Drivers of employees' proactiveness for sustainability embeddedness: Examining situation‐related antecedents of information exchange

Abstract

Embedding sustainability in day-to-day operations necessitates employees' proactiveness beyond compliance with standardised management practices.Exchanging information on safety and environmental issues is acknowledged as a component of workers' proactive behaviours for sustainability embeddedness, which is hardly promoted by codified procedures. Accordingly, identifying leverages to stimulate information exchange is a primary objective for academics and practitioners.The study investigates drivers of information exchange on safety and environmental near misses by examining five situation-related antecedents: rewards/reinforcements, organisational boundaries, social proactiveness, stakeholder salience and connectedness. The study relies on a mixed method approach, by combining social network analysis and a questionnaire survey conducted among four large Italian companies. The findings partially support the hypothesis of the study, highlighting rewards/reinforcements and connectedness as relevant antecedents of information exchange, while organisational boundaries only partially relate with information exchange. Surprisingly, stakeholder salience and social proactiveness do not emerge as significant drivers of information exchange. The study contributes to the debate on extra-role pro-sustainability behaviours and provides implications for managerial practice.