Corporate greening and employee green behavior : a multilevel analysis of sustainability paradoxes and green identity in the organizational context

Employee green behavior is a key contributor to corporate greening. While organizations often focus on technical solutions, the role of employees in corporate greening activities is underestimated. Researchers have pointed at different individual as well as organizational factors’ impacts on corporate greening and employee green behavior. However, the multilevel nature of employee green behavior has often been neglected, as have the contextual factors around it. This doctoral dissertation addresses this gap in three papers applying qualitative and quantitative methods to study how employee green behavior is influenced by sustainability paradoxes and the paradoxical tensions they cause for employees and organizations. The first paper examines how sustainability paradoxes influence corporate greening. Activities directed at corporate greening render sustainability paradoxes salient; these are (not) worked through by organizational members in different ways, and have unintended consequences on the effectiveness of corporate greening measures. The second paper explores green employees’ paradoxical identity and performing tensions that arise when employees attempt to engage in green behaviors. It shows that paradoxical tensions can lead to responses of splitting, withdrawal, or, in the most severe cases, pursuing exit strategies. Finally, the third paper studies the conjoint effect of environmental self-identity, perceived supervisory support toward the environment, and perceived organizational support toward the environment on predicting employee green behavior. It shows that a stronger environmental self-identity and higher levels of supervisory support strengthen the effect of organizational support on employee green behavior. However, if environmental self-identity is weak and perceived supervisory support toward the environment is low, organizational support is found to be not related to employee green behavior. These results have implications for the management of employee green behavior and corporate greening activities. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the research on corporate greening and employee green behavior by offering new insights into the paradoxical dynamics of corporate greening activities in organizations, as well as the role of identity and paradoxical tensions in employee green behavior at the individual level.