Does Top Management Team Responsible Leadership Help

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Received: 29 August 2021 Revised: 18 December 2021 Accepted: 1 January 2022
DOI: 10.1002/csr.2239
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Does top management team responsible leadership help

employees go green? The role of green human resource
management and environmental felt-responsibility
Hui Lu1 | Weiting Xu2 | Shaohan Cai3 | Fang Yang2 | Qingqing Chen2
1
School of Economic & Management, Nanjing
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, Abstract
China Drawing on social information processing theory, the current study investigates the
2
School of Economic & Management, China
relationship between top management team (TMT) responsible leadership and
University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou,
China employee organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) from a ver-
3
Sprott School of Business, Carleton tical perspective, and whether green human resource management (GHRM) and
University, Ottawa, Canada
employee environmental felt-responsibility can play a sequential mediating role
Correspondence between them. Totally, 102 middle-level managers and 527 employees in 102 Chi-
Hui Lu, Nanjing University of Science and
Technology, Nanjing University of Science and nese teams voluntarily participated in our study. Drawing on above data, our study
Technology, No. 200 Xiaolingwei Street, verifies that TMT responsible leadership was positively associated with both GHRM
Nanjing 210000, China.
Email: [email protected] and employee environmental felt-responsibility. In addition, GHRM mediated the
positive effects of TMT responsible leadership and employee environmental felt-
Funding information
Chinese National Science Foundation, Grant/ responsibility. Also, GHRM can further promote employee OCBE through employee
Award Number: 71974189; Key Project of environmental felt-responsibility. Overall, the positive relationship between TMT
Chinese National Science Foundation, Grant/
Award Number: 19ZDA107; Youth Project of responsible leadership and employee OCBE was sequentially mediated by GHRM
Chinese National Science Foundation, Grant/ and employee environmental felt-responsibility. Therefore, the current study shows
Award Number: 71603255; State Key Program
of National Natural Science Foundation of the way to achieve corporate environmental sustainability strategy.
China, Grant/Award Number: 72132003
KEYWORDS
environmental felt-responsibility, GHRM, OCBE, TMT responsible leadership
1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N environmental changes and strategic decisions (Wu et al., 2002). In

the current study, we focus on one particular type of TMT leadership,
With the worsening global environment and climate, businesses are namely, TMT responsible leadership. It is a leadership style that
facing a shift in their environment paradigm (Dubois & Dubois, 2012; upholds ethical and moral principles, strikes a balance between the
Laszlo & Zhexembayeva, 2011). Generally, as a critical part of the interests of all stakeholders, can actively pursue social and environ-
global ecosystem (Kotchen & Moon, 2012), corporates need to make mental sustainability, and strive to achieve harmony between people,
efforts to simultaneously develop economic, social, and environmental society and nature (Miska & Mendenhall, 2018; Pless & Maak, 2011).
sustainability (Ahmed et al., 2020; Frank et al., 2017; Saeed In this process, they will advocate various environmental policies or
et al., 2019), especially to achieve corporate environmental sustain- actions that will benefit the long-term economic, social and environ-
ability (ES) strategy, to meet the sustainable development require- mental well-being of the company and its stakeholders (Du
ments of the business environment paradigm. et al., 2015; Maak & Pless, 2006) to achieve corporate ES strategy
According to upper echelons theory, the top management team and corporate social responsibility at a holistic level through a win-
(TMT) plays a key role in leading the process of formulating and win approach (Maak & Pless, 2006; Waldman et al., 2006).
implementing corporate strategy (Hambrick et al., 2015). Their overall However, the effective formulation of a corporate ES strategy
leadership style has a bearing on the company's response to external does not mean the effective implementation of that strategy
Corp Soc Responsib Environ Manag. 2022;29:843–859. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/csr © 2022 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 843
15353966, 2022, 4, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/csr.2239 by Universitaet Konstanz Kommunikations-, Informations-, Wiley Online Library on [11/11/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
844 LU ET AL.
(Egels-Zandén & Rosén, 2015). Existing studies have shown that In addition to GHRM, environmental felt-responsibility is another
employees' organizational citizenship behaviors for the environ- fundamental variable influencing the implementation of OCBE by
ment (OCBE) can effectively contribute to implementing corporate employees (Hines et al., 1987). As a moral motivational factor, it is a
green strategies and policies (Afsar et al., 2020; Dubois & sense of responsibility that individuals should actively take remedial
Dubois, 2012). Employee OCBE refers to environmental practices measures to solve environmental problems based on their full aware-
implemented by employees that minimize negative impacts on the eco- ness of environmental benefits (Stone et al., 1995). Mandip (2012)
logical environment through their activities (Han et al., 2019), including pointed out that GHRM can integrate environmental concepts into cor-
saving office supplies, reducing energy consumption, making environ- porate HRM practices, thus conveying the organization's concern for
mental suggestions to the organization, and so forth (Ahmed corporate ES strategy and social responsibility. According to social infor-
et al., 2020; Graves et al., 2013). Importantly, TMT responsible leader- mation processing theory, employees in such a green work environment
ship emphasizes that organizations and their members are obligated to will get more cues about the green environment and feel that they have
balance the interests of various stakeholders ethically and positively, the obligation and responsibility to protect the environment. As a result,
thereby achieving the long-term goal of sustainable development. And their intrinsic environmental felt-responsibility is stimulated (Stone
these characteristics dovetail nicely with employee OCBE, which values et al., 1995). Thus they are more inclined to show OCBE in their daily
ethics and environmental friendliness. Arguably, such leadership will work and life (Janmaimool & Khajohnmanee, 2020; Wu et al., 2020;
encourage OCBE (Han et al., 2019). Wu & Yang, 2018). Therefore, the current study introduces GHRM and
To date, several studies have examined the relationship between environmental felt-responsibility as two sequential mediating variables
responsible leadership and OCBE. Previous studies have either investi- defining the intrinsic influence mechanism between TMT responsible
gated the impacts of CEOs on middle managers' OCBE or examined the leadership and employee OCBE.
