Going Green in Public Organizations: Linking Organizational Commitment and Public Service Motives to Public Employees’ Workplace Eco-Initiatives

Public servants are expected to be good stewards of resources, including the energy and environmental resources consumed in a public organization’s day-to-day operations. Many government organizations have enacted policies to mitigate the environmental impact of their operations. Even in the absence...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American review of public administration 2016-05, Vol.46 (3), p.337-355
Main Authors: Stritch, Justin M., Christensen, Robert K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Citizenship
Civil service
Commitments
Domestic service
Employee involvement
Employee motivation
Employees
Energy
Environmental impact
Environmental policy
Federal employees
Governments
Initiatives
Joining
Motivation
Natural environment
Organizational aspects
Organizational behavior
Organizations
Policies
Public administration
Public service
Staff participation
Studies
Worker participation
Workplaces
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Public servants are expected to be good stewards of resources, including the energy and environmental resources consumed in a public organization’s day-to-day operations. Many government organizations have enacted policies to mitigate the environmental impact of their operations. Even in the absence of formal policies, however, individual public employees might engage in a number of discretionary, pro-environmental behaviors known as eco-initiatives. What motivational factors cause a public employee to exhibit eco-initiative? To answer this question, we draw on a theoretical framework based on connectedness to nature, organizational commitment, public service motivation (PSM), and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We use employee-level data from a large city in the southeast United States to examine employee participation in individual eco-initiatives. We contextualize these discretionary initiatives as interesting forms of OCB, which are directed toward the environment (OCB-E). Our findings suggest that connectedness to nature, organizational commitment, and PSM are significant predictors of eco-initiative in the public workplace. In addition, we find that PSM conditions the impact of organizational commitment on eco-initiatives for certain types of employees. We conclude with a discussion that underscores the importance of individual employee motivation in discretionary efforts that advance OCB-E and effective public stewardship generally.
ISSN:0275-0740
1552-3357
DOI:10.1177/0275074014552470