Taoist leadership and employee green behaviour: A cultural and philosophical microfoundation of sustainability

• Date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2221
• Published date: 01 November 2017

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Taoist leadership and employee green behaviour: A cultural and

philosophical microfoundation of sustainability

Yijun Xing

1

|Mark Starik

2

1

School of Economics and Management,

Beijing Jiao Tong University, Beijing, China

2

Department of Management, Kogod School

of Business, American University, Washington,

District of Columbia, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Yijun Xing, School of Economics and

Management, Beijing Jiao Tong University,

Beijing, China.

Email: dr.yijunxing@gmail.com

Summary

Existing research shows that leadership behaviours can influence the proenvironment beliefs of

employees and their green behaviours. However, the mechanisms that nurture the

proenvironment attitudes of employees remain unclear. By juxtaposing Taoist philosophy and

Aldo Leopold's land ethic, this paper explores how the former can theoretically advance the latter

from a cultural and philosophical microfoundational perspective. Taoism, which treats human

beings and the natural environment as components of an integral oneness, has important implica-

tions for both Taoist leadership behaviours and the management of sustainability. We posit that

the attributions of Taoist leadership—rejection of domination,reverse thinking, and selflessness—can

nurture employee proenvironment attitudes. Using the narratives of Chinese leaders and

employees, our research empirically shows that the proenvironment attitudes and green

behaviours of employees can be nurtured through Taoist leadership. Our paper contributes the

field of sustainability management by suggesting Taoism as a cultural and philosophical

microfoundation for sustainability.

KEYWORDS

Aldo Leopold's landethic, culture, employee green behaviour, microfoundation, philosophy,

proenvironmentattitudes, Taoist leadership

1|INTRODUCTION

Globally, sustainability management has received significant atten-

tion from academics, practitioners, and policymakers (Bansal & Song,

2017; Starik & Marcus, 2000; Starik, Rands, Marcus, & Clark, 2010).

Multiple global, regional, and local sustainability issues have been

identified as being worthy of significant attention and action. Among

many others, these include climate change, water quality and scar-

city, economic inequality, and biodiversity (Brown, 2010; Winn &

Pogutz, 2013).

Numerous stakeholders have been identified as being key players

in the advancement of sustainable development. They exist at the

“meso level”of business, government, and nonprofit organizations,

and at the “micro level”of individuals and small groups within these

organizations—that is, as employees (Starik, Stubbs, & Benn, 2016).

With its focus on individual action–interaction, a more nuanced grasp

of microfoundations can play a critical role in enhancing macrolevel

sustainability management (Felin, Foss, & Ployhart, 2015). Some recent

reviews have summarized and highlighted the importance of

psychological microfoundations in advancing research on sustainability

and corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Gond, El Akremi, Swaen, &

Babu, 2017; Rupp & Mallory, 2015). However, identifying the research

gap, especially the relational driver for sustainability and social respon-

sibility, remains an urgent priority.

Proenvironment or green employee behaviours can contribute to

sustainability or sustainable development, two concepts that are

often associated with one another in various bodies of academic liter-

ature (Starik & Kanashiro, 2013). Although many definitions of these

two latter concepts have been offered, they are generally associated

with individual, organizational, and societal efforts to advance long‐

term quality of life, in both its environment and socio‐economic

acceptations.

In the domain of employee green behaviours, previous research

has suggested that leadership can influence employee moral attitudes,

which, in turn, affect voluntary green behaviours (Kim, Kim, Han,

Jackson, & Ployhart, 2014). Another recent study has indicated that

the relationship between green behavioural intentions and subsequent

employee green behaviours is positive only when employees perceive

a favourable green psychological climate (Norton, Zacher, Parker, &

Ashkanasy, 2017). However, the mechanisms that elicit employee

Received: 29 March 2016 Revised: 28 July 2017 Accepted: 1 August 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2221

1302 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2017;38:1302–1319.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

proenvironment attitudes and actions remain unclear. We seek to fill

this important research gap regarding the relational drivers of sustain-

ability by investigating how business leadership affects employee

green behaviours.

Aldo Leopold's “land ethic”has, at its core, the human protection,

conservation, preservation, and rehabilitation of nature through the

“community logic”(Leopold, 1949). In this community, human beings

and nature operate as interdependent beings. However, the mecha-

nisms that underpin this “land ethic”from a theoretical perspective

remain unclear. We suggest that Chinese Taoist philosophy can fill this

gap, providing insights into land ethic and sustainability from a cultural

and philosophical microfoundational perspective. A Taoist leader's atti-

tude towards nature is not one of control but one of harmonious coex-

istence (Xing, 2016). Hence, the philosophy transmitted by Taoist

leadership may be an important factor in underpinning employee

proenvironment attitudes. Thus, our research question is: How can

Taoist leadership nurture employee proenvironment attitudes?

