MASTER THESIS DOES SUSTAINABILITY IN THE WORKPLACE ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEES TO BEHAVE PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL?

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MASTER THESIS

DOES SUSTAINABILITY IN THE WORKPLACE ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEES TO BEHAVE PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL?

The Influence of Corporate Environmental Responsibility Activities on

Employee’s Pro-Environmental Behaviour Influenced by Affective

Organisational Commitment and Cultural Values at the Workplace

by

ELKE VEENMAN

University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business

Master International Business and Management

July 2016

Kleine Badstraat 27 9726 CG Groningen e.l.veenman@student.rug.nl

Student number: 2021811

Supervisor – University of Groningen Prof. Dr. A.R. Muller

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ABSTRACT

Enhancing corporate environmental activities and encouraging pro-environmental behaviour in the workplace can result in a significant reduction in global environmental problems. This research investigates the influence of affective organisational commitment and Schwartz’s (2004) indicated cultural values ‘HARMONY and EGALITARIANISM’, on the relation between corporate environmental responsibility and employees’ pro-environmental behaviour at work. This quantitative research conducted an online survey among 128 respondents of the multicultural organisation, the University of Groningen, in The Netherlands. Based on the data from a sample of respondents originating from 29 different countries, results showed a direct and indirect effect of corporate environmental responsibility on employee’s pro-environmental behaviour through attitude towards pro-environmental behaviour. Furthermore, the mediation effect of affective organisational commitment between corporate environmental responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour was not found, but a mediation effect of the cultural value harmony was found between corporate environmental responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour. This study gives rise to new insights about the relation between corporate environmental responsibility, affective organisational commitment, the examined cultural values and pro-environmental behaviour at the workplace. This research yields promising findings for organisations to benefit from encouraging employees to behave pro-environmental at work.

Key words: corporate environmental responsibility, pro-environmental behaviour, green behaviour, affective organisational commitment, cultural values, harmony, egalitarianism.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thomas Edison: ‘Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration’.

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INTRODUCTION

Today, a large majority of the public in Western countries accepts the idea that we are changing the climate, is rather willing to endorse the need for making personal changes, and is generally supportive of governments making changes (Lorenzoni & Pidgeon, 2006). Nevertheless, it is also widely reported that behavioural change is lagging behind these positive sentiments. On a firm level, companies are incorporating sustainability into their business models; which can be noticed in the Business’ “sustainability reports”, offering evidence on the efforts to adopt sound environmental, social, and governance policies and practices (DeKay, 2011). Corporate Social Responsibility (from here on referred to as: CSR) has become a main point in companies and addresses the core behaviour of companies as well as the responsibility that they bear for their impact on the society in which they are operational (Marsden, 2001). Companies perform CSR for many reasons, for example, to have a better impact on society, improve their image, and/or use it as a source of organisational competitive advantage (Ellemers et al., 2011). Ellemers et al. (2011) even suggests that engagement in CSR-activities may help the organisation bring out the best in its employees, and hence, to optimize organisational performance. The construct CSR can be defined in different ways, because there is not one clear definition for it. According to the United Nations (2007), ‘CSR addresses the overall contribution of business to the attainment of sustainability which fundamentally serves to improve human well-being’. CSR activities include many areas, like: environmental protection, quality and safety in the workplace, community, employees, clients, and CSR management.

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CER is focused on a company level, whereas it influences the employee’s behaviour on an individual level, because a firm faces the challenge of encouraging employees to implement and execute the chosen CER practices (Cantor et al., 2012). According to Banerjee (2002) corporate environmentalism has the potential to change existing ways of thinking in organisations and organisational members are important agents of change in this process. Therefore, CER prepossess the environmental behaviour of employees, named as pro-environmental behaviour (from here on referred to as: PEB). PEB can be defined as a kind of behaviour that intentionally seeks to minimize the negative impact of one’s actions on the natural and built environment (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). The need to increase pro-environmental behaviours of employees is readily apparent and rapidly increasing (IPCC, 2007; KPMG, 2005), since employees spend about one third of their time in an office, it is expected that PEB in the workplace will contribute significantly to the minimization of the negative impact of employee’s actions on the natural and built environment (Blok et al., 2015). Research on pro-environmental behaviour, mainly in private and household settings, has examined demographics, attitudes, beliefs and personality as predictors of environmental behaviour (Schultz & Zelezny, 1998; Vining & Ebreo, 1990). The question raises whether these results will be similar to PEB in the organisational setting. It is not well know what encourages PEB in the workplace and there is little theoretical understanding about the manner in which a firm’s environmental management practices promote employee’s environmental behaviours (Cantor et al., 2012). Specifically in the workplace setting plays CER an important role, because in the private setting people are not influenced by the corporate environmental activities.

Literature mainly focuses on CER and inter alia organisational performance and their impact of environmental damage on a macro-level, where e.g. CER showed to have an important role in enhancing financial performance (Margolis et al., 2009). Though, these macro level organisational efforts attempt to address societal concerns regarding environmental issues and ‘have strategic implications for business firms that are manifested at the micro level’ (Banerjee, 2002). Noticeable, CER is not well researched in the field of organisational behaviour and there is little understanding about the impact of CER at the micro-level of analysis, only recently Panagiotis & Evgenia (2015) found evidence for the relationship between CSR and PEB.

1.1 CER, PEB and affective organisational commitment

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process, feelings and emotions are even more important drivers for PEB. According to Schultz (1999), the provision of feedback to instigate environmentally friendly actions bolsters people’s attitudes towards pro-environmental actions (e.g. Schultz, 1999). This suggests that people can be motivated to act environmentally-friendly, because such actions reflect that they are doing the right thing, which can serve as a positive self-signal (Van der Werff, Keizer, & Steg, 2013). Essentially, CER is conducted on a firm level, but it is about how the employee perceives it on an individual level. Hence, the perspective and affection of a person towards the CER practices influences his/her actions and for this reason can encourage PEB. The affection of the employee towards the CER activities within the workplace is indirectly related to the affection of the employee towards the organisation, because the organisation conducts the environmental activities. Mueller et al. (2012) showed in his study that perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) was positively related to employees’ affective organisational commitment (from here on referred to as: AC). Additionally, Biga et al. (2012) argued that employees who are more committed to their organisation are more likely to display direct pro-environmental behaviours on the job. The focus of this study is specifically on the affective organisational commitment, because this refers to a sense of emotional attachment to the organisation, and is most clearly related to indicators of employee motivation (Meyer & Allen, 1997). Motivation is the reason for a behaviour, or a strong internal stimulus around which behaviour is organised (Moisander, 1998). Thus, it can be assumed that AC can motivate a person to behave pro-environmentally. Therefore, this study mainly will focus on the relation between CER and PEB, which can be explained through the affective organisational commitment of an employee.

