Understanding the Impact of Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership on Employees’ Pro-Environmental Behaviors in the Workplace: Based on the Proactive Motivation Model

Abstract

The increasingly severe environmental situation has brought challenges to the world, and organizations are aware of the importance of environmental management and are committed to changing individuals’ environmental behavior patterns. Based on the proactive motivation model, this study constructs a moderated multiple mediation model to explore the impact mechanism and boundary conditions between environmentally specific servant leadership (ESSL) and employees’ workplace pro-environmental behaviors (WPB). This study examines 440 Chinese industrial sector employees, and the linear regression method test results show that: (1) ESSL significantly promotes employees’ WPB. (2) Green self-efficacy (GSE), green organizational identity (GOI), and environmental passion (EP) act as multiple mediators between ESSL and employees’ WPB. (3) Green shared vision (GSV) positively moderates the relationship between ESSL and employees’ WPB. This study provides a new theoretical perspective on how ESSL affects employees’ WPB, which is analyzed from three aspects: “can do”, “reason to”, and “energized to”. This new mechanism reveals that leaders should transform their leadership style to that of environmental service, and focus on enhancing the employees’ GSE, GOI, and EP. Moreover, ESSL should make copious use of green strategy tools, such as GSV, to realize the above mechanism.