Purpose

– The objective is to describe a selection of sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper is based on a conceptual discussion.

Findings

– The paper contributes to descriptive models that address sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance. The study highlights some common views that exist in the management literature and in prosperous management practice related to the direct impact of the relationship in organizational performance between leadership and effectiveness. In fact, it also highlights the critical or sceptical views of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance raised in the literature.

Research limitations/implications

– The paper contends that the actual leadership effectiveness in organizational performance varies over time and across contexts. At times, the achievement in organizational performance is the outcome of prosperous and conscious leadership, while it at other times may be the outcome of poor and deficient leadership. The topic at hand is positioned and limited to the interface that may describe and explain the connection between these two views. Furthermore, it is limited to corporate decision making and business behaviour in relation to leadership effectiveness and organizational performance.

Practical implications

– The leadership of an organization need not only to be successful today, but they also need to be successful tomorrow to stay in control and to flourish. Quality control and quality assurance are no longer enough for most organizations. They need to build an awareness of the sustainability components into processes of their management and business practices (i.e. internal and external ones) in order to be judged as successful in corporate decision‐making and business behaviour in organizational performance in the long term.

Originality/value

– The principal contributions of the study are a model of timely leadership effectiveness, a model of contextual leadership effectiveness, and a typology of leadership effectiveness in corporate decision‐making and business behaviour. These contributions provide theoretical and managerial ideas and insights into the sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.