Organizational environmental orientation and employee environmental in‐role behaviors: A cross‐level study

• Author: Rommel O. Salvador,Alex Burciaga
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12241
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020

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  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:98–113.

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Amid extensive scholarly research on environmental management

that has focused l argely on organ izational‐level p ractices , such as

sustainability reporting and implementation of green technologies

(Boiral, Talbot, & Pai llé, 2015), there has been a growing b ody of lit‐

erature on environmental workplace behaviors: actions t hat are per‐

formed by indiv idual employees a imed at protect ing or improving

the natural envi ronment (Ciocir lan, 2017). Within t his area, many

studies have examined individual‐level antecedents to these behav‐

iors, such as pro ‐environmental attitud es or values (e.g., Saifulina &

Carballo‐Penela, 2017), personal norms (e.g., Scherbaum, Popovich,

& Finlinson, 2008), or individual differences like moral reflective‐

ness (Kim, Kim , Han, Jackson , & Ployhart , 2017). Other stud ies

have investigated co ntextual ante cedents, suc h as feedback and

peer educati on (e.g., Carri co & Riemer, 2011), as well as group‐ o r

organization al‐level precur sors, such as su pervisor su pport (e.g.,

Ramus & Steger, 200 0), or leaders' p ro‐environme ntal behavior s

(Robertso n & Barling, 2013).

Although the se studies have advanced ou r knowledge regarding

environmenta l workplace beh aviors, two li mitations of this s chol‐

arly literatur e stand out. F irst, the re has been limite d research on

the c ross‐lev el effects of organizational‐level determinants on indi‐

vidual employee environmental behaviors using a methodologically

appropriate multilevel analytic approach. Environmental workplace

behaviors are li kely to be the result of combination s of antecedents

that reside at dif ferent levels of ana lysis (Norton , Parker, Zacher,

& Ashkanasy, 2015). Howeve r, studies have genera lly modeled re ‐

lationships bet ween antecede nts and behavi oral outcomes w ithin

a single level of analysis, mostly examining individual‐level an‐

tecedents predicting individual environmental workplace behav‐

iors. In some ins tances (e.g., Z hu, Sarkis, Co rdeiro, & Lai, 20 08),

Received: 6 Dece mber 2017 

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  Revised: 6 June 2019 

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  Accepted: 28 July 2019

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12241

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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 |

Management Department, California State

University, Fullerton, Fullerton, California



Rommel O. Salvador,

Management Department,

California S tate University, Full erton,

800 N. Stat e College Blvd. SGMH 5313 ,

Fullerton, C A 92831.

Email: rsalvador@fullerton.edu



Amid the growth of sch olarly research o n environmental wor kplace behaviors , two

limitations sta nd out. First , there has been sc ant research on the cr oss‐level effect s

of organizational‐level determinants on individual employee environmental behav‐

iors using a methodo logically appropriate multi level analytic approach. S econd, there

has been an overwhe lming focus on voluntary, as opposed to ta sk‐related, employee

environmentally f riendly behavior s. In addressing th ese limitations, t his field study

(N = 615 U.S.‐based employees nested i n 51 organizations) makes a theoretic al and

empirical contri bution to the literatu re, specificall y by linking the dimensi ons of or‐

ganizational‐level environmental orientation with individual‐level employee envi‐

ronmental in‐role (i .e., task‐related) behaviors us ing multilevel analysis . The results

indicate that organ izational internal environment al orientation is positively relate d to

employee recycling be havior. Managerial status exert s a moderating effect, s uch that

the positive relationship between internal environmental orientation and energy‐

saving behavior is stronger among managers than among non‐managers. Furthermore,

an organization's external environmental orientation has an unequivocal positive re‐

lationship only with employee energy‐saving behavior. The theoretical and practical

implications of the findings are discussed.

    

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SALVADOR AnD BURCIAGA

organizational‐level antecedents predicting organizational‐level

pro‐environme ntal practices that crit ically rely on employee beh av‐

iors have also bee n examined. Other studies t hat have investigated

the impact of cont extual variables, suc h as pro‐environmental or ga‐

nizational clim ate, on individual environm ental workplace behavio rs

(e.g., Prati, Al banesi, & Pietrantoni, 2017) have ac tually operational‐

ized these organizational‐level antecedents as individual perceptions

of organizational‐level constructs, making them essentially single‐

level (i.e., indiv idual‐level) studies. A n otable exception has been t he

work of Zientar a and Zamojska (2018), who foun d a truly cross‐level

positive direc t effect of an or ganizationa l‐level variable ( i.e., green

organization al climate) on individual emp loyee citizenship behaviors

directed to ben efit the enviro nment, using a me thodologic ally ap‐

propriate multilevel approach.

