Employees’ Response to Corporate Greenwashing

Abstract

Although research has begun to investigate greenwashing, the effect of this phenomenon on employees has not yet been considered. Accordingly, we investigate greenwashing from an organizational psychology lens, exploring the impact it can have on employees, and whether these effects differ for different types of employees (i.e., those who have an educational background in environmental science and/or sustainability and those who do not). Using data collected at three separate time points from two distinct employee groups, our results show that greenwashing was negatively related to employees’ other-serving/genuine CSR attributions, pro-environmental work climate perceptions as well as their organizational trust and identification, but only for employees educated in environmental science and/or sustainability. Surprisingly, we found that greenwashing was positively related to self-serving CSR perceptions for both employee groups. These findings generate insights into the extent to which corporate environmental communications can backfire, by uncovering the deleterious effects greenwashing can have for certain employees.