Milton de Sousa
Milton de Sousa
Associate Professor
Management and Organizations
Leadership for Impact Knowledge Center

Milton Sousa is Associate Professor at Nova SBE. He co-founded the Leadership for Impact Knowledge Centre at the school where he has also been Associate Dean for Institutional Relations and International Development and Academic Director of the CEMS MIM programme.

Previously, he was Director of the MBA Programs at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Milton currently also serves as President of the Estoril Institute for Global Dialogue, a think tank dedicated to globalization and local change.

He chaired 3 editions of the Estoril Conferences, a large international forum on globalization that gathers renowned world leaders from business, academia and public sector. In that quality he has worked with the United Nations, World Bank, European Commission, NATO, and several world-class universities.

In business, Milton founded Leaders2Be, an organization that he ran for 5 years offering leadership development programs. He worked in various research and management positions, including Royal Philips Electronics, and as a strategy and management consultant at Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação and the Hay Group.

Milton is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on the topics of leadership and organizational behavior in several universities and business schools. His research interests include ethical leadership and servant leadership.


2014 - PhD in Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

2003 - MBA with Distinction from the University of Bradford

1998 - Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Porto


Servant leadership, Meaning in work and organizations, Complex Adaptive Systems, Innovation 

  • Cunha, Miguel Pina E., Hernández-linares, Remedios, De Sousa, Milton, Clegg, Stewart, Rego, Arménio (2022). Evolving conceptions of work-family boundaries: In defense of the family as stakeholder. Humanistic Management Journal, 7, 55-93.
  • Sousa, Milton, Cunha, Miguel Pina E., Simpson, Ace V., Giustiniano, Luca, Rego, Arménio, Clegg, Stewart (2022). Servus or pater? How paradoxical intent can qualify leadership: inductions from the Kingdom of Bhutan. Journal of Change Management, 22 (3), 321-353.
  • Sousa, Milton, van Dierendonck, Dirk (2021). Serving the need of people: the case for servant leadership against populism. Journal of Change Management, 21 (2), 222-241.
  • Cunha, Miguel Pina e, Clegg, Stewart, Costa, Cláudia, Leite, António Pinto, Rego, Arménio, Simpson, Ace Volkmann, Sousa, Marta Oom de, Sousa, Milton (2017). Gemeinschaft in the midst of Gesellschaft? Love as an organizational virtue. Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, 14 (1), 3-21.
  • Sousa, Milton, Van Dierendonck, Dirk (2017). Servant leaders as underestimators: Theoretical and practical implications. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 38 (2), 270-283.
  • Sousa, Milton, van Dierendonck, Dirk (2017). Servant leadership and the effect of the interaction between humility, action, and hierarchical power on follower engagement. Journal of Business Ethics.
  • Van Dierendonck, Dirk, Sousa, Milton, Gunnarsdottir, Sigrun, Bobbio, Andrea, Hakanen, Jari, Verdorfer, Armin Pircher, Duyan, Emin Cihan, Rodriguez-Carvajal, Raquel (2017). The cross-cultural invariance of the Servant Leadership Survey: A comparative study across eight countries. Administrative Sciences, 7 (2), 1-11.
  • Cunha, Miguel Pina e, Rego, Arménio, Sousa, Milton (2016). Como podem as organizações gerir paradoxos?. Análise Psicológica, 34 (3), 309-323.
  • Sousa, Milton, Van Dierendonck, Dirk (2016). Introducing a short measure of shared servant leadership impacting team performance through team behavioral integration. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 (JAN).
  • Van Dierendonck, Dirk, Sousa, Milton (2016). Finding meaning in highly uncertain situations: Servant leadership during change. Monographs in Leadership and Management, 8, 403-424.
  • Sousa, Milton, van Dierendonck, Dirk (2014). Servant leadership and engagement in a merge process under high uncertainty. Journal Of Organizational Change Management, 27 (6), 877-899.
  • Sousa, Milton, van Dierendonck, Dirk (2010). Knowledge workers, servant leadership and the search for meaning in knowledge-driven organizations. On the Horizon, 18 (3), 230-239.
  • Sousa, Milton (2006). The sustainable innovation engine. VINE, 36 (4), 398-405.
  • Rodrigues, João Loureiro, de Sousa, Milton (2021). Making waves through education: a method for addressing security grand challenges in educational contexts. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, 487-498.
  • Martinez de Castro Pinto Luz, Miguel, Sousa, Milton (2018). Incorporating organizational ambidexterity in the public sector through servant leadership. Practicing Servant Leadership. : Developments in Implementation. van Dierendonck, Dirk, Patterson, Kathleen (Eds.), Springer International Publishing, 231-248.