influence of direct supervisors on employee OCBE (Afsar et al., 2020; Our study contributes to the literature on several fronts. First, as
Wang et al., 2021). As such, these studies just focused on the influence mentioned, previous studies have only examined the positive impact
of responsible leadership in a single hierarchy such as “top manager- of direct supervisors' leadership and CEO environmentally responsible
middle manager” or “middle manager-employee.” Yet, little attention has leadership on employee OCBE (Afsar et al., 2020; Cheng et al., 2019;
been paid to the effects of TMT responsible leadership on employee Wang et al., 2021). Our study, on the other hand, focuses on the
OCBE. That is, it remains unclear, however, how top-level managers effect of TMT responsible leadership on employee OCBE and exam-
affect employee OCBE by influencing the achievement of corporate's ES ines the role of TMT responsible leadership in achieving corporate ES
strategy. To fill this gap, we explore the mechanism of how TMT respon- strategies. Second, previous studies have mostly studied whether
sible leadership affects employee OCBE across various hierarchical levels. enterprises can implement GHRM through green recruitment, green
Particularly, we focus on the effects of TMT responsible leader- training, and green performance management from a horizontal per-
ship on green human resource management (GHRM), which subse- spective (Dubois & Dubois, 2012; Muisyo & Qin, 2021; Xiang &
quently affects employee OCBE. GHRM is defined as “phenomena Yang, 2020). In contrast, the current study introduced GHRM as a
relevant to understanding relationships between organizational activities mediating variable and explored its role in the vertical mechanism
that impact the natural environment and the design, evolution, implemen- from the TMT ES strategy formulation level to the employee OCBE
tation, and influence of HRM systems.” (Ren et al., 2018, p. 778). It is implementation. Third, the current study integrates environmental
based on the principle of “sustainable development” and involves felt-responsibility into our research framework by forming a transmis-
human resource management practices such as recruiting environ- sion path of “ TMT leadership-Management system-Motivation-
mentally conscious employees, enhancing employees' environmental Employee behavior.” It explores the sequential mediating effects of
knowledge and skills, developing training programs to increase GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility in the relationship
employees' participation in environmental protection, rewarding between TMT responsible leadership and employee OCBE from social
employees for adopting environmental behaviors, and incorporating information processing theory perspectives. As such, our study con-
environmental performance into the performance appraisal system tributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which
(Mandip, 2012; Renwick et al., 2013). The purpose of GHRM is to GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility influence employee
align with the organization's ES strategy and serve the realization of OCBE, and identifies new antecedent variables that influence
corporate environmental sustainability strategy (Mandip, 2012). Argu- employee OCBE.
ably, the spirit of GHRM is consistent with the “social responsibility The theoretical model is depicted in Figure 1.
and environmental values” advocated by responsible leadership in
terms of connotation. Meanwhile, GHRM motivates middle-level
managers and employees to actively implement ES strategies (Leidner 2 | THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
et al., 2019; Renwick et al., 2016). In the current study, we argue that
TMTs with a responsible leadership style will be more inclined to sup- 2.1 | TMT responsible leadership
port and develop GHRM to embed ES strategy at all levels of the
company and to ensure the recognition and implementation of ES Nowadays, for the success of the business, leaders must not only
strategy by all employees, especially employee OCBE. focus on traditional shareholder returns (profits), but also take
LU ET AL. 845
leadership not only pays more attention to the common interests of

all stakeholders inside and outside the organization, including the nat-
ural environment (Han et al., 2019; Miska & Mendenhall, 2018;
Pless & Maak, 2011), but also takes the initiative to do good out of an
inherent obligation (Waldman & Balven, 2014) and to take responsibil-
ity for their actions (Cameron, 2011; Waldman & Galvin, 2008). Fur-
FIGURE 1 A theoretical model of OCBE thermore, TMT responsible leadership, by contrast, is more in line
with the requirements for the realization of corporate environmental
strategies (Maritz et al., 2011; Paraschiv et al., 2012).
