Sustainable leadership: honeybee practices at a Thai construction business.

Abstract

The object of this paper is to adopt Avery and Bergsteiner‟s 23 sustainable leadership practices derived from sustainable organizations as a framework to inspect the sustainable practice of a construction business in Thailand. Adopting a in-depth interview and non-participant observation as a data collection approach which consist of open-ended question and probing technique. Evidence was found for compliance with 20 of Avery and Bergsteiner‟s 23 sustainable leadership elements, but to various degrees. The elements were consisted of 23 practices: developing people, labor relations, retaining staff, suscession planing, valuing staff, CEO and top team, ethical behavior, long and short term perspective, organanizational change, financial mareket orientation, respondsibility for environment, social responsibility, stakeholders, vision‟s role in the business, decision making, self-management, team orientation, culture, knowledge sharing and retention, trust, innovation, staff engagement, and quality. The paper summerized that Avery and Bergsteiner‟s 23practices provide a useful framwork applicable to construction business in Thailand to evaluate its corperate sustainability. Other construction business companies in Thailand that seek to sustain their organisational success could adopt Avery and Bergsteiner‟s 23 Honeybee leadership to investigate their leadership practices and to help them adjust to become more sustainable. KEY WORDS: Sustainable Leadership / Construction / Honeybee