According to writer on leadership Simon Western we are entering a new age of corporate leadership in the developed world, one he calls Eco-leadership. No doubt you're thinking that that would include the late Anita Roddick or M&S boss Stuart Rose.
If I tell you that includes Al Gore well maybe you'd go with that. But Bill Gates and McDonald's? What's the boy Western on - too many organically-sourced smoothies?
McDonald's, Toshiba and Bill Gates as eco-leaders? Well you'd better believe it. According to Simon Western's book Leadership, A Critical Text, eco-leaders have become powerful since 2000.
Such paragons of eco virtue grasp the ecology of the workplace in relation to the wider world, says Western. They realise the interconnectivity of organisations and build networks and relationships with stakeholders, or in McDonald's case, steak eaters.
"Not only does the eco leader exist in the battle against climate change, but also recognises the relationship between social responsibility and success," says Western."Consumers are no longer willing to sit passively by while slave labour is used to manufacture goods."
Well Simon, that may be true amongst the well-educated haute bourgeoise of your academic world, but I have to tell you that in Kingston's shopping cventre they most clearly don't give a spit about low paid labour producing the consumer goods that fly off the shelves.
And try as I might I cannot quite put McDonald's, Toshiba and Gates into the eco fold. I'd also point out that businessmen who have enjoyed relatively recent success, such as the various cheap flight tycoons and the heads of industries in China and India, do not quite match up to
the eco leader credentials Western outlines.
Nevertheless I take his point that eco leaders, whoever they may be, are an improvement on what Western calls messiah leaders, such as Enron's boss Kenneth Lay, who led his staff a not so merry dance. These, says Western, created corporate cultures that mimicked those of fundamentalist churches.
In Lay's case this wasn't surprising - he was the son of a preacher, a Lay preacher perhaps. Still corporate messiahs know how to live, and die. Lay popped his non-eco clogs in a luxury ski chalet in Aspen.
Question: Richard Branson, messiah or eco-leader? Answers in an email please.