1.2 CER, PEB and cultural values

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are found to have an influence on environmental behaviour. Also Cordano et al. (2010) found a strong relation between altruism as a personal value and the behavioural environmental intention. Furthermore, Mueller et al. (2012) found evidence of the moderating effect of cultural values on perceptions of CSR towards AC. These findings in literature show that values can have either a direct or indirect effect.

The cultural value dimensions of Schwartz’s (2004) are particularly useful to examine the environmental behaviour and its antecedents, as these dimensions are based on an individual level. These three dimensions are: embeddedness vs autonomy, hierarchy vs egalitarianism and mastery vs harmony. The cultural values ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘harmony’, tend to be main predictors of pro-environmental behaviour, because egalitarianism stands for equality, responsibility, help, honesty and harmony stands for a world at peace, unity with nature and protecting the environment, both values that increase behaviour to help and/or protect the environment. Therefore, it is assumed that egalitarianism and harmony positively influences PEB. Additionally, in line with research of Mueller et al. (2012) who found an indirect moderating effect of cultural values on CSR towards AC, the current study is interested if the cultural values egalitarianism and harmony moderates specifically CER towards AC.

Cultural values are implicitly expressed in the relations between separate attitudes (Hattrup, Mueller, & Aguirre, 2007). It is expected that when an employee personally values the environment, maybe according to his/her cultural background, the person will have a more positive attitude towards behaving pro-environmental. Subsequently, systematic cross-cultural research is needed to expand our limited knowledge in this area (Mueller et al., 2012). Therefore, this study tries to add evidence to current literature by testing the direct and moderating effect of egalitarianism, and harmony, on the relationships between employees’ perceptions of CER, PEB and AC. Furthermore, this study attempts to contribute to literature by extending limited empirical evidence on the effect of CER on micro-level outcomes, where it highlights a potential intervening mechanism, affective organisational commitment. Last, this study extend the nascent pro-environmental behaviour literature by proposing possible factors that influence this specific behaviour.

1.3 Conceptual model

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of the cultural values egalitarianism and harmony will be examined towards PEB and on the relation between CER and AC.

Explored are the attitudes of the employees towards the organisation, the perspectives of the employees towards the CER activities of the organisation, the attitude of the employees towards PEB, and the actual PEB of the employees within the organisation, including their cultural values. It is assumed that when employees feel more committed to their organisation because of the high CER activities within, and those employees value a high level of egalitarianism, and/or harmony, they will display more pro-environmental behaviour within the organization. This is exemplified in the following conceptual model (figure 1).

Figure 1 – Conceptual model

In the next section of this research the theoretical background of the key concepts will be provided. Subsequently, the research method will follow, and will describe how data will be collected and analysed. Hereafter the results are presented, discussed, and compared to existing literature, which results in a set of propositions, and a conclusion. Finally, implications, limitations, and directions, for future research are presented.

THEORY

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factor of the context, CER in the workplace, on pro-environmental behaviour. In this part of the paper, the separated constructs will be comprehensively reviewed, explained and connected, which results in a theoretical framework that forms the basis for the data collection and analysis.

2.1 Pro-environmental behaviour

Pro-environmental behaviour can be deﬁned as behaviour that intentionally pursues reduction of the negative impact of people’s actions on the natural world (Stern, 2000). Most of the current research on pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is done within households, and not within the workplace. There is argued that people can show different PEB in households, and in companies, because employees cannot act completely according to their own personal norms and values in the workplace (Blok et al., 2014).

Previous research has tried to find reasons for the PEB of individuals. Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002) examined PEB models in order to explain why people act or do not act pro-environmentally. Ones and Dilchert (2012) deﬁned employees’ green behaviours as ‘scalable actions and behaviours that employees engage in or bring about that are linked with, and contribute to, environmental sustainability’. They categorize these behaviours as working sustainably (e.g. creating sustainable product and processes), avoiding harm (e.g. preventing pollution), conserving (e.g. reusing), inﬂuencing others (e.g. educating and training for sustainability), and taking initiative (e.g. lobbying and activism).

Pro-environmental behaviour is often based on the premise that people decide whether to act environmentally-friendly in a reasoned and calculating way. Individuals choose alternatives with the highest benefits against the lowest costs (e.g., in terms of money, effort, and/or social approval). The Theory of Planned Behaviour of Ajzen (1991) is often used to frame this behaviour and there is some evidence that this theory is successful in predicting PEB in the workplace (Ruepert et al., 2015). The theory assumes that behaviour results from the intention to perform the behaviour, which is influenced by someone’s attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control. For example, according to a study of Flanner and May (2000), positive attitudes toward pro-environmental treatment of hazardous wastewater, the perception that important others would approve this behaviour, and a feeling of perceived behavioural control over this behaviour, increased pro-environmental intentions among managers. There are different theories in literature about whether these intentions, and/or attitudes result in actual behaviour.

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their decisions (Zajonc, 1980). Consequently, decision-making based on feelings often occurs through a relatively fast, more automatic process (e.g. Kahneman, 2003; Slovic, Finucane et al., 2000). A growing body of literature suggests that the main function of people’s reasoning is not to decide what to do, but rather to generate post-hoc explanations for their decisions (Mercier & Sperber, 2011). Particularly when people make decisions in the moral domain, the decision itself is often based on feelings (Haidt, 2001). Additionally, subjective norm measures have been reported to be more useful, in terms of prediction, for cooperative behaviours than for competitive behaviours (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). People’s actions in the domain of environmental sustainability draws on two interrelated themes on the notion of identity: morality and collective action. Morality is closely involved in environmental issues since the welfare of others are at stake, and dominates, concerns about sustainability (Dresner, 2008). Collective action is implicated because many of the environmental problems we face are social dilemmas that need to be solved by collective cooperation (Sparks, 2013). Osbaldiston and Sheldon (2002) argue that, “Once one starts thinking about human behaviour in terms of social dilemmas, they begin to appear everywhere”. This quote shows the potential strength of a company by incorporating a sustainability norm in the sense it can create a certain group behaviour.

Various scholars have integrated concepts and variables from different theoretical frameworks, showing that behaviour results from multiple motivations (Guagnano et al., 1995). Encouraging workplace pro-environmental behaviours, such as, recycling, conservation, and waste reduction behaviours, will not only contribute to the greening of organisations but will also positively affect climate change and prevent further environmental degradation (Tudor, 2011), and is therefore, a serious global issue.