responsibility for society and the environment outside the corporates Responsible leadership is the key to improving corporate environ-
(Miska et al., 2014) and build ongoing, trusting relationships with all of mental performance (Liao & Zhang, 2020) and achieving corporate
the corporates' stakeholders (global employees, customers, suppliers, sustainability (Muff et al., 2020). When grounded in a full-firm per-
governments, etc.). In this context, from the perspective of the com- spective, GHRM embedded in the whole process of organizational
patibility of the common interests of stakeholders, Maak and environmental management (Dubois & Dubois, 2012) is closely linked
Pless (2006) combined the concept of leadership and corporate social to responsible leadership (Gond et al., 2011). For example, He
responsibility and defined responsible leadership as “to build and cul- et al. (2021) have explored the interactive effects of HRM and respon-
tivate sustainable and trustful relationships to different stakeholders sible leadership, and the phenomenon that responsible leadership can
inside and outside the organization and to co-ordinate their actions to moderate the moderating effect of GHRM. However, no literature
achieve common objectives” (Maak & Pless, 2006, p. 103). They pro- integrates the positive effects of TMT in building corporate GHRM
posed that the behavioral process of responsible leadership was a from the perspective of responsible leadership.
decision-making process involving ethics. While the behavioral pro- In addition, TMT responsible leaders can also trickle down
cess of responsible leadership rose from the interaction of various through the organizational hierarchy to influence employee behavior
stakeholders in the society, including the interaction between leaders (Cheng et al., 2019). When focusing on the environmental domain,
and their subordinates, which in turn contributed to the future goals TMT responsible leadership can influence employee OCBE by shaping
of the enterprise. middle-level managers' responsible leadership styles (Tian &
Generally, the notion of responsible leadership overlaps with ethi- Suo, 2021). Meanwhile, CEO environmentally responsible leadership
cal leadership, transformational leadership and sustainable leadership can also impact middle-level managers' OCBE through collective envi-
in several attributes, but responsible leadership still has its own unique ronmental identification (Wang et al., 2021). Simultaneously,
characteristics. Differing from traditional leadership styles such as eth- researchers have found several mediators between the two con-
ical leadership and transformational leadership, responsible leadership structs, such as the felt obligation for constructive change (Han
focuses more on multi-stakeholder-oriented “leader-stakeholder” et al., 2019), leader identification (Zhao & Zhou, 2019), autonomous
interactions that are outward-facing rather than the subordinate and external environmental motivation (Han et al., 2019), green
“leader-employee” relationship, which is inward and closed-loop shared vision and organizational commitment (Afsar et al., 2020),
(Javed et al., 2021; Javed, Ali, et al., 2020; Pless & Maak, 2011; green work climate and organizational identification (Zhang
Sarkar, 2016). Accordingly, TMT responsible leaders consider the nat- et al., 2021), moral identity (Xiao et al., 2021). While the existing
ural environment as an important stakeholder (Han et al., 2019; Miska research knows little about how TMT responsible leaders influence
et al., 2014), and are committed to linking the organization, society corporate GHRM and promote employee OCBE. Therefore, the cur-
and the environment through responsible leadership to meet “sustain- rent study concentrates on the TMT responsible leadership style and
able values creation and social change” (Pless, 2007, p. 438). explores its significant influence on building corporate GHRM and
Concerning environmental protection, both sustainable leadership encouraging employees to implement OCBE.
(Iqbal et al., 2020) and responsible leadership emphasize the impor-
tance of corporate sustainability from a “triple bottom line” perspec-
tive (Kiewiet & Vos, 2007; Peterlin et al., 2015), and focus on the 2.2 | TMT responsible leadership and GHRM
common interests of stakeholders, including employees, shareholders,
and the natural environment (Ferdig, 2007; Maak & Pless, 2006). Yet, Responsible TMT values environmental sustainability and recognizes
the core of sustainable leadership is that leaders always pay attention the importance of integrating environmental management with HRM
to the sustainable development of the environment and avoid (Ateş et al., 2012; Muller & Kolk, 2010). Therefore, they are more
unjustified damage to the environment (Hargreaves & Fink, 2003). In likely to recognize the value of GHRM and, in turn, promote the
contrast, responsible leadership is more targeted and aims to facilitate development and implementation of GHRM (Islam et al., 2021).
effective development and implement corporate ES strategies through Among the existing studies, He et al. (2021) explored the relationship
ethical decision-making, trust development, and green behavior between responsible leadership and GHRM from the perspective of
choices (Agarwal & Bhal, 2020; Voegtlin, 2011). It can be seen that, moderating roles. Whereas our current study argues that responsible
compared with other-oriented TMT leadership, TMT responsible TMT will provide resources to support the development and
