The worldwide problem of corruption is one that requires greater knowledge about responsible leadership. Based on the literature on responsible leadership, developmental psychology, and moral development, the purpose of our study is to understand the constructions of the motivational drivers behind the behaviors of a responsible leader. Using biographical and narrative methodologies, we analyzed the individual motivational drivers of Carlos Cavelier, a recognized responsible leaders who grew up and works in Colombia, a social/economic context characterized by institutional fragility and corruption. Our findings suggest that the coherence between the immediate environments of development of the future leader, configured optimal environments in which the leader developed the moral conscience that guides his behavior as a responsible leader. Our study points out the need not to take the development of responsible leaders for granted, and presents propositions that allow for a deeper understanding of the micro-foundations of responsible leadership, highlighting the importance of the contexts in which leaders are raised and in which they develop. Thus, our study has the potential to be heuristic and generative of future studies. 330 | CASTILLO eT AL. 1 | INTRODUCTION The past two decades have witnessed growing interest in the topic of responsible leadership (RL) (Maak, Pless, & Voegtlin, 2016; Waldman, 2011). This is the result of the rising number of corporate scandals and their significant global financial, social, and environmental repercussions (e.g., Odebrecht, FIFA, Petrobras, etc.). According to Voegtlin, Patzer, and Scherer (2012), scandals of this kind have led to a decline in public trust, the destruction of social capital, and an overall loss of legitimacy for corporate organizational systems. This loss of legitimacy and trust persists (Waldman, Siegel, & Stahl, 2020). Other reasons to be interested in RL are the global environment of new businesses, the active role of stakeholders, and the complex environmental and social challenges as we transition to a more sustainable economic model (Throop & Mayberry, 2017; Witt & Stahl, 2016). According to Freeman and Auster (2011), organizations and their leaders are coming under increasing pressure to enact new values, such as responsibility and sustainability, and to pay more attention to the effects of their actions on their stakeholders. This implies that if organizations want flourish, "leaders will need to behave in new ways consistent with a finite, complex, uncertain, changing, collaborative, connected, and caring world" (Throop & Mayberry, 2017, p. 222). The sheer expansiveness and growth of organizations focused on sustainability such as the Association of Sustainability in Higher Education, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME); and the Academy of Management, among others, is reflective of the increasing recognition of the importance of integrating sustainability in business education (Palthe, 2013) to train the leaders needed by socie...