2.2 Corporate environmental responsibility

The essence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been heatedly debated over the past decades (Murphy & Schlegelmilch, 2013). Broadly defined, CSR contains ‘actions that appear to further social good, beyond the interests of the firm and which is required by law’ (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). Different persons can have a different understanding of CSR, depending on the context in which business and society are being interwoven.

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understanding regarding CSR at the micro-level of analysis (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012). Moreover, considering that employees are a key group of stakeholders that demand and support organisational attempts to determine and cultivate a socially responsible workplace (McWilliams & Siegel 2001), it is important to examine the potential effect of perceived CSR on employees and their environmental behaviour within the workplace. Employees as a unit of analysis, have received limited attention in past CSR literature (Aguilera et al., 2007; Rupp et al., 2006). Additionally, a recent global survey of 1122 corporate executives perceived that businesses benefit from CSR because it increases attractiveness to potential and existing employees (Economist, 2008: 13). A French poll on CSR indicates that employees were seen as the most important stakeholder group towards whom corporations have to exercise their social responsibility (Humière & Chauveau, 2001).

In this research there is a focus on the sustainability part of CSR, titled Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER), which focuses on the protection of the environment, because of the huge impact firms can have on the ecological environment. Evidence in literature emphasizes the strategic view of CER and suggests that CER could actually help firms to reduce costs, attract consumers, and build a good reputation, thereby achieving competitive advantage and increasing profitability (Buysse & Verbeke, 2003; Clarkson et al., 2011).

2.3 Corporate environmental responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour

The topic of workplace behaviour has become increasingly important as more and more organisations implement corporate social responsibility and/or organisational sustainability strategies (Young & Tilley, 2006). However, there is still much scope for embedding sustainability into the business curriculum (Naeem & Neal, 2012).

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2.4 Affective organisational commitment

Human capital is one of the most important resources of the company as the tacit knowledge, skills, specialization, and social complexity of individuals makes them strategically valuable to the organisation. According to social identity theory, which embraces an integrated theoretical perspective on the relationship between self-concept and group behaviour (Hogg and Terry, 2001), the perceptions of employees about the organisation’s identity may influence the strength of identification with their organisation. Individuals are most happy if they associate themselves with organisations that have positive reputations, and they are proud to identify with such organisations, because these associations will enhance their self-concept (Maignan & Ferrell, 2001). These expressions of self-identity may encapsulate what sort of person someone would like to be (Markus & Nurius, 1986) or people may identify with what they care about (Frankfurt, 1988). Both expressions can act as motives for their behaviour.

The employee’s identification with the organisation, including the emotional attachment and involvement in the organisation, defines the affective commitment of the employee with their organisation (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Affective organisational commitment is related to employee performance, employee withdrawal, and turnover intentions (Mueller et al., 2012). Therefore, it is important for companies to know which determinants influence affective organisational commitment of the employee.

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commitment (Kim et al. 2010). Employees who identify with the company feel more at home, care about the well-being of the firm, and will therefore, have a more positive attitude towards the firm (Carmeli et al., 2007), which indicates the employee’s willingness to ‘go for the extra’ mile for the organisation (Ellemers et al., 2011). Research has found a positive relationship between CSR and commitment, where this relationship becomes stronger for employees who hold more belief in the importance of corporate responsibility (Peterson, 2004; Brammer et al., 2007). Therefore, this study hypothesises the following:

Hypothesis 2: Perceived corporate environmental responsibility by employees in the organisation is positively related to employees’ affective organisational commitment.

2.6 Affective organisational commitment and pro-environmental behaviour

Literature argues that employees who are more committed to their organisation are more likely to display pro-environmental behaviours in the workplace (Biga et al., 2012). Also, Paillé & Boiral (2013), reported findings of a positive relation between commitment to the organisation and organisational citizenship behaviours for the environment (OCBE). Affective organisational commitment (AC) can be characterized as (a) a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values; (b) a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; and (c) a strong desire to maintain membership in the organisation (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). Furthermore, the environmental management literature suggests that commitment from employees across all levels in the organisation is necessary for sustainability (Topf, 2000; Zutshi & Sohal, 2003). Therefore, it can be assumed that AC is an important factor towards PEB. Employees who feel strongly committed towards to organisation will engage in PEB more than those who feel weakly committed towards the organisation. The following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 3: Employee’s affective organisational commitment is positively related to employees’ pro-environmental behaviour at work.

2.7 CER through AC towards PEB

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committed to the organisation, they will be more willing to act in a manner that benefits the organisation. This can be referred to as the social exchange theory, which addresses the main effects of reciprocity on long-term relationships amongst stakeholders within an organisation. If employees are aware that becoming greener is an important objective of their organisation, and the organisation demonstrates its interest in creating, developing and maintaining high-quality relationships on a long term period, individuals might be more prone to reciprocate by performing PEBs in the workplace (Paillé & Jorge, 2014).

Combining the recent studies that link employee attitudes and pro-environmental behaviour (Paillé & Boiral, 2013) with the aforementioned hypotheses, namely the effect of both CER (hypothesis 1) on PEB, CER on AC (hypothesis 2) and AC on CER (hypothesis 3) it is postulated that employee’s perceptions of organisation’s CER will lead them to

affectively commit with the organisation and, in turn, will behave pro-environmental.

Hypothesis 4: Employee’s affective organisational commitment mediates the relationship between perceived corporate environmental responsibility by employees in the organisation and employees’ pro-environmental behaviour at work.

2.8 Cultural values

Nowadays, many organisations are internationally oriented and contain multi-cultural workforces. According to Eisenberg (2013), the rapid increase of globalization processes in many aspects of social and work life in the last two decades of the 20th century resulted in record numbers of individuals who, on a daily basis, interact and work with individuals who have been socialized in significantly different cultures. Culture joins with social structure, history, demography, and ecology in complex reciprocal relations that influence every aspect of how we live (Schwartz, 2006). Therefore, it is not easy to measure culture, but researchers try to identify culture by studying the literature of a society or its legal, economic, family, or governance systems. What they seek, implicitly or explicitly, are underlying value emphases (Weber, 1958). Accordingly, studying value emphases directly is an especially efficient way to capture and characterize cultures (Schwartz, 2006).

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a system of value priorities. The total number of values that people possess is relatively small. Therefore, relative to other antecedents of behaviour (e.g. attitudes), values provide an economically efficient instrument for describing and explaining similarities and differences between persons, groups, nations, and culture (Rokeach, 1973).

