Exploring the Impact of Sustainability Control Systems on Employees’ Green Creativity: The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment and Sustainability Learning Capabilities

Abstract

This paper investigates how sustainability control systems (SCSs) drive employees’ green creativity (EGC) with the purpose of assisting organisations in the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector to improve their environmental sustainability performance. Managers and staff of manufacturing firms often lack awareness of environmental issues, which leads to unsustainable strategies. EGC has been identified as an important resource for devising sustainable strategies. SCSs drive employee behaviour and support EGC by fostering a creative workplace. Utilising Simons’ Levers of Controls (LoC) framework, a mediation model incorporating psychological empowerment (PE) and sustainability learning capabilities (SLCs) is tested to provide insights on how SCSs influence EGS. Survey data collected from 239 organisations in the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector were analysed using the PLS-SEM method. The results confirm the full mediating roles of PE and SLCs on the link between SCSs and EGC. This demonstrates the importance of empowering employees and enhancing their learning capabilities to encourage EGC. This study contributes to Simons’ LoC framework by incorporating sustainability dimensions into management control systems (MCSs), and extends the extant body of knowledge by providing a specific understanding of the mechanisms driving EGC through PE and SLCs.