Augmenting environmental sustainability through the exchange of green creative ideas – evidence from an emerging economy

Abstract

Leader trustworthiness and perceived green reputation are becoming increasingly important for driving the exchange of green creative ideas within a team. The effective exchange of green creative ideas is relevant for building organisational strategies that align with the United Nations global compact environmental sustainability principles and helps advance the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDG). However, evidence from emerging countries is limited. This paper contributes by investigating the case of the Nigerian manufacturing sector, wherein organisations have achieved little success in cultivating the effective exchange of green creative ideas. Through the lens of the social exchange and stakeholder theory, this study investigates the predictive powers of leaders’ trustworthiness and perceived green reputation on green creative ideas exchange amongst their respective team members. Utilising a cross-sectional (but time lagged) data collection method, a total of 350 employees from 21 different manufacturing organisations participated in this research. Results indicate that perceived green reputation, integrity and benevolence are positive predictors of green creative ideas exchange. Surprisingly, perceived green reputation attenuates the positive relationships between benevolence, integrity and green creative ideas exchange. Furthermore, perceived green reputation reinforces the link between ability and green creative ideas exchange. Leaders and practitioners may therefore, consider exhibiting more benevolence that could support the increase of team members’ perception of their green reputation. Policies can be instituted to further ensure that leaders maintain perceived green reputation that is grounded on all trustworthiness dimensions.