Research-Thesis: How do leaders, facing strong performance constraints and internal resistance, mobilize anticipated pride to steer their managerial decisions toward sustainability and foster their teams' pro-environmental behaviors?

Abstract

Leadership, emotions, and sustainability are increasingly intertwined in today’s organizations. As companies face growing pressure to adapt their practices to environmental challenges, leaders play a decisive role in shaping how sustainability is understood, communicated, and implemented. This thesis examines how leaders, confronted with strong performance constraints and internal resistance, mobilize anticipated pride to steer their managerial decisions toward sustainability and to foster pro environmental behaviors within their teams. Based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with leaders responsible for sustainability-related issues, the study shows that anticipated pride is not only an individual emotion, but also a motivational resource that can support commitment, communication and collective engagement. Leaders use it to frame sustainability as a meaningful and pride-worthy objective, while also linking it to performance, credibility, and long-term organizational survival. However, the findings also show that this emotional driver operates within structural constraints such as me pressure, resistance to change, and lack of support from management. The thesis therefore highlights that sustainable leadership cannot be reduced to technical decision making alone. It depends equally on values, emotions, and the ability to create a sense of shared purpose. In this perspective, anticipated pride appears as a powerful lever for encouraging both leaders and employees to engage more actively in the ecological transition.