Pro-Environmental Organizational Culture: Its Essence and a Concept for Its Operationalization

Abstract

Organizational culture is currently considered a critical factor in achieving success in any business activity, including the implementation of the idea of sustainability. Sustainability-driven organizations incorporate a triple bottom line approach, which promotes the collateral achievement of companies’ environmental, economic, and social goals. The first bottom line is related to environmental sustainability. This bottom line should be facilitated by a pro-environmental organizational culture (PE culture). A company should strive to bring this culture to the highest possible level. Although in the literature on the subject some research on the factors that influence employees’ pro-environmental behavior have been presented, environmental sustainability in the context of organizational culture has received comparatively little attention. So far, the concept of levels of PE culture and the corresponding measurement instrument have not been developed. The aim of this paper is to present the concept of a pro-environmental organizational culture and its operationalization to support the achievement of sustainability goals. Operationalization is the process of determining the extension of a concept, which in turn transforms the concept into a metric. This paper presents a four-level concept of PE culture and a research instrument developed for the purpose of measuring the cultural level in organizations. The instrument was tested in a manufacturing company.