Environmentally specific transformational leadership and team pro-environmental behaviors: The roles of pro-environmental goal clarity, pro-environmental harmonious passion, and power distance

Abstract

Does environmentally specific transformational leadership promote team pro-environmental behaviors? If so, why and when? Using the cognitive-affective processing system framework, we explore the idea that environmentally specific transformational leadership facilitates team pro-environmental behaviors via team pro-environmental goal clarity and team pro-environmental harmonious passion separately and that such indirect relationships are stronger when the team power distance is high. We used three waves of data from 113 teams in six Chinese manufacturing organizations to test our theoretical predictions. The results of regression analyses show that environmentally specific transformational leadership is positively related to team pro-environmental behaviors; this relationship is parallel mediated by team pro-environmental goal clarity and team pro-environmental harmonious passion. Furthermore, the team power distance strengthens the above parallel mediation effects such that in teams with high levels of power distance, environmentally specific transformational leadership strongly provokes team members’ pro-environmental goal clarity, pro-environmental harmonious passion, and subsequent pro-environmental behaviors. These findings suggest that environmentally specific transformational leadership is an effective approach for organizations to improve their teams’ pro-environmental behaviors, particularly in the context of strong power distance.

Promoting employees’ pro‐environmental behaviour through empowering leadership: The roles of psychological ownership, empowerment role identity, and environmental self‐identity

“…It includes both direct and indirect influences on green behaviours and does not explicitly qualify these behaviours as extra‐role behaviours. Moreover, this scale has shown high reliability in research studies conducted with Chinese samples (Peng et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2018). The team supervisors were asked to rate how the identified employees promoted environmental sustainability in their respective workplaces.…”

“…Specifically, we delve into the effect of empowering leadership on employees’ PEB. Although several studies have documented the impacts of top‐down leadership styles on employees’ PEB, such as transformational leadership (Graves et al., 2013; Peng et al., 2020), spiritual leadership (Afsar et al., 2016), and servant leadership (Tuan, 2019), noticeably missing have been the studies on the impact of empowering leadership. In this study, we explain how and why empowering leadership can influence employees’ PEB.…”

Determinant analysis of employee attitudes toward pro-environmental behavior in textile firms of Pakistan: a serial mediation approach

“…EP is not only an individual function, but it also reflects group property. When people show concern for the environment, they express their passion to others and facilitate the contagion of their passion (Peng et al , 2020).…”

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

“…The cause of environmental crisis lies in the rapid evolution of industrialization, and the Chinese government is exploring a new model of harmonious coexistence with nature [1]. Along with the prevalence of environmentalism in the world, consumers pay attention to the impact of consumption and production behavior patterns on the environment, and they encourage environmental action and green consumption [2,3].…”