**3.2 Direction, alignment and commitment (DAC) ontology and the honey bee approach**

Drath et al. [25] proposed leadership's direction, alignment and commitment (DAC) ontology. This ontology underscores that individual leaders` and collective leadership beliefs integrate into leadership practices and shape the longer-term outcomes of leadership. Individual and collective beliefs are crucial to producing DAC of people, activities and their commitment to long-term leadership outcomes. DAC is achieved by leadership in an organisation based on shared resources and a web of common, mutually acknowledged and understood beliefs, which create and reshape leadership practice. Leadership practices in the DAC ontology are collective enactments with intended outcomes. These practices reflect patterns in the behaviour of a collective aimed at producing DAC (e.g. pattern of conversation and routines that transcend individual behaviour). Without alignment with the contextual and organisational situation, leadership practices limit achieving long-term goals.

In the DAC ontology, leadership shapes direction, which refers to the reasonable level of understanding and agreement regarding the collective's shared work's aims, mission, and goals. Direction for sustainable leadership relates to sustainability thresholds, emerging and purposeful consciousness among people who choose to live their lives and lead organisations in ways that account for their footprint on the earth, society and the health of a global economy.

DAC ontology also underscores that leadership seeks to achieve alignment. Concisely, alignment hinges on the organisation and coordination of knowledge and work so that there is coherence with the work of other individuals and groups. Lastly, commitment as part of DAC ontology is about the willingness of individuals to subsume their efforts and benefits within a collective effort and benefits. Commitment is evident in various ways, which include undivided loyalty or extra effort and organisational citizenship behaviours. **Figure 1** depicts the elements of the DAC ontology, interrelationship and interactions of leadership beliefs at the individual and collective levels, and leadership practices influencing the DAC and long-term outcomes of leadership.

The production of DAC is inextricably bound to webs of beliefs and practices in the leadership context and culture. While changing the thoughts and behaviours of people in positions of authority are necessary for changing the leadership culture, it is insufficient to bring about sustainable changes without changing the beliefs and behaviours of everyone who thinks and acts in ways that sustain the culture [25]. Producing DAC is not just a one-off exercise but requires reproducing and re-creating DAC as the context changes [25]. Having elaborated on the DAC, the following section unravels the honey bee and locust philosophies. It illuminates the integration of the sustainability lens with the different ontologies of leadership to achieve sustainability vision and outcome.
