Amid the growth of scholarly research on environmental workplace behaviors, two limitations stand out. First, there has been scant research on the cross‐level effects of organizational‐level determinants on individual employee environmental behaviors using a methodologically appropriate multilevel analytic approach. Second, there has been an overwhelming focus on voluntary, as opposed to task‐related, employee environmentally friendly behaviors. In addressing these limitations, this field study (N = 615 U.S.‐based employees nested in 51 organizations) makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature, (...) specifically by linking the dimensions of organizational‐level environmental orientation with individual‐level employee environmental in‐role (i.e., task‐related) behaviors using multilevel analysis. The results indicate that organizational internal environmental orientation is positively related to employee recycling behavior. Managerial status exerts a moderating effect, such that the positive relationship between internal environmental orientation and energy‐saving behavior is stronger among managers than among non‐managers. Furthermore, an organization's external environmental orientation has an unequivocal positive relationship only with employee energy‐saving behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is particularly suited for driving employee sustainability behaviors, which are more ethically complex than the types of employee ethical behaviors typically examined by prior research. Through four studies, two involving the actual employees of construction companies, (...) we demonstrate that purpose drives the sustainability behaviors of employees by causing them to take psychological ownership of sustainability. In addition, we show that the sustainability-enhancing effect of purpose is stronger when employees perceive that they have higher autonomy in enacting their sustainability actions and for those employees for whom being moral is more central to their sense of self. (shrink)