Many studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between values and pro-environmental behaviour, in social and pro-environmental psychology. Often, values seem to have an indirect rather than a direct effect on pro-environmental behaviour, through behaviour specific beliefs, norms and intentions (Feather, 1990). Pro-environmental behaviours are typically seen as moral behaviours, that is, people do not mainly behave pro-environmentally because they are maximizing utility but also because they want to act based on what they believe is best for other people (de Groot, 2008).

There are different theories and models that show different routes, which aim to explain and predict PEB, such as the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), the norm activation model (Schwartz, 1981) and the value-belief-norm theory (Stern, 2000). The theory of planned behaviour indicates that beliefs influence attitudes, these attitudes influence the intention to behave, which lead to actual behaviour. Whereas, the norm activation model argues that awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility steers personal norms, which influence actual behaviour. While, the value-belief-norm theory suggest that values influence beliefs, which influence personal norms and that leads to actual behaviour. All these theories suggest that values lead to norms, which eventually leads to a certain behaviour. Values and norms are closely related, where values are defined as general desirable trans-situational goals varying in importance, which serve as a guiding principle in people’s life (Schwartz, 1992) and personal norms reflect self-expectations and are experienced as feelings of moral obligation to engage in the relevant behaviour (Schwartz, 1977). The current research focuses specifically on values, as values are abstract as well general and remain relatively stable over time (Stern, 2000; Schwartz, Bardi & Bianchi, 2000), which can affect behaviour indirectly or directly. Different values among different cultures are tested, as the intensity of certain values vary between countries and global regions.

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societies: embeddedness versus autonomy, hierarchy versus egalitarianism, and mastery versus harmony (Schwartz, 2006). This study specifically focuses on the cultural values, egalitarianism and harmony, which tend to be related to PEB.

The dimension egalitarianism vs. hierarchy correlates with the behaviour of people to preserve the social fabric in a responsible manner. Egalitarianism (from French égal, meaning ‘equal’) seeks to induce people to recognize one another as moral equals who share basic interests as human beings. People are socialized to internalize a commitment to cooperate and to feel concern for everyone’s welfare. They are expected to act for the benefit of others as a matter of choice. For example important values in such cultures include equality, social justice, responsibility, help, and honesty. On the contrary, cultural hierarchy relies on hierarchical systems of ascribed roles to ensure responsible, productive behaviour. It defines the unequal distribution of power, roles, and resources as legitimate. People are socialized to take the hierarchical distribution of roles for granted and to comply with the obligations and rules attached to their roles. Values like social power, authority, humility, and wealth are highly important in hierarchical cultures (Schwartz, 2006).

Karp (1996) examined the influence of values on environmental behaviour and used the general human value measurement of Schwartz, which can be compared with the investigation of the cultural values of Schwartz. He found that the values, self-transcendent/openness to change, and universalism/biospheric, have a positive influence on environmental behaviour. Universalism represents ‘understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and nature’ (Karp, 1996). This corresponds with the cultural value egalitarianism, which stands for feeling concern for everyone’s welfare. In addition, cultural cognition research suggests that people with egalitarian and communitarian perspectives are more likely to acknowledge that global temperatures are increasing, and that humans are causing climate change compared to those with hierarchical and individualistic perspectives (Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011).

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that the samples from different countries are matched on critical characteristics, because cultural differences within regions are meaningful (Schwartz, 2006).

Value orientations may be important determinants to explain pro-environmental behaviour (De Groot et al., 2007). Ruepert et al. (2016) found recently a direct effect of biospheric values on a certain type of PEB at work. On the basis of the above, it would be relevant to explore the direct relation of values towards PEB more thoroughly. Hence, this study examines the direct relations of cultural values on PEB. Conforming egalitarianism, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 5a: Employees who strongly value egalitarianism will engage in pro-environmental behaviour.

Subsequently, the dimension harmony vs. mastery correlates with how people manage their relations to the natural and social world. Harmony emphasizes fitting into the world as it is, trying to understand and appreciate rather than to change, direct, or to exploit. Important values in harmony cultures includes world at peace, unity with nature, and protecting the environment. Mastery is the polar cultural opposite and encourages active self-assertion in order to master, direct, and change the natural and social environment to attain group or personal goals. Values such as ambition, success, daring, and competence are especially important in mastery cultures (Schwartz, 2006).

According to the cultural value ‘universalism’ of Karp (1996), which resulted in positively influencing PEB and stands for: ‘understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and nature’. Especially the last part of this human value corresponds with the cultural value harmony, which stands for world at peace, unity with nature, and protecting the environment. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 5b: Employees who strongly value harmony will engage in pro-environmental behaviour.

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well-being of all members of society and feel responsible for its promotion (House et al., 2004). Humane orientation is in line with the cultural value egalitarianism, which also stands for well-being of all members of society by feeling concern for everyone’s welfare, equality, social justice, responsibility, help and honesty. Therefore, the next hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 6a: The relationship between perceived corporate environmental

responsibility and affective organisational commitment is more positive in the organisation when the employee strongly values egalitarianism.

Furthermore, the tested humane orientation in the research of Mueller et al. (2012) is also in line with the cultural value harmony, which importantly values world at peace, unity with nature and protecting the environment, corresponding the well-being of members of society. The relation between CSR and AC was as well confirmed by the research of Ditlev-Simonsen (2015), but she did not incorporate the cultural differences. Little is known in the fields of organisational behaviour and industrial and organisational psychology about the effects of CER on employees’ attitudes and the differences among cultures (Mueller et al., 2012.). Therefore, this study tries to give rise to new insights about the influence of cultural values on the relation between CER and AC. According to previous findings, it is assumed that employees who value the world at peace and protecting the environment will feel more committed to their company if the organisation acts beyond the well-being of individuals and the society, as employees who highly value harmony are possibly more sensitive for the CER activities of the organisation. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 6b: The relationship between perceived corporate environmental

responsibility and affective organisational commitment is more positive in the organisation when the employee strongly values harmony.

METHODOLOGY

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3.1 Procedure and participants

This paper tries to provide a contribution to the literature by testing corporate environmental responsibility, affective organisational commitment and cultural values on pro-environmental behaviour at the workplace. The research is conducted in the University of Groningen, which is the examined organisation. Data is collected from organisational members of different departments, ranging from PhD students to full professors, secretaries to general managers, and students of different faculties. All the members of the researched organisation are called employees in this study, but in the data analysis potential differences between students and workers of the University of Groningen are taken into account, as they contain some varying characteristics.