On the basis of 42 qualitative in‐depth interviews conducted with

Chinese business leaders and employees in different industries, this

paper adopts the narrative research method. Narrative is an effective

tool for leaders to mobilize resources, embrace initiatives, and envisage

environment and social sustainability for their respective organizations

and society at large. We found that leader narrative and storytelling is

a powerful tool to empower, embrace, and engage employees in

achieving operational and strategic objectives towards sustainability.

Our research makes several contributions to the nascent and

vibrant literature on the microfoundations of sustainability. First, it does

so (Gond et al., 2017) by drawing upon traditional Chinese cultural

resources. In particular, it adds to and enriches Leopold's theoretical

framework of environmental action by explicating how theTaoist philos-

ophy of treating oneself and the natural environment as one can theo-

retically advance Leopold's land ethic. Second, our study contributes

to employee green behaviours by articulating the three attributions of

Taoist leadership as potential mechanisms suited to nurture employee

proenvironment attitudes. Third, Taoist leadership may trigger

employee proenvironment harmonious passion, which can amplify the

relationship betweenTaoist leadership and employee green behaviours,

thereby encouraging employees to act in an eco‐friendly manner. The

article is organized as follows. We first review the literature on the

microfoundations of sustainability and employee green behaviours,

Aldo Leopold's land ethic and Taoist philosophy, and leadership for sus-

tainability as theoretical building blocks for our arguments. Then, we

describe this study's research design and research context and present

our findings. We then conclude with a discussion of its implications, lim-

itations, and future research directions.

2|LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 |The microfoundations of sustainability and

employee green behaviours

In recent years, the field of sustainability management has received

significant scholarly attention in relation to the existential global soci-

etal and ecological challenge presented by climate change. A recent

review suggested that sustainability and CSR are based on different

theoretical orientations (Bansal & Song, 2017). Arguably, CSR is theo-

retically rooted in the literature of ethics, whereas sustainability tends

to adopt a systemic perspective. A nuanced understanding of

microfoundations can play a critical role in helping us better under-

stand the macrolevel sustainability phenomenon (Barney & Felin,

2013; Foss, 2011).The microfoundations movement emphasizes that

individual action and interaction affect macrolevel observations (Felin

et al., 2015). Recent research has begun exploring the behavioural

microfoundations of sustainability management. For instance, one

study has revealed that the organizational ethic of care can drive

employee involvement in sustainability‐related behaviours at work

(Carmeli, Brammer, Gomes, & Tarba, 2017). Another study has found

that the number of women on an organization's board of directors

has a direct effect on its attitude towards environmental sustainability,

wherein the female‐oriented cultural effects were measured by gram-

matical gender marking (Shoham, Almor, Lee, & Ahammad, 2017). One

recent systematic review of the psychological microfoundations of

CSR has outlined the drivers and evaluation of, and responses to CSR

(Gond et al., 2017). However, little research has focussed upon the

relational drivers of sustainability, especially from the perspective of

the relationship between business leaders and employees.

Proenvironment behaviours have been investigated in the litera-

ture stream of environmental psychology (Bamberg & Möser, 2007).

The underpinning theoretical framework is that values affect attitudes,

which, in turn, influence intentions and then lead to behaviours (De

Groot & Steg, 2009). This argument connects to the theory of planned

behaviour (TPB), which suggests that intentions can affect behaviours

(Ajzen, 1991). The TPB has been the most widely used theoretical

framework to examine employee green behaviours (Norton, Parker,

Zacher, & Ashkanasy, 2015). Although social norms are a necessary

condition for the achievement of employee green behaviours, inter-

ventions are required to bring it about (Vlachos, Panagopoulos,

Bachrach, & Morgeson, 2017). For instance, one conceptual model

suggests that intervention‐related goals can affect the effectiveness

of workplace interventions in bringing about changes in

proenvironment behaviours (Unsworth, Dmitrieva, & Adriasola, 2013).

The existing research on employee green behaviours largely falls

into two categories—namely, required employee green behaviours

and voluntary employee green behaviours (Norton et al., 2015).

Required employee green behaviours refer to the policies and organi-

zational rules that regulate employee behaviours, such as any explicit

and clearly stated rules that employees must follow regarding envi-

ronmental protection; thus, the required employee green behaviours

literature mainly relies on the organizational design and enforcement

of organization rules. By contrast, voluntary employee green behav-

iours focus on the intentions, motivations, and willingness of individ-

uals to behave in an environmentally friendly way in the absence of

explicit rules and regulations. This literature tends to leverage psycho-

logical concepts to explain voluntary workplace green behaviours

(Kim et al., 2014).

However, the existing literature does not articulate the mecha-

nisms that foster employee green behaviours. Individual‐level values

in favour of sustainability can influence the green behaviours of

employees (Starik & Kanashiro, 2013), but employees need to be

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