Responsible Leadership: A Real Need or Transient Curiosity

Responsible leadership is a process of interaction with stakeholders integrating around a shared goal, taking place in the company and outside and based on values and principles of ethics. In Poland, the concept of responsible leadership began to appear only in times of political and economic transformation (after 1989), with the influx of foreign investment. In contrast to countries with about 100 years of experience in the implementation of the concept of responsible leadership, its Polish history is quite short. The purpose of this paper is to explore how responsible leadership is understood in Polish companies, to analyze how RL exists in a transitional country and region, and how organisations can develop leaders who have competencies necessary to ensure the sustainability of the company. A qualitative and quantitative methodology was used to summarize the research among entrepreneurs and businesses. Exploring the construct of social responsibility orientation among entrepreneurs, we show that executives in these businesses hold different beliefs about their responsibilities toward different stakeholders, with concomitant implications for their understanding and enactment of responsible leadership.