How firms leverage corporate environmental strategy to nurture green behavior: Role of multi‐level environmentally responsible leadership

Abstract

The implementation of a firm's corporate environmental strategy is contingent on a practical mechanism between leaders and employees as stakeholders to spread a collective stimulus of responsible behaviors from top to bottom. This study builds on the theoretical underpinnings of social identity theory to examine the influence of corporate environmental strategy on employees' voluntary green behavior through the mediating role of middle managers' environmentally responsible leadership and the moderating role of CEOs' environmentally responsible leadership. The sample included 1532 middle managers‐subordinate dyads from 91 automotive firms and their supply chain business partners in China. Multi‐source data on CEOs' and managers' environmentally responsible leadership and employees' voluntary green behavior were collected in two stages and analyzed with multilevel structural equation modeling through the MPlus 8.3 software. The findings supported all the hypothesized relationships in predicting employees' voluntary green behavior, including the mediating and moderating mechanisms. Theoretical and managerial implications are offered, along with limitations and suggestions for future research.

The Importance of the Circular Economy Concept among Organizations within the Food Sector and a Management Systems Perspective

“…As rhetoric changes faster than reality, the high level of declarations considering the CE principles obtained in the study can be a promising result. However, that positive scenario will depend on the attitude of managers, both at the middle and top management levels, as Faraz et al's study confirms a positive mechanism between leaders and employees within environmental behaviors [83].…”

Leadership and Environmental Sustainability: An Integrative Conceptual Model of Multilevel Antecedents and Consequences of Leader Green Behavior

“…Most research has focused on green leadership styles and, similar to the leadership literature in general, the most prominent construct is environmentally-specific transformational leadership (e.g., Robertson, 2018;Robertson & Barling, 2017; see Table 1). Additional popular leadership styles investigated in relation to environmental sustainability include servant leadership (e.g., Tuan, 2021), responsible leadership (e.g., Faraz et al, 2023), environmental leadership (e.g., Su et al, 2020), ethical leadership (e.g., Ahmad et al, 2021), and sustainable leadership (e.g., Haney et al, 2020). Furthermore, several studies examined environmentally-specific supervisory support.…”