Humanistic Leadership, Organizational Culture and Corporate Citizenship Behaviour

Abstract

Leadership plays a significant role in shaping an organization's culture. A new type of organization is emerging that aims at not only earning profit through its business, but also at contributing to the benefit and well being of the members of the society. These organizations are led by a new type of leader who is called a humanistic leader (Prasad, 2011). This paper looks at the importance of humanistic leadership style in shaping this new type of organization. We also look at these organizations using the lens of established frameworks such as the Corporate Social Responsibility pyramid developed by Buchholtz & Carroll. These organizations look at the well-being of all stakeholders including owners, vendors, customers, employees and other shareholders. These organizations behave like responsible corporate citizens and new emerging research suggests that these organizations are being rewarded by their customers, as well as the shareholders. This development will in turn create a new model of business which is based on win-win strategy for all the stakeholders of an organization. Many of these new class of leaders display higher order needs such as self-transcendence and self-actualization in the Maslow's schema of needs arranged in a hierarchical pyramid. This paper suggests that the research in the areas of individual motivation of leaders can be merged with research in the area of leadership and organizational culture to help understand this new emerging trend.