paying attention to both respecting and regenerating resources [
3]. The traditional perspective is based on renewable resources and the prevention of polluting processes and materials. The new perspective is also based on renewable resources, as well as purifying and oxygenating processes for people and the environment. The traditional view focuses on using non-toxic materials and processes, as well as maintenance, processing, dismantling, demolition, disposal and recycling. On the other hand, the innovative standpoint emphasizes accountability for the enhancement of health/wellbeing and renewing/upgrading resources through “re-wellbeing, up-wellbeing and crea(te)-wellbeing” as a fundamental sustainable development goal for positive, healthy organizations [
3]. From a positive, healthy organizations perspective [
5], the shift from illness to positive health of individuals and organizations underlines the importance of promoting the individuals’ and organizations’ resources, and subsequently building their strengths. This innovative approach goes beyond the ecological and socio-economic context by focusing on sustaining well-being and improving the quality of life of individuals, groups, and organizations [
3].
The psychology of sustainability is important in work and organizational psychology because the discipline aims to promote humane and productive organizations. The recent economic crisis has threatened the quality of working life; for this reason, the issues of sustainability and sustainable wellbeing of workers has become more critical [
6]. These authors question the model of a “happy and productive worker”, showing empirically that different combinations may appear, as follows: “happy and productive worker” or “unhappy and unproductive worker”, as well as “unhappy and productive worker” and “happy and unproductive worker” (p. 11). These results open a series of reflections about sustainability in organizations, asking if researchers and practitioners can consider sustainable working conditions as highly productive, associated with a low level of wellbeing/job dissatisfaction, or as a high level of wellbeing/job satisfaction, associated with low productivity [
6]. More research and multi-level analyses are necessary to consider variables at the level of operative units or organizations to further clarify both sustainable wellbeing and the sustainability of organizations that promote a virtuous circle, in order to promote the wellbeing of workers and the success of the organizations [
6]. Positive healthy organizations in a preventive perspective are centered on the promotion of growth, and the procurement of optimal results and positive experiences, and do not center on deficiency, failure, and the avoidance of risks for health and safety [
5]. Healthy organizations try to anticipate problems and simultaneously promote well-being and the enhancement of resources at the individual, organizational and inter-organizational level [
5]. Healthy organizations that try to obtain the right balance between their specific conditions, field and culture underline the increasing importance of well-being and sustainability [
5]. In this scenario, it is important to consider new forms of leadership to promote sustainability in organizations. Until recently, the construct of sustainable leadership had been developed from the traditional perspective of shared responsibility, which is to avoid unduly depleting resources by taking care not to cause any damage from economic, social and environmental standpoints [
8,
9]. This definition was based on seven principles [
8,
9], as follows: sustainable leadership creates and preserves continuous learning, secures success over time, sustains the leadership of others, addresses issues of social justice, develops rather than depletes human and material resources, develops environmental diversity and capacity, and is actively engaged in the environment.
Leadership is a concept that is strongly related to the topic of human resource development [
10,
11,
12,
13]. Organizations can progress and create businesses in a particularly adaptive manner by focusing on their human resources; considering their growth, development and wellbeing; and protecting the relationship between leaders and followers [
7,
14,
15]. This approach can promote profitable and advantageous development processes for both individuals and organizations [
12,
13]. To effectively respond to the challenges of real and sustainable human resource development from a primary prevention perspective [
7,
16,
17,
18], our study introduces a new integrated leadership style for the sustainability of human capital and organizations. The focus is on the flourishing of individuals and organizations, as well as the principles of psychology of sustainability and sustainable development to support healthy individuals in healthy businesses [
3,
5,
6,
19,
20,
21]. In this framework, we have developed a new integrated concept, called human capital sustainability leadership, and the scale to assess it.
This new construct goes beyond the traditional definition of sustainable leadership by positioning itself in the positive shift, as well as integrating other current leadership aspects that are important for the development and functioning of human capital from a psychological, sustainable perspective. The new human capital sustainability leadership focuses on healthy people as flourishing and resilient workers, and on healthy organizations as thriving and successful environments characterized by the positive circle of long-term wellbeing and performance. This new human capital sustainability leadership construct integrates our definition of sustainability leadership with ethical leadership [
22], mindful leadership [
23,
24] and servant leadership [
25,
26]. Briefly, our sustainability leadership construct focuses on both the use of vigilant decision-making processes (i.e., using decision-making expertise that leave out the superfluous by centering resources on crucial aspects of work), and the development and sustainability of human resources by creating continuous learning conditions that support and facilitate employees’ personal and career growth. Furthermore, our sustainability leadership concept integrates other aspects that are essential for the prosperity and optimal functioning of human resources from a long-term perspective.
Ethical leadership aims to engender fair and just aims, empower an organization’s members [
22], create consistency of actions with espoused values, use behavior to communicate or enforce ethical standards, fair decisions and rewards, kindness, compassion and concern for others [
27].
