Presently, sustainable leadership has emerged as an effective leadership style to cope with sustainable challenges. Extent literature has recommended exploring the mechanism and conditional boundaries for the significant effect of sustainable leadership on sustainable performance. Therefore, this study would investigate the mediating mechanism of organizational learning and the psychological empowerment as conditional factor on the sustainable leadership–sustainable performance relationship. The cluster-sampling approach was employed to collect data from 369 small medium enterprises in selected ASEAN countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam. The response rate is 41%. Structural equation modeling (variance-based) analysis was performed to empirically confirm the proposed hypotheses. By running PROCESS Macro in SPSS, the moderated-mediation analysis was conducted in this study. The research outcomes revealed that higher level of psychological empowerment will result in a higher indirect effect of sustainable leadership on sustainable performance through organizational learning. Based on the present empirical evidences, implications and future research directions have also been added at the end of study. To date, this study has preliminary investigated the interplay of sustainable leadership, organizational learning, empowerment, and sustainable performance.

Purpose: Considering the vital role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in accomplishing sustainable development goals, this study aims to examine how and when sustainable leadership (SL) influences sustainable performance by examining social innovation (SI) as a mediating mechanism and managerial discretion (MD) as a boundary condition based on upper echelon theory. Design/methodology/approach: This study is cross-sectional in nature. The authors adopted a cluster-sampling approach to collect data from 500 employees of HEIs in Pakistan and China. The response rate for this study was 52.63%. As the proposed model is complex, the authors used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the research hypothesis. Findings: The empirical findings confirm the presence of SI as a competitive partial mediator between SL and sustainable performance. Nevertheless, the findings of this study do not suggest a higher positive effect of SL on SI in the presence of high MD. Research limitations/implications: The study evaluated the role of SL and SI in fostering sustainable performance from the perspective of employees in HEIs in China and Pakistan. Before the empirical evidence can be generalized, there is a need to conduct similar studies in other parts of Asia and Western countries as well. Practical implications: This study presents implications for higher education leaders and policymakers at the national level to foster the sustainable performance of their institutions. Social implications: The current evidence reveals the effectiveness of SL in achieving the social goals of HEIs through SI. The recommendations presented in this study can have an impact on society, providing it with a sustainable future. Originality/value: This study is the first of its kind to examine the mediating role of SI on the relationship between SL and sustainable performance. The present study also provides pioneering empirical evidence about the negative effects of MD in the context of HEIs.

Sketching on the Social Exchange Theory (SET), the present study aims to investigate the direct relationship between training and development, work environment, and job satisfaction with employee retention. The contingent role of transformational leadership was also analysed under the Situational Leadership Theory (SLT). Accordingly, we collected data from 287 employees of SMEs in northern China by employing a convenience sampling approach, exhibiting a response rate of 57.40 percent. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis was then run to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings revealed a significant positive impact of training and development, work environment, and job satisfaction on employee retention. However, no moderating effect of transformational leadership was indicated on their direct relationship. This study has enriched the literature on employee retention and the leadership arena. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no prior evidence concerning the study’s integrated relationship of the continuous variables. The implications and limitations were finally expressed at the end of this manuscript.