The search in the Scopus database using the structured query retrieved 519 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2017 and 2025. Following the three-stage PRISMA screening process, 519 records entered Stage 1, where title and abstract screening based on IC1 and IC2 retained 237 articles. In Stage 2, keyword and topic relevance screening further refined the selection. In Stage 3, full-text screening applying IC2 and IC3 yielded a final set of 30 articles selected for qualitative synthesis. The bibliometric analysis was subsequently conducted on all 519 articles to map the broader intellectual landscape of the field.

The annual distribution of publications shows a consistent upward trend, from 12 articles in 2017 to 188 articles in 2025, reflecting accelerating scholarly interest in the intersection of global leadership and environmental sustainability. The years 2024 (110 articles) and 2025 (188 articles) represent the most productive period, indicating that research attention to this domain has intensified substantially in recent years, consistent with increased global policy attention to climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Figure 2 illustrates the temporal evolution of key research topics in the literature on leadership, sustainability, and environmental performance. The results indicate that leadership, sustainability, and sustainability leadership represent the earliest and most consistently discussed themes, having appeared since approximately 2017 and remaining relevant throughout the observation period. This pattern suggests that these three concepts form the foundational basis of the research domain.

As the field evolves, more specific themes such as transformational leadership and green transformational leadership emerge and gain prominence from around 2020 onward. The bubble sizes indicate that green transformational leadership has the largest volume of recent publications, reflecting a growing recognition that leadership styles play a crucial role in driving sustainability-oriented outcomes. Environmental performance and green innovation appear as relatively new topics that gained prominence from 2020 to 2025, indicating a shift toward outcome-based and innovation-driven research, with measurable environmental impact as the primary focus. The presence of a data quality artifact (“nan”) in the trend chart reflects a minor preprocessing issue in the dataset and does not affect the substantive interpretation of results.

Figure 3 presents a word cloud illustrating the dominant keywords in the full corpus of 519 articles. The most prominent terms are transformational leadership, leadership, sustainability, and green transformational leadership, which collectively form the core structure of the research domain. The high frequency of these terms confirms that the literature is strongly oriented toward understanding how specific leadership styles contribute to sustainability objectives.

Related terms such as sustainability leadership, environmental performance, green innovation, and sustainability performance appear prominently, reinforcing the centrality of outcome-based evaluation in the field. Keywords including green human resource management, organizational culture, corporate social responsibility, and corporate sustainability indicate that sustainability is increasingly conceptualized as an internal organizational process involving human capital, institutional values, and strategic alignment. The presence of digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and bibliometric analysis reflects an emerging methodological and technological dimension within the research domain. Terms such as climate change, environmental sustainability, and sustainable development goals further highlight the continued relevance of global environmental policy agendas in shaping research priorities. The diversity of visible keywords confirms the highly interdisciplinary nature of this research field, spanning organizational behavior, environmental management, innovation studies, and governance.

Figure 4 presents a tree map visualization illustrating the relative frequency and prominence of key topics across the 519 articles. The results show that sustainability (86 occurrences) and transformational leadership (132 occurrences) are the two most dominant topics, confirming their role as the primary pillars of this research field. Green transformational leadership (78 occurrences) ranks third, reflecting a strong and growing emphasis on environmentally specific leadership frameworks.

Sustainability leadership (37 occurrences) and leadership (41 occurrences) also demonstrate high prominence, followed by environmental performance (22 occurrences) and green innovation (21 occurrences), both of which represent outcome-oriented themes. At a moderate frequency level, green human resource management (18 occurrences), corporate social responsibility (14 occurrences), environmental sustainability (14 occurrences), and higher education (13 occurrences) indicate the multisectoral scope of the literature. Additional topics, including digital transformation (12 occurrences), organizational culture (11 occurrences), organizational performance (11 occurrences), sustainability performance (11 occurrences), and innovation (11 occurrences), reflect the breadth of constructs studied in relation to leadership and sustainability. Topics such as corporate sustainability (10 occurrences) and green creativity (10 occurrences) represent emerging themes at the frontier of the field. Overall, the hierarchical structure revealed by the tree map confirms that the literature has evolved toward an integrated framework in which leadership capability drives direction, green innovation enables implementation, and sustainability represents the primary performance objective.

Figure 5 presents the keyword co-occurrence network derived from the 519 articles, revealing three distinct thematic clusters. The green cluster, positioned at the center-right of the network, represents the core thematic axis of the field and includes leadership, sustainability, innovation, sustainable development, climate change, sustainable development goal, stakeholder, learning, performance assessment, and employment. The strong co-occurrence among these terms confirms that leadership and sustainability are deeply intertwined with innovation and governance outcomes in the literature.

The red cluster, positioned at the upper-left, groups methodological and contextual keywords including structural equation modeling, surveys and questionnaires, Pakistan, human, female, male, adult, organization and management, and green transformational leadership. This cluster reflects the dominant research methodology (quantitative, survey-based, SEM) and geographic concentration of empirical studies, particularly in manufacturing and service sectors in developing countries.

The blue cluster, located at the lower-left, encompasses human resource management, transformational leadership, environmental management, environmental impact, and resource allocation. This cluster highlights the operational dimension of the research domain, where leadership intersects with HRM practices and environmental management systems in natural resource and organizational contexts.

The co-occurrence structure confirms that transglobal leadership, green transformational leadership, and sustainability leadership are not isolated constructs but are embedded within a broader network of governance, innovation, and organizational factors. This finding reinforces the argument that achieving sustainable natural resource management requires coordinated leadership action across multiple organizational and institutional dimensions.

