Environmental Transformational Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Towards Environment: Mediating Role of Perceived Meaningful work

Abstract

Among the burning issue of our times is climate change. Considering this, socially conscious organizations are increasingly doing their bit by instituting environmental management systems and adopting ‘green’ practices. These systems and practices yield desired results only when employees own them and complement them with their voluntary pro-environmental behaviors which are known as organizational citizenship behaviors towards environment. Accordingly, scholars and managers alike are interested in the enrichment of their understanding of antecedents of organizational citizenship behavior towards environment as well as mediational pathways connecting the former with the latter. Invoking the theoretical lens of social information processing approach, this study combines the interdisciplinary literature at the intersection of environmental psychology and organizational behavior to broaden the contemporary understanding of the voluntary pro-environmental behaviors at workplace. More specifically, this quantitative, survey-based study theoretically links and empirically tests the impact of environmental transformational leadership on organizational citizenship behavior towards environment via the mediational mechanism of perceived meaningful work. Cross sectional data from a sample of 311 employees working in Pakistan’s hospitality sector were collected and analyzed to test the hypothesized relationships through regression analysis and bootstrapping resampling procedure using SPSS v.22 and PROCESS macro v.3.5 respectively. Results indicate statistically significant indirect effect of perceived meaningful work on the relationship between environmental transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior towards environment. In totality, the findings facilitate as well as advance the ongoing conversation in interdisciplinary literature at the intersection of environmental psychology and organizational behavior. Limitations of the present study have been duly acknowledged and directions for future scholarly pursuits have been discussed towards the end of this document.