Achieving organizational environmental citizenship behavior through green transformational leadership: a moderated mediation study

Purpose Transformational leadership has caught the significant attention of many academic scholars in the leadership domain. In recent studies, emphasis has been given on green transformational leaders who empower their subordinates, which, in turn, leads to employees’ discretionary behavior toward environmental management of the organization, which has been denoted as organizational environmental citizenship behavior. Organizational citizenship behavior has been strongly advocated as a means to improve the environmental performance of organizations. A green transformational leader encourages his subordinates to undertake activities that are beneficial to the organization’s environmental management, such as thinking about the sustainable development of the organization, solving environmental problems and contributing to the firm’s environmental performance. This study aims to investigate the domain of environmental leadership by examining the mechanism and conditions under which green transformational leaders induce organizational environmental citizenship behavior. Design/methodology/approach Information technology (IT) firms across four major cities in India were considered for the survey to examine the proposed hypotheses. Online questionnaires were shared with 1,286 employees working across seven branches of IT companies. A total of 378 respondents completed the survey, but only 293 questionnaires were suitable for further analysis using structural equation modeling. Findings The findings of the study show that green transformational leadership promotes green empowerment and organizational citizenship behaviors toward the environment (OCBE) among the employees. It also reveals that environmental passion plays a key role in promoting eco-initiative and eco-helping behavior among the employees when they are empowered for green practices. Also, the influence of resource commitment fosters eco-civic engagement among the employees. Practical implications Results hold strong implications for human resource managers on how green transformational leadership approaches can help trigger organizational citizenship behavior among employees. Also, understanding the impact of green empowerment on employees’ involvement in extra-role behavior will help organizations to develop strategies to strengthen their sense of empowerment toward green practices. Originality/value This study attempts to investigate the impact of green transformational leadership on employees’ OCBE and the mechanisms through and conditions under which green transformational leadership may impact the indicators of OCBE. The study proposes a mechanism and social and psychological conditions that can potentially explain the linkages between green transformational leadership and OCBE: green empowerment, resource commitment and environmental passion.