According to Lozano et al. (2013), universities could play a critical role in the transition toward a more sustainable society. Universities can contribute to the education about sustainability for students, and teachers and other staff members can be a role model of students (Blok et al., 2014). According to the Green Metric World University Ranking (2016), the University of Groningen is ranked 12th_{out of 407 universities worldwide on sustainability, and} the most sustainable University in the Netherlands. The University of Groningen focuses on sustainability in their policy, teaching and research, business operations and in the construction of new buildings. Waste is separated into 28 different streams and collected in electrical vans, and technologies such as concrete core activation are used in new construction work. In addition, the University of Groningen encourages its students and staff to think about sustainability via contests like the Green Mind Award. The University of Groningen has set itself the goal of promoting sustainable development in every aspect of University operations (rug.nl, 2016). Furthermore, the University of Groningen is a multinational organisation with 30,000 students, including 3,750 international students and employs 5,500 staff members of whom more than 1,200 are from abroad. Therefore, the University of Groningen seems to be a suitable organisation for the current research to test if CER will relate to PEB and the influences of the tested cultural value orientations.

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participants who indicated not being part of the RUG, the final sample was reduced to 128 respondents. The respondent group consisted of 58 (45.3%) men and 70 (54.7%) women, with an average age of 30 years (Mage = 30.4, SD = 12.88). 48 respondents were employees and 80 of the respondents were students. Most respondents (35.2%) were part of the Economics and Business Department, but the rest (64.8%) were uniformly allocated among the other departments. The level of education was equally distributed between, high school degree (26.6 %), College (5.5%), Bachelor’s Degree (28.1%), Master’s Degree (21.9%) and PhD (18.0%).

3.2 Measures

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The construct CER activities is tested by the questionnaire of Ellemers et al. (2011). The three statements measured different sustainable activities in the organisation. The answers were captured on a scale from 1 (=disagree) up to 7 (=agree).

Affective organisational commitment is tested with four items by the measurement of Allen & Meyer (1990). In previous research, the measure has been shown to demonstrate psychometric equivalence across countries, as well as the expected relationships with external measures, including job satisfaction (Hattrup, Mueller, & Aguirre, 2008). The answers were captured on a scale from 1 (=disagree) up to 7 (=agree).

Cultural values were tested by the Schwartz Value Survey that includes 23 value items from the short version of the Portrait Value Questionnaire, which is designed to measure basic individual values (Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004). The given portrait describes a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a value. Respondents rate the importance of each as “How much like you is this person?” A scale from 1 (= very much like me) to 6 (= not like me at all) was used. Respondents’ own values were inferred from their self-reported similarity to people described implicitly in terms of particular values. Within-country analyses in each country confirmed reasonable meaning equivalence across countries for all items used (Schwartz, 2006).

Four control variables were included: gender, age, job title (student or employee) and cultural region. Gender was reported as the dummy variable ‘female’ (0= male, 1 = female), job title was reported as the dummy variable ‘student’ (0= employee, 1= student) and the cultural region variable was divided in 4 dummy variables: Netherlands dummy (0= other, 1= The Netherlands), East-Europe dummy (0= other, 1= East-Europe), West-Europe dummy (0= other, 1= West-Europe), Latin America dummy (0= other, 1= Latin America) and outside these regions dummies means that it is another region, because some countries fall outside these regions, but couldn’t form a separate region group.

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and van der Bij, 2012). The separate section with the detailed description of the research methodology and survey questions in the appendix secures the controllability of the study result. This ensures that other scientists can replicate the study and enables them to evaluate the reliability and validity criteria (van Aken, Berends & van der Bij, 2012).

3.3 Data analysis

A quantitative research method is used to test the proposed hypotheses. For the data analysis, the statistical program SPSS was used. Firstly, the Spearman’s rho correlation test was used to check for correlations between the items to compute the variables. This test was used for the correlation, because the variables were measured on an ordinal scale, and examines the correlation between two measures of nonmetric correlation. Subsequently the correlation test was used to check for multicollinearity and relations between the variables. The reliability of the scales was tested by Cronbach’s alpha to confirm good internal correlation of each item in the scale. A Cronbach’s alpha above 0.6 indicates a good internal reliability. Secondly, a Harman’s single-factor test was used, to address the issue of common method bias by loading all the variables on one factor (Podsakoff, 2003). Thirdly, in order to test the hypotheses, a linear regression was conducted and the Baron & Kenny (1986) method was used to test the mediation effect (Hypotheses 1-4). The hierarchical linear modelling (HLM), also called multi-level modelling, was used as the hypotheses were explicitly hierarchical in nature and all the tested constructs were grand-mean-centred. To examine hypotheses 6a and 6b, interaction variables were made of the cultural values egalitarianism and harmony with CER to test the moderation effect.

Additionally, the Preacher and Hayes (2004) bootstrap method was used to assess the significance or non-significance of the mediation effect by repeatedly randomly sampling observations with replacement from the data set to compute the desired statistics in each resample.The number of samples used for the indirect effect confidence intervals was 20,000. The range of the confidence intervals reaches from a negative lower bound (valued as LLCI= lower level confidence interval) to a positive upper bound (valued as ULCI= upper level confidence interval) and thus implies that with a probability of 95% the mediation relationship should not lie within the interval that encompasses the zero. The mediation is significant when the interval is significantly different from zero.

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parametric test to compare differences between two independent groups, when the dependent variable is either ordinal or continuous.

RESULTS

In this section, the obtained results from the questionnaires are presented. First, the descriptive statistics will show the correlations and the nature of the data. Subsequently, the results of the hypotheses and an additional analysis of the data will be given.

4.1 Descriptive statistics

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations and reliabilities for the used variables. However, the various underlying activities of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) scores differently. The respondents reported PEB printing with a high average of 6.07 (SD=1.15), PEB shopping with a low average of 3.88 (SD=1.42) and PEB energy use with an average of 5.13 (SD=1.67). The variable ‘PEB’ constructed from these 3 different activities has a mean of 5.03 (SD=1.15), but the reliability of the resulting scale was not very high (α=0.49). Therefore, the analysis was run with the different types of pro-environmental behaviours separately, as well as, the mean score across behaviours. As the pattern of results were very similar for the different indicators of pro-environmental behaviour, only the analyses with overall pro-environmental behaviour as the dependent variable are reported. Furthermore, all the other variables had a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.6 or higher, therefore the variables are reliable.

