Abstract

Globally, the oil and gas sector are faced with the sustainability challenge of meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), agreed in Paris 2016 by all member states of the UN. This is a global, sustainability change problem for companies particularly in the energy sector, as they face the triple challenge of sustaining production levels whilst, simultaneously, remaining affordable and profitable. Whilst this multi-layered global problem has received sparse attention in Organisational Change studies and there have been growing calls for sustainable approaches to address the world’s and firms’ sustainability issues, this paper addresses the challenges faced by leaders in the energy sector in Bahrain. In this paper we frame sustainable change within leadership theorisation to develop a Network Leadership Approach to help the Bahrain Oil and Gas sector address their sustainable change problems. We contribute to the conceptualisation of leadership by highlighting how specific characteristics of Network Leadership, as a collective practice, can help in collectively addressing the multiple sustainable change problems experienced by organisations’ leaders across the energy sector. This paper considers the implications of a Network Leadership Approach and identifies areas for future research Organisational Change.