846 LU ET AL.
dissemination of GHRM, for example, allocating more budget for environment in the organization (Afsar et al., 2020). As employees
green training (Kleinschmidt et al., 2010), incorporating environmental receive the information of TMT's environmental attitudes, they could
criteria into performance appraisals, developing environmentally- easily understand the importance of environmental protection. This
oriented reward and punishment mechanisms, and so forth. Such sup- would inspire their strong inner desire for environmental protection
ports also draw attention to and enhance employees' understanding and promote the formation of environmental felt-responsibility. On
of GHRM throughout the organization, thereby facilitating the imple- the other hand, through communication channels such as internal
mentation of GHRM. news, reports, or meetings, employees will perceive that TMT respon-
Furthermore, responsible TMT tends to select middle-level man- sible leaders actively assume corporate social responsibility and make
agers who are aligned with their green values with organizations' pro-environmental related decisions aligned with the interests of all
values and support the company's green efforts (Zhu et al., 2005). stakeholders (Maak & Pless, 2006). As an important source of social
They also cultivate middle-level managers' identification with sustain- information for employees (Boekhorst, 2014), this set of behaviors
able development through communication, motivation, and empower- exhibited by TMT leaders delivers the message to employees that the
ment (Wang et al., 2021). This could motivate middle-level managers corporate values environmental protection and is actively responsible
to actively introduce GHRM practices to grassroots-level employees. for the environment (Ostroff et al., 2003), thus helping employees to
Finally, according to the social information processing theory, indi- shape their own environmentally responsible attitudes and percep-
viduals' attitudes and behaviors are influenced by their social environ- tions, and eventually form the formative environmental felt-responsi-
ment to a large extent. Through the processing and interpretation of bility. Therefore, we maintain that the positive effect of TMT
specific social information, individuals can decide what attitudes and responsible leadership leads to employee environmental felt-
behaviors to adopt (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). In the workplace, the sub- responsibility.
ordinates will form their own cognition by processing the information Furthermore, we argue that GHRM affects the formation of
conveyed by their leaders in the workplace, which in turn influence employee environmental felt-responsibility. According to Social Infor-
their attitudes and behaviors (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). This is why in mation Processing Theory, the perceptual processes of individuals are
their daily interactions with TMT responsible leaders, middle-level man- affected by the environment. Therefore, the organizational environ-
agers perceive the clear clues that top managers attached importance ment shapes employees' cognitions and attitudes, making them con-
to environmental sustainability and judge that advocating ES strategy sistent with the dominant value in the environment (Thomas &
met the requirements of top managers. Then, middle-level managers Griffin, 1989). In the same vein, we argue that GHRM is a manage-
gradually develop environmental values that are consistent with top ment tool that reflects corporate strategy and influences the percep-
managers, thus becoming more focused on the corporate vision and tions and behaviors of all employees by establishing a green
mission of sustainability (Afsar et al., 2020). Consequently, middle-level organizational environment (Rubel et al., 2021). Specifically, it inte-
managers will become more confident in corporate green management grates the concept of environmental protection into HRM practices,
and tend to formulate and implement the GHRM practices. In summary, creates an overall atmosphere of pursuing sustainable development in
TMT responsible leadership can facilitate the implementation of GHRM the organization, and emphasizes the importance of sustainability
in organizations. As such, we propose the following: through its sub-modules such as green recruitment and green training.
With HRM in place, employees could easily understand the impor-
Hypothesis 1. TMT responsible leadership positively tance that the organization attaches to social responsibility and envi-
relates to GHRM. ronmental protection. Therefore, they tend to believe that they
should also bear the responsibility of protecting the environment, and
this ultimately inspires their environmental felt-responsibility. As such,
2.3 | TMT responsible leadership and employee we maintain that GHRM positively influences employee environmen-
environmental felt-responsibility tal felt-responsibility.
In summary, we suggest that GHRM can facilitate employee envi-
Environmental felt-responsibility is defined as “a psychological state ronmental felt-responsibility. Furthermore, since TMT responsible
reflecting the extent to which citizens feel compelled to take useful action leadership can positively influence GHRM (Hypothesis 1), we suggest
towards the environment” (Punzo et al., 2019, p. 313). It reflects their that GHRM can mediate the relationship between TMT responsible
concern for environmental issues and willingness to take the initiative leadership and employee environmental felt-responsibility. As such,
to solve environmental problems (Dunlap & Jones, 2002). While we propose the following:
employees' perceptions and attitudes in the workplace are always
influenced by social information provided by leaders (Bunderson & Hypothesis 2. TMT responsible leadership positively
Reagans, 2011; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978), especially social information relates to employee environmental felt-responsibility.
provided by leaders with higher social status (Bunderson &
Reagans, 2011; Copeland, 1994). Hypothesis 3. GHRM mediates the relationship between
Accordingly, on the one hand, TMT responsible leaders can con- TMT responsible leadership and employee environmental
struct an environmentally friendly green vision and a green work felt-responsibility.
LU ET AL. 847
2.4 | GHRM and employee OCBE (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Based on the interpretation of corporate envi-
ronmental support and importance, employees are able to correctly
Prior studies have shown that GHRM can promote employee OCBE understand the importance of environmental protection and regard it as
(Boudreau & Ramstad, 2005). GHRM can deliver clear pro- their responsibility to solve environmental problems. Thus, they will seize
environmental messages to employees using methods such as green every opportunity to proactively adopt OCBE and realize their environ-
recruitment, green training, green performance and green compensa- mental values. Furthermore, employees with high environmental felt-
tion (Alfes et al., 2012; Zoogah, 2011) so that employees can better responsibility are more sensitive to the clues for environmental issues,
understand the company's environmental standards and importance and are more willing to make efforts to solve environmental problems
in processing these social messages. And ultimately, as reported, when (Yue et al., 2020). Once the environmental management policy is
they truly understand the importance of environmental protection, implemented, employees with high environmental felt-responsibility will
employees tend to proactively engage in OCBE (Ren et al., 2018). respond positively and take the initiative to implement OCBE in order to
Specifically, during the green recruitment process, companies could achieve green and sustainable development through their efforts.
