Perceived Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility and Employees' Innovative Behavior: A Stimulus-Organism-Response Perspective.

Weiwei Wu,Tianyi Zhang,Haiyan Li,Li Yu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.777657

Abstract

Drawing from the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this study examines how and under what circumstances perceived environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) affects innovative behavior of employees in the context of environmental protection. Using a sample of 398 employees from different firms in the high energy-consuming industry of China, the results indicate that, at first, perceived ECSR provides a positive effect on organizational identification. Secondly, organizational identification has a positive influence on the innovative behavior of employees. Thirdly, organizational identification plays an important mediating effect between perceived ECSR and the innovative behavior of employees. Fourthly, both the effect of perceived ECSR on organizational identification and the indirect effect of perceived ECSR on the innovative behavior of the employees via organizational identification will be stronger when the levels of organizational trust are high. These findings add new insights into the perceived ECSR-employees’ innovative behavior relationship and provide important managerial implications for enhancing ECSR perception to improve the innovative behavior of employees.

Highlights

There is considerable agreement that the activities of the firms are the main cause of environmental degradation (Tian and Robertson, 2019)
The results report that perceived environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) is significantly associated with organizational identification (r = 0.417, p < 0.01), and organizational identification significantly affects the innovative behavior of employees (r = 0.369, p < 0.01)
Organizational trust is significantly associated with organizational identification and innovative behavior of employees, which suggests that organizational trust may strengthen the effect of perceived ECSR on both organizational identification and innovative behavior of employees

Summary

Introduction

There is considerable agreement that the activities of the firms are the main cause of environmental degradation (Tian and Robertson, 2019). Controlling pollutant emissions from high energy-consuming firms and developing cleaner energy sources have become the core requirements of the economic construction of China (Zhang and Liu, 2019; Han, 2021). In such a context, firms that want to meet these requirements and survive need to depend more on innovation (Tang et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2021). Employee innovation is the foundation of the innovation of firms (Shin et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2019). Existing research has suggested that innovative behavior of employees is extremely important because it can play a key role

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