Corporate Purpose and Employee Sustainability Behaviors

This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is part...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2023-04, Vol.183 (4), p.963-981
Main Authors: Bhattacharya, C. B., Sen, Sankar, Edinger-Schons, Laura Marie, Neureiter, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomy
Behavior
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Citizenship
Companies
Education
Employee behavior
Employees
Ethics
Management
Morality
Original Paper
Ownership
Perceptions
Philosophy
Quality of Life Research
Self concept
Society
Stakeholders
Sustainability
Work
Workplaces
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Summary:This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is particularly suited for driving employee sustainability behaviors, which are more ethically complex than the types of employee ethical behaviors typically examined by prior research. Through four studies, two involving the actual employees of construction companies, we demonstrate that purpose drives the sustainability behaviors of employees by causing them to take psychological ownership of sustainability. In addition, we show that the sustainability-enhancing effect of purpose is stronger when employees perceive that they have higher autonomy in enacting their sustainability actions and for those employees for whom being moral is more central to their sense of self.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-022-05090-5