select green-oriented employees, whose environmental attitudes and However, an essential question remains unclear: how do GHRM and
green values fit the company's green value. Employees are thus able to employee environmental felt-responsibility transform environmentally
receive the important message of corporate green preferences through sustainable strategies into employee-specific OCBE? Our Hypothesis 3
this recruitment status quo, thereby clarifying corporate expectations of suggests that GHRM stimulates employee environmental felt-responsibil-
their own green behavior (Rentsch, 1990) and ultimately implementing ity. Our Hypothesis 4 suggests that there is a positive relationship
OCBE actively (Saeed et al., 2019). During the green training process, between GHRM and employee OCBE. Furthermore, as mentioned above,
companies instill green knowledge and skills in their employees. As employee environmental felt-responsibility leads to OCBE. Consequently,
these environmental messages are emphasized, employees become we hypothesize that employee environmental felt-responsibility plays a
more aware of the importance of environmental protection (Bansal & mediating role between GHRM and OCBE. Arguably, GHRM is critical to
Roth, 2000) and adjust their behavior to eventually adopt responsible the implementation of corporate environmental sustainability strategies,
OCBE for corporate expectations (Rentsch, 1990; Zalesny & because it influences OCBE by affecting employee environmental felt-
Ford, 1990). In addition, green performance and compensation manage- responsibility. As such, we propose the following:
ment can cultivate employees' awareness of corporate sustainability
norms by establishing a green evaluation index system and setting cor- Hypothesis 5. Employee environmental felt-responsibility
porate environmental standards. Meanwhile, in the process of providing positively relates to employee OCBE.
guidance, evaluation and feedback to employees, green performance
and compensation management can continuously assimilate employees' Hypothesis 6. Employee environmental felt-responsibility
judgments about their work and environmental protection (Ashford & mediates the relationship between GHRM and
Cummings, 1983), thereby motivating employees to actively implement employee OCBE.
OCBE that meets corporate environmental requirements (Tang
et al., 2018). As such, we propose the following:
2.6 | The mediating role of GHRM and
Hypothesis 4. GHRM positively relates to employee OCBE. environmental felt-responsibility
Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 6 suggest that TMT responsible leader-

2.5 | Employee environmental felt-responsibility ship influences employee OCBE through GHRM and employee envi-
and employee OCBE ronmental felt-responsibility. Nevertheless, the mechanism through
which GHRM and employee environmental felt-responsibility medi-
Environmental felt-responsibility is regarded as an essential psychological ates the relationship between TMT responsible leadership and OCBE
variable that influences employee OCBE (Hines et al., 1987; Yue needs to be further clarified. TMT responsible leadership focuses on
et al., 2020). Specifically, Hines et al. (1987) empirically found that people environmental sustainability (Miska & Mendenhall, 2018). Such
with high environmental felt-responsibility tend to be more willing to leaders will consciously develop and promote the implementation of
engage in OCBE; Yue et al. (2020) pointed out that employees with high GHRM, which is consistent with ethical and green values, in order to
environmental felt-responsibility are more concerned about environmen- fulfill corporate environmental sustainability strategies (He
tal issues than their personal interests, which may promote OCBE. In the et al., 2021). GHRM involves green recruitment, green training, green
same vein, we believe that employee environmental felt-responsibility performance, green compensation, and so forth, which can deliver
reflects individuals' positive attitudinal orientation toward environmental green messages to employees. According to social information
behavior and will positively influence employee OCBE. According to the processing theory, employees will understand the necessity of envi-
social information processing theory, employees with high environmental ronmental protection through these messages. Therefore, they are
felt-responsibility will actively collect information on environmental pro- likely to consider it as their own responsibility, which will improve
tection in the company, and then process and interpret such information their own environmental felt-responsibility. Employees with high
848 LU ET AL.
environmental felt-responsibility are more concerned with degree. In addition, 6.5% graduated from high school/junior high
environmental-related issues (Yue et al., 2020) and are more willing to school, 27.3% had an associate degree, and 5.9% held a master's
make efforts to solve environmental problems. As such, they are likely degree. In addition, team members with a tenure of 5 years or less in
to engage in OCBE. As such, we propose the following: their current company accounted for the largest percentage, which is
49.1%, team members with a tenure of 6–10 years accounted for
Hypothesis 7. GHRM and employee environmental felt- 30.0%, while those with a tenure of 10 years or more accounted for
responsibility serially mediate the relationship between 20.9%. The companies' TMT team size ranged between 3 and 10 indi-
TMT responsible leadership and employee OCBE. viduals, with an average team size of 5.
3 | METHOD 3.2 | Measures
3.1 | Sample and data collection We adapt scales developed by prior studies to measure all variables,
in order to ensure the high reliability and validity of the measurement
Our study was conducted from July to September 2020. We con- instruments. Moreover, to ensure the appropriateness of the ques-
tacted human resource (HR) managers of five manufacturing compa- tionnaire design and statements, we translated the scales following
nies located in Shandong, Hebei, and Jiangsu Province, explained our the translation and back-translation procedure (Brislin, 1980). All the
research purpose, and obtained their permission. At the same time, items were measured by using a five-point Likert scale.