Following the three-stage PRISMA screening process, 30 articles were selected for qualitative synthesis ( Table 1). These articles were selected based on their direct relevance to global leadership, environmental sustainability outcomes, and/or natural resource management. The articles were predominantly published in high-impact journals, including Sustainability (Switzerland), Journal of Cleaner Production, Business Strategy and the Environment, and Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.

From the 30 selected articles, determinants of sustainability and environmental performance outcomes were systematized. Following additional criteria analogous to prior SLR studies, requiring a determinant to appear in at least three studies, to be used as an independent or moderating variable, and to have a clear sustainability or environmental performance outcome variable, nine determinant categories were identified. Table 2 presents these determinants, their indicators, reported results, and overall conclusions.

3.4.1. Leadership Style

Leadership style emerged as the most consistently studied determinant across the selected literature, appearing in all 30 reviewed studies. Green transformational leadership (green TFL) is the most prominent subconstruct, positively predicting environmental performance, green innovation, and employees’ pro-environmental behavior in the large majority of studies. ^{6, 8, 9, 15} Singh et al. identified green TFL as the most cited concept in the corpus (1,625 citations), underscoring its centrality. ⁶ Transglobal leadership, though less studied, showed positive effects on organizational sustainability in the Indonesian public sector.

3.4.2. Green innovation

Green innovation consistently emerged as a mediating variable between leadership and environmental performance. Sánchez-García et al. demonstrated this in the agricultural and wine industry context, reflecting direct relevance to natural resource management. ¹⁶ Özgül and Doğan further showed that green TFL enables competitive advantage through green innovation, suggesting that leadership-driven innovation can support both environmental and economic sustainability in NRM sectors. ¹⁸

3.4.3. Environmental performance

Environmental performance functions as the central outcome variable within the leadership–sustainability relationship. It reflects measurable indicators such as emission reduction, energy efficiency, and waste management. Empirical studies demonstrate that environmental performance is significantly influenced by leadership through both direct and indirect pathways. ^{19, 25, 35} In particular, leadership enhances environmental performance by strengthening employee engagement, knowledge utilization, and organizational practices. These findings suggest that environmental performance is not only an outcome but also a reflection of integrated organizational systems shaped by leadership and innovation processes.

3.4.4. Organizational culture and green psychological climate

Organizational culture and green psychological climate serve as critical mediating variables that translate leadership influence into sustainability outcomes. A strong green organizational culture, characterized by shared environmental values and collective commitment, significantly enhances sustainability performance. Empirical evidence shows that green transformational leadership fosters a green psychological climate through shared vision and organizational alignment. ²² Furthermore, organizational culture mediates the relationship between leadership and employee sustainability behavior, particularly through mechanisms such as motivation, value internalization, and behavioral transformation. ^{23, 24} This highlights the importance of internal organizational dynamics in achieving sustainability objectives.

3.4.5. Human resource management

Human resource management, particularly green HRM, plays a crucial role in supporting sustainability outcomes by aligning employee capabilities, motivation, and opportunities with environmental goals. Empirical findings indicate that green HRM practices significantly improve employee engagement and environmental performance. ^{25, 26} The interaction between green HRM and leadership produces synergistic effects, where leadership enhances the effectiveness of HRM practices in driving sustainability outcomes. ^{26, 20} This suggests that HRM functions as an operational mechanism through which leadership translates sustainability strategies into organizational performance.

3.4.6. Corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) represents an important determinant linking organizational activities with environmental and social sustainability objectives. Empirical evidence indicates that CSR contributes positively to sustainability performance, although its effects may vary depending on contextual factors. Sustainability leadership has been shown to strengthen the relationship between CSR and environmental performance. ²⁷ In addition, CSR functions as a mediating mechanism when integrated with green innovation, reinforcing the importance of combining social responsibility with innovation strategies. ²⁸ These findings suggest that CSR enhances sustainability outcomes when supported by effective leadership.

3.4.7. Stakeholder engagement and community empowerment

Stakeholder engagement and community empowerment are essential determinants in sustainability, particularly in natural resource management contexts involving multiple actors. Empirical studies show that leadership significantly influences stakeholder participation, inclusivity, and environmental citizenship behavior. ³⁰ These findings highlight that sustainability outcomes depend on collaborative processes and shared responsibility among stakeholders. Leadership plays a key role in fostering trust, coordination, and active participation in sustainability initiatives.

3.4.8. Governance structure

Governance structure is a critical determinant in achieving sustainability outcomes, particularly in natural resource management contexts characterized by cross-boundary challenges. Empirical evidence shows that leadership significantly influences governance quality, which in turn affects sustainability performance. ^{9, 31} Studies also highlight the importance of institutional quality, stakeholder participation, and community-based governance in achieving sustainable outcomes. ^{10, 11} Furthermore, sustainability leadership plays a key role in facilitating transitions toward renewable energy systems and adaptive governance frameworks. ³³ These findings suggest that governance structure functions as a mediating mechanism linking leadership with natural resource management outcomes.

3.4.9. Knowledge management

Knowledge management emerges as a strategic determinant that supports sustainability through learning, knowledge sharing, and innovation. Empirical evidence indicates that green knowledge and organizational learning significantly influence employee behavior and environmental performance. ^{19, 35} In addition, knowledge management enhances sustainability outcomes by integrating with innovation and HRM systems, particularly in developing-country contexts. ³⁶ This highlights that knowledge is a critical resource that enables organizations to adapt and sustain environmental performance.