How Green Transformational Leadership Affects Green Creativity: Creative Process Engagement as Intermediary Bond and Green Innovation Strategy as Boundary Spanner

Abstract

Focusing on China’s steel industry, the effect of green transformational leadership on employee green creativity, its underlying mechanisms, and the conditions that govern the situation are examined. The sample analysis of 298 employees working with 46 supervisors from 23 companies indicates that green transformational leadership positively affects employee green creativity, and creative process engagement plays a mediating role in the relationship of green transformational leadership to employee green creativity. Moreover, the mediated role is moderated by green innovation strategy, which is used as a boundary spanner to affect the whole path linked by creative process engagement, so that this effect is strengthened when the level of green innovation strategy is high, rather than low. The results verify the hierarchical linear hypothesized model, which is helpful to sketch a more complete view of the relationship between green transformational leadership, creative process engagement, green innovation strategy, and green creativity, and to provide beneficial insights for innovative practice and the green management of steel enterprises.

Promoting Green Product Development Performance via Leader Green Transformationality and Employee Green Self-Efficacy: The Moderating Role of Environmental Regulation

“…For example, a sample survey of 262 employees in the electronics industry in Taiwan shows that there is a positive correlation between green transformational leadership and green self-efficacy [47]. In the same light, we suggest that employees' confidence to achieve environmental performance can be inspired by green transformational leadership, which embodies a kind of environmental responsibility [22], employees' green self-efficacy is imperceptibly affected in the top-down communication [48,49], especially in mainland China, which attaches importance to environmental protection.…”

“…Since the "Beautiful China" plan was put forward, China has adopted the most stringent new environmental protection law in history [41], which has made more companies turn their attention to environmental behavior [39]. Green transformational leadership can focus more on pro-environmental behaviors, improve environmental performance, and meet the needs of social green development [21,22]. In Hypothesis 2, we propose that green self-efficacy mediates the positive effect of green transformational leadership on green product development performance.…”

“…Green transformational leadership, on the basis of change orientation, tends to pursue environmental goals, which is similar to responsible leadership, that is, on the basis of interest linkage, more emphasis on social responsibility [16,17]. Therefore, once the enterprise's green product development involves energy conservation, pollution prevention, and other issues [21], green transformational leadership can provide environmental support for employees, clarify an environmental vision and set environmental expectations, stimulate followers' awareness of green products, and motivate employees to consider green product development issues from the perspective of environmental sustainability [15,21,22]. Previous studies have shown that green transformational leadership helps formulate green development strategies and promote companies to move toward the goal of green development [21][22][23], thereby promoting green product development performance [21].…”

“…Green transformational leadership refers to the behavior of leaders to motivate followers to achieve environmental goals, and to motivate followers to exceed the expected level of environmental performance [21,22]. As a promising leadership style, green transformational leadership can provide an inspiring green vision and motivate followers to actively complete environmental goals or tasks, thereby enhancing the company's green image and possibly bringing green opportunities [23].…”

“…The development and maintenance of an environmental management system depends on the internal ability of the organization [24,25]. Leaders understand, predict, and control how employees interact to achieve environmental goals [22,26], thereby enhancing corporate green innovation and green performance, especially in a society with high power distance [23,27].Different from focusing on external rewards and leader-employee reciprocity, green transformational leadership, as a kind of pro-environment leadership, follows higher-level self reinforcement and emphasizes that self-regulation is the main driving force for cultivating employees' specific behaviors [28].…”