Business-as-usual is likely to drive us to an unsustainable world. To solve the problems human industrial activity has created, such as climate change, species extinction, and biodiversity loss, business leaders (CEOs, top managers, and boards of directors) must be central to the solution for corporate sustainability. In particular, “heroic” leaders are needed to transform their companies into business beyond usual. In this essay, we briefly outline what researchers already know about microfoundational or socio-cognitive and motivational underpinnings of leaders that affect corporate sustainability. However, gaps remain in our understanding of affective drivers and values of leaders. We question whether microfoundations research has the potential to understand true business transformation for positive deviance and suggest that positive organizational scholarship and research on sustainability change agents can provide insights. We next highlight how empirical and research design shortcomings might be addressed. Finally, we discuss how to identify, develop, and empower leaders with transformational potential so that we can proactively create heroic leaders rather than wait for them to magically appear.

一切照旧可能将我们带入一个不可持续的世界。为了解决人类工业活动造成的问题，例如气候变化，物种灭绝和生物多样性丧失，企业领导者（首席执行官，最高管理者和董事会）对于解决企业可持续性至关重要。特别是，需要“英雄”领导者将他们的公司转变为非常规的业务。在本文中，我们简要概述了研究人员对影响公司可持续性的领导者的微观基础或社会认知和动机基础的认识。但是，我们对情感驱动力和领导者价值观的理解仍然存在差距。我们质疑微观基础研究是否有潜力理解真正的业务转型以实现积极的偏差，并建议积极的组织奖学金和可持续性变革推动者的研究可以提供见解。接下来，我们重点介绍如何解决经验和研究设计缺陷。最后，我们讨论如何确定，发展和赋予具有变革潜力的领导者，以便我们可以主动创建英勇的领导者，而不是等待他们神奇地出现。