Nuno Manuel Guimaraes

Flourishing-for-all as emerged as a concept to respond to the apparent lack of capacity to translate the sustainability discourse into actual practices conducive to more sustainable societies. In this special issue, we assert that flourishing-for-all addresses the gap identified in the sustainability discourse that still needs conversion into practice, and that processes for catalyzing this necessary transformation need to be identified and implemented. The eight papers in this special issue address flourishing-for-all from different ontological, epistemological, and methodological perspectives, demonstrating a wide interest in the topic, and the shared belief that both academia and practice must go beyond sustainability to embrace flourishing-for-all. They bring to the fore three important features of a flourishing-for-all approach: First, it allows for a more profound analysis of systemic sustainability-related problems; secondly, it highlights new relationships among the problem-related variables; thirdly, it extends the repertory and reach of possible solutions.

Flourishing‐for‐all as emerged as a concept to respond to the apparent lack of capacity to translate the sustainability discourse into actual practices conducive to more sustainable societies. In this special issue, we assert that flourishing‐for‐all addresses the gap identified in the sustainability discourse that still needs conversion into practice, and that processes for catalyzing this necessary transformation need to be identified and implemented. The eight papers in this special issue address flourishing‐for‐all from different ontological, epistemological, and methodological perspectives, demonstrating a wide interest in the topic, and the shared belief that both academia and practice must go beyond sustainability to embrace flourishing‐for‐all. They bring to the fore three important features of a flourishing‐for‐all approach: First, it allows for a more profound analysis of systemic sustainability‐related problems; secondly, it highlights new relationships among the problem‐related variables; thirdly, it extends the repertory and reach of possible solutions.

It is becoming clear that many of today’s management theories are inadequate theoretically and practically to move understanding, scholarship, and practice to where it needs to be for scholars, business leaders, and policy makers to cope with an increasing fraught world. This Special Issue’s focus is on sustainability. Sustainability challenges need to incorporate multidisciplinary interventions and the trans- and interdisciplinary nature of solutions. To actively seek transformation toward sustainability, fundamental and innovative short-term as well as long-term efforts are required in society, economy, technology, and education, including our understanding of human behavior and attitudes toward the management of the environment. This introductory piece presents natural science theories as a promising approach for achieving progress toward transformation for sustainability.

We propose a liminality-based analysis of the process of ethical leadership/followership in organizations. A liminal view presents ethical leadership as a process taking place in organizational contexts that are often characterized by high levels of ambiguity, which render the usual rules and preferences dubious or inadequate. In these relational spaces, involving leaders, followers, and their context, old frames may be questioned and new ones introduced in an emergent way, through subtle processes whose evolution and implications may not be easy to grasp even by those participating in them