Organizational Environmental Orientation And Employee Environmental In-Role Behaviors: A Cross-Level Study

Amid the growth of scholarly research on environmental workplace behaviors, two limitations stand out. First, there has been scant research on the cross-level effects of organizational-level determinants on individual employee environmental behaviors using a methodologically appropriate multilevel analytic approach. Second, there has been an overwhelming focus on voluntary, as opposed to task-related, employee environmentally friendly behaviors. In addressing these limitations, this field study (N = 615 U.S.-based employees nested in 51 organizations) makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature, specifically by linking the dimensions of organizational-level environmental orientation with individual-level employee environmental in-role (i.e., task-related) behaviors using multilevel analysis. The results indicate that organizational internal environmental orientation is positively related to employee recycling behavior. Managerial status exerts a moderating effect, such that the positive relationship between internal environmental orientation and energy-saving behavior is stronger among managers than among non-managers. Furthermore, an organization's external environmental orientation has an unequivocal positive relationship only with employee energy-saving behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.