That said, like many ot her studies in t his area, Zient ara and

Zamojska’s (2018) stud y examined voluntary or extra‐role employee

behaviors. In deed, current beh avioral research in t he area appears to

be overwhelmingly biased toward studying voluntary environmen‐

tal employee be haviors (Norton, Zach er, & Ashkanasy, 2015), which

include organ izational citize nship behavior f or the environme nt

(OCBE; e.g., Erdog an, Bauer, & Taylor, 2015), eco‐helpin g behavior

(e.g., Paille, Mejia‐Morelos, Marche‐Paille, Chen, & Chen, 2016),

and employee‐driven eco‐innovation (Buhl, Blazejewski, & Dittmer,

2016). Accordingly, a second lim itation of the literatu re has been the

scant research regarding what Ciocirlan (2017) labeled as environ‐

mental in‐role behaviors (EIRBs), alternatively ref erred to as task‐re‐

lated pro‐environmental behaviors (Bissing‐Olson, Iyer, Fielding , &

Zacher, 2013): environmentally friendly behaviors that employees

perform as pa rt of their job de scription, o r actions they un dertake

in the normal cou rse of carry ing out their t ask roles. Maki ng this

distinctio n between task‐related and volu ntary employee behavio rs

is critical as env ironmental workplace beh aviors are not monolithic,

but rather mult idimensional and contex t dependent (Boiral, P aille, &

Raineri, 2015). For i nstance, ta sk‐related environme ntal behavior s

are likely to be direc tly influen ced by the employee's p erceptions

regarding the company's environmental sustainability policies, pro‐

cedures, and pr actices (“gre en work climate”), w hile voluntar y em‐

ployee green beh aviors are not (Norto n, Zacher, & Ashkanasy, 2014).

Moreover, recognizing that individual pro‐environmental behaviors

facilitate, at l east in part, the enactm ent of organizational‐level en‐

vironmental sustainability initiatives (Ones & Dilchert, 2012), the

day‐to‐day, and perhaps even m undane, nature of EIRBs give these

actions an even gr eater potential to s hape organiz ational environ‐

mental sustainability performance, compared to the one‐off and rel‐

atively rare voluntary pro‐environmental behaviors.

In this study, we addre ss these two li mitations of the e xtant

literature by examining the cross‐level relationship between orga‐

nizational environmental orientation—the extent to which a c ompany

recognizes the re levance of environmental i ssues to its business an d

the degree to whic h it exercises an overall commitme nt toward the

natural environment (Banerjee, 2002; Banerjee, Iyer, & Kashyap,

2003)—and EIRB s. Recent resear ch indicates th at a company's en‐

vironmental o rientation ha s direct positi ve effect s on a variety of

outcomes large ly at the organizational level, su ch as environmental

strategy (e.g ., Chan, 2010) and sus tainable sup ply chain prac tices

(e.g., Mariados s, Chi, Tansuhaj, & Pomirl eanu, 2016), and has an

amplifying e ffect on the r elationship be tween the comp any's eco‐

innovation and it s firm per formance (Zha ng & Walton, 2017). We

contribute to and e xtend this body of literatur e, specifically by the‐

oretically and empirically linking organizational‐level environmental

orientation with individual‐level employee pro‐environmental be‐

haviors within t he firm. In doing so, we r espond to calls from s cholars

to bridge the evide nt gulf betwee n the macro (i.e., o rganization al‐

level) and micro (i.e., individual‐level) streams of research within the

larger body of bus iness ethics a nd corporate so cial responsib ility

(CSR) schola rship (e.g., Jama li & Carroll, 2017). G iven that pro‐en ‐

vironmental b ehaviors are a fu nction of mora l consideratio ns and

values (e.g., de G root & Steg, 200 9), examining the inf luence of or‐

ganizational‐level antecedents on individual‐level EIRBs in the work‐

place advances k nowledge squa rely within the r ealm of business

ethics. Impo rtantly, we make this contributio n using a methodolog‐

ically appropriate multilevel approach that business ethics and so‐

cial responsibi lity scholars (e.g., Fryn as & Yamahaki, 2016; Ozbili r &

Kelloway, 2015) have been advoc ating for. Acknowledging that em‐

ployees are nes ted within orga nizations, the c onventional assum p‐

tion of indepen dence among data point s is likely to be violated wh en

modeling the ef fects of organizat ional environmental o rientation on

EIRBs using ordina ry least sq uares regressi on—an issue that is ad‐

dressed by using mu ltilevel modeling (e.g., B liese, 2000).

In addition, we al so make a contribution by a ddressing the seco nd

limitation me ntioned above. Specific ally, we extend the literatur e on

environmentally relevant employee behaviors by identifying contex‐

tual antecedents to behavior s that are task‐related and integrated

into a company's day‐to‐day o perations, a s opposed to bein g vol‐

untary or extra‐role. In examining two particular EIRBs separately,

recycling behav ior and energy‐saving b ehavior, we build on research

suggesting t hat there exists a qualitat ive, conceptual distinct ion be‐

tween these t wo forms of pro‐environmenta l behavior in the work‐

place (Ofsta d, Tobolova, Nayum, & K lockner, 2017; Yuriev, Boiral,

Francoeur, & Paille, 2018). Co nsequently, we empirically exte nd re‐

search in this are a by demonstrating that they d iffer in terms of the

degree to which organizational‐level antecedents influence them.

Finally, although e xtant research indicate s that the engagement

of both managers a nd non‐managerial employees as env ironmental

stakeholde rs is critical to t he success of a sust ainability p rogram

(Baranova & Mea dows, 2017), evidence suggests t hat they differ in

their respons es to environmental issues an d initiatives (e.g., Harvey

& Schaefer, 2001; One s & Dilchert, 2012). Thus , we extend research

on the influence of m anagerial status (i.e., whet her the employee is

a manager/supervisor o r not) by examining its moder ating effect on

the relationship between an organization's environmental orienta‐

tion and EIRBs.

The rest of this pa per is organized a s follows. Firs t, we briefly

review research on organizational environmental orientation and

managerial status, developing hypotheses linking these with EIRBs.

Second, we desc ribe the samp le and methods of t he study, and