HR managers provided us with a list of employees and their direct
supervisors who have worked together for at least 1 year. Data were
collected by surveying the middle-level managers and the employees 3.3 | Independent variable
within their teams at these companies. To avoid the common method
variance (CMV) bias, we collected data from two different sources— We adapt the scale developed by Wang et al. (2021) that measures
employees and their direct supervisors (middle-level managers). CEO environmentally responsible leadership, as well as the 7-item
We asked the HR managers of these companies to distribute a large scale developed by Robertson and Barling (2013) that measures multi-
envelope to each participating employee (718 employees and 120 mid- factor leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1995; Robertson & Barling, 2013), to
dle-level managers). There were two small envelopes in the large enve- measure TMT responsible leadership. The scale measures TMT
lope, which were marked as “Yourself” or “Your Supervisor” with a responsible leadership with a focus on environmental sustainability. It
matching code, respectively. What is noteworthy is that both small enve- includes seven items. One sample item is “The top management team
lopes also contain a confidentiality affidavit. The middle-level managers of my company talks about his/her values and beliefs about the envi-
filled out the supervisor questionnaire, which asked questions related to ronment”. Middle-level managers were asked to rate the responsible
TMT responsible leadership style and employee OCBE, whereas the leadership of their organization's TMT by answering those questions.
employees completed the questions related to GHRM, environmental The Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.938 in the current study.
felt-responsibility, as well as the control variables. During the distribution
process, HR also emphasized to the respondents that after completing
the questionnaire as required, the questionnaire should be sealed in the 3.4 | Dependent variable
original envelope and sent through HR. Finally, for the returned question-
naires, we collated the middle-level managers' questionnaires first, record- We adopted a 7-item scale developed by Temminck et al. (2015) to
ing the team codes they represented and the employee codes they measure OCBE. A sample item is: “My subordinates proposed envi-
evaluated. After the middle-level managers' questionnaires were entered, ronmental protection suggestions for improving work procedures.”
we sorted the employee questionnaires and matched them with the Middle-level managers were asked to answer those questions, in
middle-level managers' questionnaires according to the team codes, and order to evaluate the OCBE of junior employees in their teams. The
then merged the middle-level managers' questionnaires with the Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.938 in the current study.
employee questionnaire according to the employee codes.
After eliminating the invalid questionnaires, a total of 102 valid
supervisor questionnaires and 527 valid subordinate questionnaires 3.5 | Mediating variables
were used for further analysis, with a response rate of 85.00% for
managers and 73.39% for employees. Among the respondents, 50.7% We adopted an 18-item GHRM, explicitly developed for the Chinese
were male. Their age distribution was as follows: 11.4% fell into the context by Tang et al. (2018). The scale consists of five dimensions:
“25 and below” age group, 59.0% fell into the “26–35” category, green recruitment and selection, green training, green rewards, green
25.4% were aged 36 to 45, and only 4.2% are over 45 years old. Their performance, and employee engagement. A sample item is “My com-
education levels varied from “high school” to “postgraduate or pany develops training programs in environmental management to
above”, with a large majority of them (60.3%) holding a bachelor's increase environmental awareness, skills, and expertise of employees.”
LU ET AL. 849
Employees were asked to answer those questions related to GHRM. (Chan, 1998). Next, the current study examined the within-group inter-
The Cronbach's alpha for the scale was 0.978 in the current study. rater reliability (Rwg) and the intra-class correlation (ICC) to test the
We adopted the scale of environmental felt-responsibility devel- aggregation criteria. The Rwg is a comparison of the variance of the
oped by Punzo et al. (2019). The scale consists of five items. One sam- low-level variables with the random distribution variance to determine
ple question is “I think it is important to reduce the use of plastic the rationality of summing the low-level variables to the high-level vari-
products.” Employees were asked to self-evaluate their environmental ables; the ICC is a comparison of the variance of the group members
felt-responsibility by answering those questions. The Cronbach's alpha within the group with the mean–variance between the groups, including
for the scale was 0.933 in the current study. the reliability of score within group ICC(1) and the reliability of mean
group score ICC (2). The results showed that the ICC (1) for GHRM was
0.18, which was greater than the recommended cutoff value of 0.12
3.6 | Control variables (James, 1982); the ICC (2) was 0.53, which reached the recommended
cutoff value (Kim et al., 2014; Schneider et al., 1998); and the Rwg
Demographic variables can affect environmental felt-responsibility value, which reflects the within-group consistency was 0.96. This was
and OCBE (Jovanovic et al., 2017; Khan et al., 2019). Therefore, we greater than the recommended cutoff value of 0.70 and met the data
include gender (“1” = male; “2” = female), age (“1” = 25 years old or aggregation requirements (James et al., 1993a, 1993b; LeBreton &
younger; “2” = 26–35 years old; “3” = 36–45 years old; “4” = 46– Senter, 2008). The results demonstrated that the measured variables
55 years old; “5” = 56 years old or older) and tenure (“1” = 5 years could be aggregated from the individual level to the organizational level.
