Pro-Environmental Employee Engagement: The Influence of Pro-Environmental Organizational, Job and Personal Resources

Abstract

As organizations continue to respond to the existential challenge that is climate change, the extent to which employees engage in environmental sustainability is critical to that response. This study introduces new measures of pro-environmental employee engagement, pro-environmental job resources and pro-environmental meaningful work. Based on engagement theory, a model is tested that shows how perceived corporate environmental responsibility, pro-environmental job resources (supervisor support, involvement, information) and pro-environmental meaningful work (a personal resource) influence pro-environmental employee engagement. Online self-report survey data were collected through convenience sampling from 285 full-time and part-time employees (aged 18–89 years) working across a range of occupations and organizations in Australia. Data were analyzed using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). In support of the proposed model, CFA and SEM results generally yielded a good fit to the data. Eight of nine proposed direct effects involving corporate environmental responsibility, pro-environmental job resources (modelled as a higher-order construct), pro-environmental meaningful work, and pro-environmental engagement, were significant. All proposed indirect effects within a re-specified model were significant. The final model explained 51% of the variance in pro-environmental job resources; 20% in pro-environmental meaningful work; and 71% in pro-environmental employee engagement. Overall, the results indicate that perceived organizational, job and personal resources play a motivational role in enhancing pro-environmental employee engagement. The study contributes a theory-based model and new measures of employee pro-environmental resources and engagement. The model can be applied to help organizations assess and develop interventions to address the critically important issue of environmental sustainability. Future research directions and study limitations are discussed.

The psychological conditions for employee engagement in organizational change: Test of a change engagement model

“…Change engagement therefore provides a more theoretically grounded and motivational expression of previously researched positive change-related constructs, such as openness to change, readiness for change, and commitment to change (Bouckenooghe et al, 2009;Arnéguy et al, 2018;Tsaousis and Vakola, 2018). Although researchers have shown that change-related organizational and job resources are associated with change engagement (Albrecht et al, 2022a), no research has yet examined the influence of a theoretically coherent set of change-related psychological resources on change engagement.…”

“…Consistent with this proposition, research has demonstrated employee psychological safety to be positively associated with performance and innovation (Baer and Frese, 2003;Frazier et al, 2017). Although May et al (2004) showed that psychological safety was also positively associated with employee engagement, as yet, no research has been conducted on the construct of change-related psychological safety or its association with positive employee attitudes to change (Albrecht et al, 2022a). As modeled in Figure 1, the current research aims to address the gap by testing the proposed association between change related psychological safety and change engagement (H3).…”

“…Change engagement was measured with two three-item sub-scales (Albrecht et al, 2022a), with the items adapted from measures of job engagement (Rich et al, 2010) and employee attitudes to change (e.g., Bouckenooghe et al, 2009;Tsaousis and Vakola, 2018). As shown in Table 1, items include "I am enthusiastic about change in this organization" and "I strive as hard as I can to contribute positively to change initiatives in this organization. "…”

Greater willingness to reduce microplastics consumption in Mexico than in Spain supports the importance of legislation on the use of plastics

“…Policy and legislation have been described as effective top-down means to promote pro-environmental practices in different countries and cultures. Examples of this are the reduction of poisoning practices promoted by the awareness of environmental legislation in Kenya (Didarali et al, 2022 ), the pro-environmental engagement of Australian employees following the introduction of corporate pro-environmental policies (Albrecht et al, 2021 ), and the increased environmental concern of Chinese citizens living in cities with more sustainability policies in place (Liu et al, 2018 ).…”

Making Organizations Sustainable Through Employee Participation: An Analysis of Factors and Their Interactions

“…In general, most research on employees in sustainability topics have been conducted in companies, for example, employees' proenvironmental behaviors [19], [20], [21], the role of employee commitment for green performance [22], the employees' attitude and performance [23], and the role of EP in the sustainability [24]. There is increasing, yet limited, research on other types of organizations [25], such as the effect of corporate social responsibility on job satisfaction and organizational commitment [26], green employee engagement in higher education organizations [27], and analyzing employees' green behavior in the public and private sectors [28].…”