One of the most eagerly-awaited additions to the field of leadership development for sustainability and corporate citizenship was the launch of the Global Institute for Responsible Leadership (GIRL). The founders include Joseph Jaworski, author of Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership and Peter Senge, who brought the concepts of systems thinking and the learning organisation to the masses through The Fifth Discipline. They have partnered with such behemoths as Unilever, Royal Dutch/Shell, the World Bank, the U.S. National Park Service, and Oxfam to form the Institute. "The Global Institute", they say, "is dedicated to engaging, enabling, and supporting 21st-century leaders committed to taking responsibility for bringing about positive transformation within our world and addressing the critical issues of our time."

The Institute goes on to say, "The most pressing challenges leaders face today require innovative thinking and collaboration across traditional boundaries-departments, organisations, sectors, and cultures. Yet we are entrenched in rigid patterns of behavior that limit our ability to transcend these boundaries and work together to effect deep change. To bring about the level of transformation needed in our organisations and our world right now, we need a new way of learning and of leading-one not limited to reflecting the patterns of the past but one that tunes into the possibilities of the future." 12

Some management executives reading this might be nodding at this point. They will have experienced the frustration of bringing a corporate citizenship strategy to life. Really to life, in hearts, minds and actions. Managing this change is a key part of their jobs, and one for which they are often ill-prepared. The management academe has begun to address this challenge, as illustrated by a book due out later in 2003. Leading Change toward Sustainability, A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society by Bob Doppelt of The University of Oregon attempts to answer the question "what process is required to create change within organisations to move them towards sustainability?" 13 Doppelt suggests focusing on a company's governance system and its leadership. "When an organisation has an effective governance system and effective, forward-looking leadership, it is much more likely to be able to marshal the tremendous forces required to transform its culture and successfully adopt sustainability-based thinking, values and behaviours."

Governance and leadership was something that Andy Law of St Lukes, the advertising agency, had something to say about in his book Experiment at Work. 14 The company he founded became famous as a successful cooperatively-owned advertising agency with a social conscience. In March, Law was forced to resign after trying to sack two managers who then put the matter to a vote of the co-owners. "There's a paradox between strong leadership and working as a co-operative" Law commented. "I'd probably be a little more dictatorial if I did it again" he said. 15 This raises questions about the concept of leadership that GIRL and the wider corporate citizenship community must deal with. Can we speak of leadership that is empowering of others, when all power is vested in the leader? Is the best indicator of such leadership when people don't need or want to be led anymore, as happened at St Lukes? In engaging with such questions we could reflect on the existing debates concerning the problematic concept of employee empowerment. 16 We might also reflect on the way the concept of leadership is used outside the business world. Speaking about the invasion of Iraq in March, the Leader of the US Senate, Bill Frist told BBC radio that we are in a new era that requires decisive leadership. That, to some, leadership implies overriding others' opinions to implement your own, illustrates what a difficult concept it is.