Leadership for sustainable organizational health and well-being : Indigenous community perspectives

Leadership models being adopted by workplaces are evolving with an increasing focus on sustainable, inclusive approaches which embrace diversities of race/ethnicity, culture of origin and cultural heritage. Organizational health and well-being are central to some of these more contemporary models of leadership. Managing inclusive workplaces requires leveraging the cultural heritage of communities and their leadership orientations, by promoting employee organizational identity and self-esteem. This chapter makes the proposition that indigenist-oriented models of leadership styles rooted in mindful egalitarianism, cultural authenticity and leveraging of informal networks offer great prospects for sustainable organizational health and well-being. We present evidence to argue that adopting indigenist-oriented models of leadership may result in improved organizational cultural inclusivity, and higher employee organizational citizenship, contributing to sustainable organizational competitiveness.