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Table 1 - Descriptive statistics, reliabilities and correlations

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. CER 4,62 0,97 (.59) 2. AC 4,86 1,26 .40** _(.86) 3. At. PEB 5,84 0,96 .24** _.08 _(.90) 4. PEB 5,03 0,90 .14 .09 .33** _(.49) 5. PEB printing 6,07 1,15 .19* _.11 _.06 _.49** _(.56) 6. PEB shopping 3,88 1,42 .09 .11 .48** _.60** _-.04 _(.64) 7. PEB energy 5,13 1,67 .10 -.02 .13 .74** _.20* _.21* _(.68) 8. Egalitarianism 5.03 0.67 .21* _.02 _.42** _.17 _-.09 _.38** _.08 _(.58) 9. Harmony 4.39 0.97 .20* _.15 _.57** _.28** _-.04 _.44** _.17 _.49** _(.76) 10. Female dummy 0.55 0.50 .04 -.01 .24** _-.01 _-.00 _.11 _-.11 _.27** _.07 11. Age 30.4 12.88 -.06 .29** -.11 -.09 -.12 .08 -.16 -.24** -.16 -.21* 12. Student dummy 0.63 0.47 -.02 -.32** _.06 _.09 _.05 _-.10 _.19* _.18* _.21* _.14 _-.81**

Note: N=128. Numbers in parentheses are coefficient alphas. Variables 1 – 7, 11 and 12 are measured on a 7-point scale (1 to 7). Variables 8 and 9 are measured on a 6-7-point scale (1 to 6). CER =corporate social responsibility, AC= affective organisational commitment, At. PEB= attitude towards pro-environmental behaviour, PEB= Pro-environmental behaviour. **p<0.01, *p<0.05

4.2 Common method bias

This study was drawn using a cross-sectional design, therefore was tested for common method bias. This is a potential problem in behavioural research and includes variance that is attributable to the measurement method rather than to the constructs the measures represent (Podsakoff, 2003). Therefore, a Harman’s single-factor test was used, which is one of the most widely used techniques to address the issue of common method bias. All the variables were loaded on one factor and examined with the un-rotated factor solution (Podsakoff, 2003), where the variance of the factor (23.846%) did not explain more than 50 percent, which shows low evidence for common method bias in this study.

4.3 Test of hypotheses 1 - 4

In order to test the hypothesis a linear regression analysis was used. In order to assess, whether the effect of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) on pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is affected by affective organisational commitment (AC), a mediation analysis of Baron and Kenny (1986) was conducted. According to Baron and Kenny (1986) ‘a given variable may be said to function as a mediator to the extent that it accounts for the relation between the predictor and the criterion’.

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positive effect on pro-environmental behaviour of employees in the workplace, which is statistically significant and confirms hypothesis 1 (β = 0.172 , p<0.05, (p = 0.036)), which is presented in table 2 model 1. Furthermore, the control variables age, gender, job title (student or employee) and region were added to the baseline regression. The direct relation between CER and PEB stayed weak positive significant (β = 0.20, p<0.05), were the control variables did not significantly influenced PEB (table 2 model 2).

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29 Table 2 - HLM results for full maximum-likelihood estimates of the effects of CER, AC, cultural values and control variables on PEB in the main sample (N = 128)

Dependent variable: Pro-environmental behaviour

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Intercept 4.23**(0.38) 4.57**(0.68) 4.93**(0.59) 4.38**(.69) 2.33**(.73)

CER 0.17* (0.08) 0.20*(0.09) .14(.10) .06(.09)

AC 0.15*(0.07) .11(.07) .10(.07)

Attitude towards PEB .43**(.08)

Indirect CER through AC .05 (.04)

Indirect CER through At. PEB .09**(.04)

Control variables

Female dummy -0.08(0.16) -0.09(0.16) -.09(.16) -.30(.15)

Age -0.01(0.01) -0.02(0.01) -.02(.01) -.02(.01)

Student dummy -0.02(0.26) 0.01(0.27) .03(.26) .01(.24) Netherlands dummy 0.07(0.30) -0.07(0.29) .03(.30) .24(.27) East Europe dummy -0.42(0.38) -0.49(0.38) -.49(.38) -.37(.34) West Europe dummy 0.08(0.32) 0.01(0.32) .06(.32) .10(.29) Latin America dummy 0.00(0.40) -0.12(0.40) -.04(.40) -.12(.36) Cultural values Egalitarianism Harmony

Note: Entries corresponding to the predicting variables are unstandardized regression coefficients of the fixed effects; standard errors are in parentheses. Results are grand-mean-centred. HLM= hierarchical linear

modelling, CER= corporate environmental responsibility, AC= affective commitment, PEB= pro-environmental behaviour, At. PEB= attitude towards pro-environmental behaviour.

4.4 Test of CER, attitude towards PEB and actual PEB

Additionally, testing CER on the attitude towards PEB, a positive significant relation was found, the direct relation between CER and attitude PEB was confirmed (β = 0.20, p<0.05). Also the relation between attitude towards PEB and actual PEB was tested significantly positive (β =0.43, p<0.01), which is presented in model 5 of table 2 were a linear regression with these three variables was conducted. Model 5 shows that the direct relation between CER and PEB became insignificant, where attitude towards PEB and PEB stayed significant.

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environmental responsibility on pro-environmental behaviour is mediated by the attitude towards pro-environmental behaviour.

4.5 Test of hypotheses 5a & 5b

Initially, a Spearman’s rho correlation of the two cultural values was conducted. Results show that egalitarianism and harmony significantly correlate (r=0.49, p<0.01) (table 1). Furthermore, a Spearman’s rho correlation of the variables egalitarianism, CER and PEB was conducted to test multicollinearity. The test showed a correlation between CER and egalitarianism (r=0.21, p<0.05), but egalitarianism does not directly correlate with the variable PEB. Though egalitarianism does correlate with attitude towards PEB (r=0.42, p<0.01) and PEB shopping (r= 0.38, p<0.01).

A linear regression with CER, PEB and egalitarianism was conducted to test hypothesis 5a. The direct relation between CER and PEB stayed significant (β =0.20, p<0.05) (model 6 table 3), where the relation between egalitarianism and PEB became insignificant (β =0.05, p>0.05), where egalitarianism to attitude towards PEB became significant (β =0.34, p<0.05) (appendix 1). Also, the interaction effect of CER and egalitarianism towards PEB was insignificant (β=0.01, P>0.05). Therefore, hypothesis 5a is rejected. Additionally, a bootstrap test with the Preacher and Hayes method was done to check for potential mediation of the direct effect between CER through egalitarianism to PEB, where the mediation was insignificant (β =0.01, LLCI= -0.025; ULCI= 0.058). Though, the bootstrap test showed a significant mediation of the indirect effect of CER through egalitarianism to attitude towards PEB (β = 0.06, LLCI= 0.011; ULCI= 0.134) (appendix 1).

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7 table 3). Also, the bootstrap test showed a significant mediation of the indirect effect of CER through harmony to the attitude towards PEB (β= 0.14, LLCI= 0.048, ULCI= 0.257).

