The Impact Of Responsible Leadership On Business Growth Performance

Since there are more corporate scandals gradually exposed from many famous firms, business leaders are increasingly held accountable for various stakeholder groups. Thus the concept of responsible leadership came into being. From the stakeholder theory perspective, this paper researches into the content and structure of responsible leadership itself as well as its mechanism. The study has profound significance both in theory and practice.Based on the systematical review of entire literature relevant to responsible leadership, this paper use corporate interviews, questionnaires, and data analysis to explore the research questions. Through the pre-test of 128 respondents and the formal questionnaire survey of 207 respondents, the study draws several conclusions as follows:(1) Responsible leadership is a multidimensional concept, including four dimensions which are moral integrity, open communication, guidance and care, and active citizenship behavior. The scale of responsible leadership has good reliability and validity, which provides a measuring tool for the follow-up study of responsible leadership's mechanism.(2) Responsible leadership has a positive impact on business growth performance. Specifically, moral integrity, open communication and active citizenship behavior have significant positive impact on business growth performance.(3) Corporate social capital mediates the relation between responsible leadership and business growth performance. Specifically, internal social capital partly mediates the relation between moral integrity, active citizenship behavior and business growth performance, fully mediates the relation between open communication and business growth performance. External social capital partly mediates the relation between moral integrity, open communication, active citizenship behavior and business growth performance (4) Leaders'educational level, firm size, and industry type have different impacts on the mechanism of responsible leadership.This study further develops the concept of responsible leadership, and lays a good theoretical foundation for future empirical research related to responsible leadership. It has instructive significance on selection, evaluation and training for corporate leaders, and also has important lessons for leaders who engage in corporate strategic planning and management decision-making.