Mindful leadership refers to a style based on paying attention to the present moment, and recognizing personal feelings and emotions and keeping them under control, especially under stress. Mindfulness means awareness of an individual’s own presence at a given time and its impact on other people [
23,
24].
Servant leadership considers, as its main objective [
25], the growth of the followers for their personal interest (not for the interest of the organization or the leader) [
25], recognizing their needs and helping them on the basis of a moral responsibility towards them [
28]. The new human capital sustainability leadership is rooted in all of these perspectives, recognizing them as different facets of the same concept, going beyond the existing definition of sustainable leadership by integrating and recomposing the core sides to broaden and enhance the previous construct. In the literature, the four kinds of leadership included in our model (ethical, sustainable, mindful and servant leadership) are considered and detected separately, as they are orthogonal dimensions with little or no variance in common. Our contribution to the investigation in the field goes in the direction of exploring the possibility of unifying these four kinds of leadership in one second-order factor that can get them together on the basis of common variance.
Our study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the new construct of the Human Capital Sustainability Leadership Scale for Italian workers in terms of a higher-order construct, composed of four specific types of leadership (ethical, sustainable, mindful and servant leadership). Defining a higher-order construct allows the specific constructs to be detected at the same time using a more economical procedure that represents a valid and reliable measure of the core construct. This new measure permits us to evaluate human capital sustainability leadership from the leader’s point of view. On the basis of the theoretical construct and the formulation of items, we hypothesize that four factors will emerge that converge in the higher order factor human capital sustainability leadership.
4. Discussion
This study aimed to analyze the psychometric properties of a new measure for assessing human capital sustainability leadership among Italian workers. The developed measure proved to be a reliable and valid tool for assessing this new kind of leadership from the leader’s point of view.
Regarding its dimensionality, the results of the EFA showed a structure with four dimensions: Ethical, sustainable, mindful and servant leadership. Moreover, the second-order CFA indicated that the four dimensions identified through EFA converged in the higher-order construct of human capital sustainability leadership, showing satisfactory statistic fit indices. The scale as a total score, and the four factors that were verified through the calculation of Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, showed good reliability. The correlations of the new Human Capital Sustainability Leadership Scale with workplace relational civility, flourishing, and the (E), (L) and (P) dimensions of the HELP-Q underlined an adequate concurrent validity of the instrument with regard to the effected measures. In particular, the positive relationships of Human Capital Sustainability Leadership Scale with Workplace Relational Civility Scale, for both Part A (me with others) and Part B (others with me) suggested that leaders who perceive higher human capital sustainability leadership feel both themselves committed to act with workplace relational civility and also perceive more relational civility towards themselves by others in the workplace. The positive relationships of the Human Capital Sustainability Leadership Scale and the Flourishing Scale suggested that this kind of leadership permitted the leaders to perceive themselves as flourishing in terms of social and psychological prosperity and well-being in important areas, such as in relationships, self-esteem, presence of purpose, and optimism. This psychological prosperity is an important starting point to be able to promote flourishing of other workers/collaborators. The positive relationships of the Human Capital Sustainability Leadership Scale with the Entrepreneurship Leadership Professionalism Questionnaire suggested that leaders with higher human capital sustainability leadership perceived themselves in the framework of the challenging 21st century, with these integral characteristics being part of their capacity to serve as a role model in their leadership.
Although the results of the present study appear promising, it is necessary to point out some limitations, particularly in relation to the characteristics of the participants. The participants were not representative of the national context because they were only from the Tuscany region. Future research could extend the study to include participants from different parts of Italy and from various industries and organizations, as well as to replicate the study in international contexts. Furthermore, there are issues that could be considered which are relative to potential social desirability and the impression of management effects. Future studies may include measures to detect these aspects, including self-deception, as exemplified by the Paulhus Self-Deception Scale [
46].
Despite the above-mentioned limitations, the findings suggest that this new measure for assessing human capital sustainability leadership is a new core construct of leadership resources to be used in meeting the challenges of the 21st century. This leadership style focused on human capital sustainability that could favor a sustainable development of organizations. The focus on the promotion of resources and well-being at the individual and organizational level could contribute towards workers and organizations that are more productive and efficient. The human capital sustainable leadership style could enhance autonomy and self-actualization of workers, positive relationships and positive workplaces, thereby sustaining well-being for healthy individuals and healthy organizations [
5]. This human capital sustainable leadership style could also promote a deeper enhancement of workers’ strengths and, as a result, their flourishing [
3,
5]. The construct of human capital sustainable leadership can be used in organizational contexts to facilitate strategic actions for building a more sustainable human environment, promote the sustainable development of human resources and organizations, support flourishing and resilient workers, and promote healthy organizations and healthy businesses [
3,
5,
6,
19].