Additionally, model 9 in table 3 shows the effect of all variables, CER, the tested cultural values and the control variables on PEB. The model shows that only harmony stayed to have a strong positive significant influence on pro-environmental behaviour, when all variables are included.

Table 3 - HLM results for full maximum-likelihood estimates of the effects of CER, AC, cultural values and control variables on PEB in the main sample (N = 128)

Dependent variable: Pro-environmental behaviour

Variable Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 Model 9

Intercept 4.37**(.91) 4.00**(.70) 4.13**(.82) 3.92**(.98)

CER .20* (.09) .14(.09) .21*(.09) .16(.09)

Indirect CER through Egal. _.01(.02)

Indirect CER through Har. _.07**(0.04)

Control variables

Female dummy -.09(.17) -.08(.16) -.05(.17) -.01(.17)

Age -.02(.01) -.02(.01) -.01(.01) -.01(.01)

Student dummy -.03(.27) -.20(.26) -.01(.26) -.17(.26) Netherlands dummy .06(.31) .10(.29) .13(.30) .12(.30) East Europe dummy -.45(.40) -.36(.37) -.37(.38) -.40(.39) West Europe dummy .06(.33) .11(.32) .16(.33) .18(.32) Latin America

dummy -.02(.41) .02(.39) .02(.40) .01(.40)

Cultural values

Egalitarianism .05(.14) -.12(.14)

Harmony .24**(.09) .26**(.10)

Note: Entries corresponding to the predicting variables are unstandardized regression coefficients of the fixed effects; standard errors are in parentheses. Results are grand-mean-centred. HLM= hierarchical linear modelling, CER= corporate environmental responsibility, Egal.= egalitarianism, Har.= harmony.

4.6 Test of hypotheses 6a & 6b

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Firstly, the results show that the relation of CER and AC stayed significant (β =0.50, p=0.000), whereas egalitarianism has an insignificant effect on AC (β =0.07, p=0.443), but the interaction effect of egalitarianism x CER had a weak significant effect on AC (β = 0.21, p< 0.05) (model A table 4). Though, the interaction effect of CER and egalitarianism stayed not significant in the regression of all variables on AC (model D table 4). Therefore, egalitarianism has a weak moderating effect on the relation between CER and AC, which confirms hypothesis 6a.

Secondly, the linear regression between the variables CER, AC and the interaction of CER and harmony shows that the relation between CER and AC stayed significant (β =0.47, p<0.01), where the interaction of CER and harmony was insignificant (β= 0.06, P>0.05) and harmony also had an insignificant effect on AC (β =0.21, p>0.05). Therefore, harmony does not moderate the relation between CER and AC (model B table 4), which rejects hypothesis 6b.

Table 4 - HLM results for full maximum-likelihood estimates of the effects of CER, cultural values and control variables on AC in the main sample (N = 128)

Dependent variable: affective organisational commitment

Variable Baseline regression with control variables Model A Model B Model C Model D Intercept 1.85*( .83) 1.48(1.10) 1.23(.89) 1.08(.99) .86(1.21) CER .53**( .11) .50**( .11) .47**( .11) .54**( .11) .47**( .11) Control variables Female dummy .15(.20) .13(.21) .13(.20) .20(.20) .22(.21) Age .02(.01) .02(.01) .02(.01) .02(.01) .02(.01) Student dummy -.49(.32) -.51(.32) -.60(.33) -.48(.32) -.61(.33) Netherlands dummy .29(.37) .39(.37) .40(.37) .41(.37) .49(.37) East Europe dummy .65(.46) .87(.48) .82(.47) .73(.46) .95*(.48) West Europe dummy .14(.40) .23(.40) .25(.40) .30(.40) .41(.40) Latin America dummy .41(.49) .52(.49) .52(.50) .44(.49) .56(.49)

Cultural values Egalitarianism .07(.16) -.07(.18) Harmony .21(.11) .20(.12) Cross-level interactions CER x Egalitarianism .21*(.11) .23(.12) CER x Harmony .05(.09) -.04(.10)

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4.7 Additional analysis

Additionally, gender has a significant effect on the attitude towards PEB. A Mann-Whitney U test was conducted (p=0.008; decision reject null hypothesis) and showed that women do have a significant higher attitude towards PEB than men (Mean women=6.05; Mean man=5.57). Moreover, gender was also significant different among egalitarianism (p=0.002; decision reject null hypothesis), with men valuing egalitarianism more than women (Mean women=1.80; Mean men=2.17).

Besides the division in gender, a separation was done between students and employees. According to the energy use, on average, students switch off their computer more often than employees (p=0.031; decision rejects null hypothesis), which shows a more positive energy behaviour of students in this PEB category than that of the employees (Mean students=5.36; Mean employee=4.73).

Furthermore, the Mann-Whitney U test (p=0.000 decision rejects null hypothesis) showed that students were on average less committed to the organisation than employees (Mean students=4.56; Mean employees=5.36). For this reason, a Spearman’s rho correlation was conducted to see the effect of AC on the different PEB categories between employees and students. Remarkably, students’ AC correlates with actual PEB and printing PEB, even though the average AC of students is lower than that of the employees’ (table 1). No correlation was found between employees’ AC and the differing PEB. A linear regression test showed a positive significant relation between student’s AC and pro-environmental printing behaviour (R=0.314, β =0.278, p=0.005) and actual PEB (R=0.234, β =0.160, p=0.037). A low significant correlation was found between student’s AC with PEB and pro-environmental printing behaviour.

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34 Table 5 - Frequencies and means by Cultural regions in main sample

Cultural Region N Egali-tarianism Har-mony CER AC Attitude PEB PEB The Netherlands 73 4.88 4.23 4.43 4.93 5.63 4.98 Eastern Europe 11 4.94 4.48 5.24 5.25 5.96 4.82 Latin America 9 5.15 4.52 4.52 4.61 6.24 5.10 Western Europe 23 5.28 4.42 4.72 4.66 6.10 5.16 Asia 4 5.33 4.67 4.92 5.38 6.05 5.46 USA 2 6.00 5.50 5.33 3.63 6.90 4.06 Middle-East 3 5.78 5.11 4.78 3.59 6.13 5.71 Africa 3 5.00 4.67 5.56 5.50 5.93 5.11

NOTE: CER= corporate environmental responsibility, AC= affective commitment, PEB= pro-environmental

behaviour

DISCUSSION

Despite the growing interest in pro-environmental behaviour (PEB), far less is known about PEB in the workplace. According to Ruepert et al. (2016) it is important to understand which factors affect PEB at work, as encouraging PEB in the workplace can result in a significant reduction in environmental problems. This paper focused on the factors: CER, AC and the cultural values egalitarianism and harmony affecting PEB in the workplace.