and below; “2” = 6–10 years; “3” = 11–15 years; “4” = 16–20 years; The Cronbach's alpha coefficients for TMT responsible leadership,
“5” = 20 years and above) as three control variables. In addition, it is GHRM, environmental felt-responsibility, and employee OCBE in the
reported that executive team characteristics size can affect individ- current study were 0.938, 0.978, 0.933, and 0.938, respectively, which
uals' environmental choices and green behaviors organizational sus- were all greater than 0.8. This indicated that the reliability of the scales
tainability decisions, and implementation (Peng et al., 2020; Siddiquei used in the study was satisfactory. Next, we used Mplus 8.0 to conduct
et al., 2021). For example, TMT team size can affect employees' psy- confirmatory factor analysis on four latent variables: TMT responsible
chological factors (Agnihotri & Bhattacharya, 2020). Therefore, we leadership, GHRM, environmental felt-responsibility, and employee
also include team TMT size as a control variable. OCBE. As shown in Table 1, the composite reliabilities (C.R.) of the vari-
ables were 0.940, 0.989, 0.937, and 0.941, respectively, and the factor
loadings of the items were higher than the recommended cutoff value
3.7 | Hypothesis testing methods of 0.600 (p < 0.001), indicating high reliability and convergent validity of
the variables. Furthermore, the average variance extracted (AVE) that
Our research model involved both organizational and individual-level vari- indicates the explanatory power of the variance of the measured vari-
ables. Therefore, multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) was ables of the calculated latent variables for the variables was 0.514,
used to test our research hypotheses (Preacher et al., 2010). The hypoth- 0.837, 0.750, and 0.727, respectively. They were all higher than the rec-
eses to be tested in the current study included three indirect relationship ommended cutoff value of 0.500, indicating that most of the variance
models in which the relationship between TMT responsible leadership can be accounted for by the constructs (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Thus
and employee OCBE was mediated by GHRM and environmental felt- the convergent validity of all four variables was satisfactory.
responsibility. We were able to verify the relationship between TMT Finally, Table 1 also showed the results of the tests for the discrimi-
responsible leadership and employee OCBE, the mediating role of envi- nant validity, supporting the discriminant validity of the variables. The AVE
ronmental felt-responsibility, the mediating role of GHRM, and the value of each factor in the current study is greater than the correlation
sequential mediating role of GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility, coefficient among the paired factors, the square root of the latent variable
by utilizing an MSEM analysis. We calculated the chain mediation effect AVE is greater than the correlation coefficient among the constructs
by multiplying the three path coefficients (including the latent predictor, (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). And the minimum value of AVE among all latent
latent group means of the two mediators, and the latent outcome vari- variables (0.514) is greater than the maximum square value of the correla-
able). We used SPSS 21.0 software to calculate the means and standard tion coefficient among the latent variables (0.393 = 0.627 0.627)
deviations of the variables. In addition, we used Mplus 8.0 for a robust (As shown in Table 4), indicating that the model has good discriminant
maximum likelihood estimator to test all analyses. validity and can be hypothesis tested. Therefore, our scales are deemed
appropriate for hypothesis testing.
4 | RESULTS
4.2 | Common method variance issue
4.1 | Data aggregation testing
Our data were collected from two sources: junior employees and
GHRM is an organizational-level variable in our study. Therefore, we middle-level managers. This alleviates the potential problem of com-
summed and averaged the employee-perceived GHRM by teams and mon method bias. Second, we utilized Mplus 8.0 to compare the fit
thus used it as organizational-level data for subsequent processing indexes of the baseline four-factor model with the fit indexes of
850 LU ET AL.
TABLE 1 Reliability and validity tests
Composite reliability Convergent validity Discriminant validity
Variables CR AVE 1 2 3 4
Employee OCBE 0.941 0.727 0.853
Environmental Felt-responsibility 0.937 0.750 0.627 0.866
GHRM 0.989 0.837 0.407 0.541 0.915
TMT responsible leadership 0.940 0.514 0.325 0.369 0.453 0.717
Note: The bold values on the diagonal of Table 1 represent the square root of the latent variable AVE. The lower triangular part is the Pearson correlation
coefficient values.
TABLE 2 Comparison of model fits
χ2 df χ 2/df RMSEA CFI TLI SRMR

Four-factor model (RL GHRM EFR OCBE) 2722.28 891 3.06*** 0.06 0.90 0.90 0.05
Three-factor model (RL + GHRM EFR OCBE) 6067.87 899 6.75*** 0.10 0.72 0.71 0.13
Two-factor model (RL + GHRM + EFR OCBE) 7525.96 901 8.35*** 0.12 0.64 0.63 0.14
Single-factor model (OCBE + EFR + GHRM + RL) 9388.18 902 10.41*** 0.13 0.54 0.52 0.16
Abbreviations: EFR, environmental felt-responsibility; GHRM, green human resource management; OCBE, employee organizational citizenship behavior for
environment; RL, TMT responsible leadership.
***p < 0.001.
alternative models. As shown in Table 2, the four-factor model fit p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.044, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, SRMR within/
indexes well (χ 2/df = 3.06, RMSEA = 0.06, CFI = 0.90, TLI = 0.90, between group = 0.021/0.070). They suggested that environmental felt-
SRMR = 0.05, p < 0.001) and significantly better than alternative responsibility and employee OCBE had significant variance both within and
models. This result not only indicated satisfactory discriminant validity between-group, while TMT responsible leadership and GHRM had signifi-
among the variables but also suggest that common method bias was cant variance between the group. Next, we tested the structural model.
not a serious concern. The analysis results showed that TMT responsible leadership influences
employee OCBE through GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility.
