CEO environmentally responsible leadership and firm environmental innovation: A socio-psychological perspective

Yanxia Wang; Tao Shen; Yang Chen; Abraham Carmeli

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.01.004

CEO environmentally responsible leadership and firm environmental innovation: A socio-psychological perspective

Yanxia Wang, Tao Shen, Yang Chen, Abraham Carmeli

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Manufacturing firms face increasing pressure to seek innovative solutions to environmental perils. Addressing such challenges requires responsible leadership that embraces a normative and stewardship approach for environmentally sustainable system. However, the question of whether and how CEO environmentally responsible leadership can drive firm environmental innovation has yet to be addressed. We develop and test a serial mediation model that specifies socio-psychological mechanisms through which environmentally responsible CEOs influence firm environmental innovation. To test the model, we use a two-wave multi-source dataset of top- and middle-level managers in 125 manufacturing firms in China. We find that environmentally responsible CEOs drive environmental innovation by developing a sense of collective environmental identification, which facilitates middle-level managers’ engagement in the organizational citizenship behavior associated with a more sustainable environment. Our research delineates the power of CEOs’ responsible leadership and its potential to help organizations that face growing pressure to increase environmental innovation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	327-340
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Business Research
Volume	126
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.01.004
State	Published - Mar 2021
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are appreciative of the editor and reviewers’ comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71502142 , 71802102 ). The last author appreciates the support of Jeremy Coller Foundation (No. 20189), The Eli Hurvitz institute of Strategic Management (No. 20191), and The Henry Crown Institute of Business Research in Israel (No. 2019-2).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

Collective environmental identification
Environmental innovation
Environmentally responsible leadership
Pro-environmental behaviors

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10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.01.004

Cite this

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abstract = "Manufacturing firms face increasing pressure to seek innovative solutions to environmental perils. Addressing such challenges requires responsible leadership that embraces a normative and stewardship approach for environmentally sustainable system. However, the question of whether and how CEO environmentally responsible leadership can drive firm environmental innovation has yet to be addressed. We develop and test a serial mediation model that specifies socio-psychological mechanisms through which environmentally responsible CEOs influence firm environmental innovation. To test the model, we use a two-wave multi-source dataset of top- and middle-level managers in 125 manufacturing firms in China. We find that environmentally responsible CEOs drive environmental innovation by developing a sense of collective environmental identification, which facilitates middle-level managers{\textquoteright} engagement in the organizational citizenship behavior associated with a more sustainable environment. Our research delineates the power of CEOs{\textquoteright} responsible leadership and its potential to help organizations that face growing pressure to increase environmental innovation.",

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CEO environmentally responsible leadership and firm environmental innovation: A socio-psychological perspective

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

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