Former research found evidence for the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and PEB (Panagiotis & Evgenia, 2015), but little attention is paid to specifically the environmental part of CSR, so called corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and additionally its impact on a micro-level. Hence, this study focused on CER, and the effect on employees’ PEB within a multi-cultural organisation. Examined was (a) the influence of employees’ perceptions of CER through AC on their PEB and (b) the role of cultural values within these associations.

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According to hypothesis 2, the results clearly show a significantly positive relation between CER and AC (figure 2), which is in line with findings of Mueller et al. (2012). Their study reveals that perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) is positively related to employees’ affective commitment (AC). On the contrary, Ellemers et al. (2011) found a less strong relation between caring about the environment and affective organisational commitment. They explained that the organisation’s concern about the environment might be more abstract and have less impact on the day-to-day work of employees. However, this study found strong positive relations between CER and affective organisational commitment, and adds to previous research, where work attitudes have received little attention (Mueller et al., 2012), that specifically CER, instead of CSR, also relates to affective organisational commitment. Additionally, it is of great importance to know which determinants influence AC, as AC is related to employee performance, employee withdrawal and turnover intentions (Mueller et al., 2012). In line with research of Kim et al. (2010), perceived CER may increase affective organisational commitment because it reflects positive social behaviour on the part of the organisation and employees identify more strongly with organisations that possess positive attributes.

In contrast to previous research, this study did not find a strong relationship between affective organisational commitment and employee’s pro-environmental behaviour. However, in this case a weak relation was found between AC and PEB (figure 2). According to hypothesis

3, employees who feel strongly committed towards the organization will engage in PEB more

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exchange, the latter may become more satisfied and committed, which may in turn encourage them to engage in organisational citizenship behaviour for the environment in order to help their organisation to become more pro-environmental. However, this study did not find the mediation of employee’s affective organisational commitment between the relation of perceived CER by employees in the organisation and employees’ PEB at work. In contrast to

hypothesis 4, the findings display that employee’s perceptions of organisation’s CER will not

specifically lead them to affectively commit with the organisation and, in turn, to behave pro-environmental.

CSR has often been explicitly defined in relation to the values of society, but according to Gjølberg (2009), cross-cultural research on the topic is still limited. Contrary to the research of Mueller et al. (2012), which demonstrates that cultural values seem to be substantial moderators of the effects of perceived CSR on employees AC, this study only found a weak moderating influence of Schwartz’ (2004) cultural value, egalitarianism, on the relation between CER and AC (figure 2). According to hypothesis 6b, the relationship between perceived corporate environmental responsibility and affective organisational commitment is more positive in the organisation when the employee strongly values egalitarianism. In contrast to hypothesis 6a, the relationship between perceived CER and AC is not more positive in the organisation when the employee strongly values harmony.

Furthermore, the direct effect of egalitarianism and harmony were tested towards PEB. In contrast to hypothesis 5a, the results did not find a relation between egalitarianism and PEB, which assumes that employees who strongly value egalitarianism will not engage in PEB. According to hypothesis 5b, employees who strongly value harmony will engage in pro-environmental behaviour. This is in line with the findings of Karp (1996) who found a positive influence of the human value ‘universalism’, a similar value as harmony and egalitarianism, on environmental behaviour.

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37 Figure 2 – The results of the tested relations between: CER, AC, PEB, egalitarianism and harmony

Note: The mediating effect of AC between CER and PEB was not found.

5.1 Additional findings

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38 Figure 3 – Additional findings: mediating effect CER through attitude towards PEB to actual PEB; mediating effect CER through cultural values to attitude towards PEB

5.2 Theoretical implications

This research contributes to the literature on PEB in six different ways. Firstly, CER is not well researched in the field of organisational behaviour and there is little understanding about the impact of CER at the micro-level of analysis. This study found the direct relation of CER to PEB and suggests that an organisation’s sustainability activities on a corporate level can encourage PEB of employees on an individual level.

Secondly, this study reveals that CER, AC and the cultural value harmony, have a direct influence to PEB at work. Therefore, this study adds evidence to literature about the factors that encourages PEB specifically in the workplace, which can eventually results in a significant reduction in environmental problems.

Thirdly, respondents in this study reported to have a high positive attitude towards PEB at work, which is an important finding, and in line with research of Ruepert (2016), suggesting that employees feel morally obliged to act pro-environmentally at work, and thus does not seem to deny the importance of engaging in pro-environmental actions in the workplace.

Fourthly, this study found the direct influence of CER to AC. Therefore, it may be that environmental responsible activities of the organisation can increase employees’ commitment to their organisation. Moreover, this study suggests that CER is not only beneficial for environmental protection, but also for the internal environment of the organisation.

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Lastly, according to the additional results of the mediation effect of harmony between CER and PEB, it can be assumed that employees who highly value harmony, which stands for inter alia the world at peace and protecting the environment, are possibly stimulated by the CER activities of the organisation, which likely encourages the PEB of this person. A person that does not value harmony thoughts will perhaps not be influenced by the corporate environmental activities through their cultural values to act pro-environmental. This study suggests that the environmental activities of a corporation can stimulate and/or encourage harmony values of a person, which in turn increases their PEB. Therefore, organisations should show their sustainable behaviour to stimulate egalitarianism and/ or harmony values of employees, instead of missing this opportunity or even weakening these values by, for example, stimulating other values, which does not encourage PEB, or even diminishing PEB.

5.3 Practical implications

The results provide some interesting implications for organisations. There is still little comprehension of how a firm’s environmental practices promotes employee’s environmental behaviour. This study found evidence for the direct relation between CER and PEB. This implies specifically that the perception of employees regarding the environmental responsible character of the organisation significantly contributes to demonstrations of pro-environmental behaviour. Therefore, environmental activities of the organisation should be taken into account by managers if they want to influence the employee’s environmental behaviour. Although, PEB is often based on voluntary and unrewarded actions, Paillé and Boiral (2013) suggests that environmental leadership and formal policies can send a positive signal to employees and help promote sustainable initiatives. Moreover, the perceptions, according to CER, has an influence on actual behaviour, so organisations should communicate internally the pro-environmental activities that they have accomplished in order to make employees aware. Otherwise employees cannot act according to the CER actions that they perceive. Paillé and Boiral (2013) also propose that environmental training should have a positive impact on PEB by promoting the values and knowledge needed to stimulate appropriate initiatives in this area.