How Does Sustainable Leadership Promote the Willingness to Adopt an Environmental Innovation Strategy? The Key Mediating Role of Environmental Value

Abstract

Sustainability has redefined corporate performance-oriented strategies, but research linking organizational leadership to sustainability strategies remains limited. Indeed, most past studies have employed the perspective of institutional pressure to explore why companies passively adopt environmental strategies. However, few studies have explored how to employ the internal management mechanisms of organizations to proactively promote companies to adopt environmental strategies. Therefore, the first purpose of this research is to explore how sustainable leadership promotes strategic adoption through environmental psychological ownership and environmental identity, based on the meaning management theory and upper echelons theory. The second purpose of this study is to address the new concepts of environmental psychological ownership and environmental identity through the social identity theory and psychological ownership theory. To validate the proposed model, this research collected responses from 101 chief executive officers and members of their senior management teams, and the results of the analysis supported all hypotheses. This research can not only provide academic literature with a cross-broad perspective on organizational leadership and sustainability but also provide an example for companies looking to implement sustainability strategies.