Leadership and Learning for Sustainability: Perspectives of Owners of Small and Medium-sized Saskatchewan Businesses

Entrepreneurship exerts a significant impact on Canada's national economy. Despite outnumbering the country's public companies, few empirical studies have explored small and medium-sized entity (SME) owners' experiences with leadership practices and learning strategies for sustainability practices, opportunities, and challenges. The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to explore the phenomenon of leadership and learning for sustainability from the perspective of owners of three Saskatchewan SMEs. A purposeful sample of one Saskatchewan SME represented a typical case from each of the service, retail, and construction sectors. Four owners from three SMEs participated in this study. Analysis of data from semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentation revealed themes that portrayed the experiences of SME owners and the perspective of the researcher, a Chartered Accountant and advisor to SME owners. Findings revealed that SME owners' sustainability practices, opportunities, and challenges focused on generating business profits and engaging in learning using technology for information exchange and communication. Informal learning using technology emerged as participants' preferred strategies. Leadership practices for sustainability focused on creating networks and cultivating referrals as well as developing business knowledge and industry expertise required to generate business profits and mentor employees. Suggestions for practice included collaborative research among academics, accounting practitioners, and SME owners on sustainability practices, opportunities, and challenges as well as leadership practices and learning strategies with published results accessible to accounting practitioners and SME owners. Accountants need to increase their knowledge of sustainability, learning, and leadership issues for discussion with SME clients, use new frameworks such as the Canadian Index of Wellbeing as checklists, and acquire SME clients' stories as rich resources for learning. Recommendations for future research include conducting qualitative case studies to examine SME owners' experiences with sustainability initiatives, leadership practices, and learning strategies using data from accounting practitioners, and SME owners' stories. Qualitative case studies should investigate SME owners' experiences with social and environmental issues, leadership practices, and learning strategies. Qualitative research could investigate adults' informal learning using the Internet in workplaces, acquired and required informational literacy skills, and industry associations' training resources with a view to improvements.