In addition, nested models were compared in the current study,
4.3 | Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis and the analysis results are shown in Table 4. Model 1 is our baseline
model that contains and only contains all assumptions between vari-
The data were correlated at two levels, where gender, age, member ten- ables. The results indicated that the model 1 matched the data well (χ 2/
ure, environmental felt-responsibility, and employee OCBE were df = 2.02, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.044, CFI = 0.90, TLI = 0.90, SRMR
individual-level variables, and TMT size, GHRM, and TMT responsible within/between group = 0.036/0.078). All fit indexes were satisfactory
leadership were organizational-level variables. It is worth noting that the for the model.
data for the variable GHRM were selected after averaging the data by Then, we tested the following four sets of nested models based
intra-team summation. Table 3 shows the summary statistics, correlations, on the baseline model. Model 2 removed the path from GHRM to
and reliability coefficients for all variables. At the organizational level, OCBE, model 3 removed the path from TMT responsible leader to
TMT responsible leadership was significantly and positively correlated employee environmental responsibility, model 4 removed the path
with GHRM (r = 0.422, p < 0.001). And at the individual level, environ- from GHRM to employee environmental responsibility, and finally,
mental felt-responsibility and employee OCBE (r = 0.585, p < 0.001) were model 5 added the path from TMT responsible leader to OCBE on the
also significantly positively correlated. These correlations preliminarily ver- basis of model 4. The results are shown in Table 4 indicating that
ified hypotheses 1 and 5 proposed in the current study. alternative models from model 2 to model 5 were significantly differ-
ent from the baseline model (4χ2 = 35.434, p < 0.001;
4χ2 = 12.497, p < 0.001; 4χ2 = 3.759, p < 0.001; 4χ2 = 4.785,
4.4 | Hypothesis testing p < 0.001). In addition, the fit indexes of the baseline model were bet-
ter than the fit indexes of the alternative models. Thus the baseline
We test our research model by utilizing multilevel structural equation model was the optimal path model. In summary, the model had good
modeling (MSEM). We first performed a multilevel confirmatory factor fitness and could be subjected to path coefficient analysis and
analysis. The results showed satisfactory goodness of fit (χ 2/df = 2.04, hypothesis testing (Schreiber, 2008).
LU ET AL. 851
TABLE 3 Descriptive statistics, correlations, and reliability coefficients
Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5
Level 1 (Individual)
Gender 1.49 0.50 —
Age 2.22 0.70 0.056 —
Member tenure 1.87 1.09 0.000 0.638*** —
Environmental felt-responsibility 4.53 0.68 0.094* 0.014 0.049 (0.933)
Employee OCBE 4.18 0.73 0.099* 0.003 0.031 0.585*** (0.938)
Level 2 (Organizational)
TMT size 5.39 1.12
GHRM 4.13 0.37 0.076 (0.978)
TMT responsible leadership 4.40 0.71 0.070 0.422*** (0.938)
Note: Level 1 N = 527, Level 2 N = 102. The bold values on the diagonal of Table 3 represent the reliability coefficients of each variable
(Cronbach's Alpha).
*p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.
TABLE 4 Model comparisons
SRMR within group (

Structure χ2 df χ 2/df 4χ 2 RMSEA CFI TLI between group)
Model 1 1991.66 988 2.02 0.044 0.90 0.90 0.036 (0.078)
Model 2 2027.09 988 2.05 35.434*** 0.045 0.90 0.89 0.038 (0.137)
Model 3 2004.16 989 2.03 12.497*** 0.044 0.90 0.89 0.037 (0.083)
Model 4 1995.42 989 2.02 3.759*** 0.044 0.90 0.90 0.038 (0.081)
Model 5 1996.44 988 2.02 4.785*** 0.044 0.90 0.89 0.038 (0.080)
Note:*** p < 0.001.

852 LU ET AL.
T A B L E 5 Path coefficients of the

Structural path Estimate SE Est./SE
structural model
Direct paths at the same level
Environmental felt-responsibility ! OCBE(H5) 0.525*** 0.082 6.443
TMT responsible leadership ! GHRM(H1) 0.381*** 0.106 3.583
Direct path of high level ! low level
GHRM ! OCBE (H4) 0.899** 0.299 3.009
TMT responsible leadership ! Environmental felt- 0.236* 0.114 2.066
responsibility (H2)
GHRM ! Environmental felt-responsibility 0.484** 0.179 2.705
Note: For more conciseness. Table 5 does not list the effects of the control variables. Control variables:
gender (“1” = male; “2” = female), age, and member tenure at the individual level; TMT size at the
organizational level.
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Table 5 shows the estimated normalized coefficients of struc-

tural paths of model 1. TMT responsible leadership was signifi-
cantly and positively related to GHRM (β = 0.381, p < 0.001),
supporting Hypothesis 1. TMT responsible leadership was signifi-
cantly and positively related to environmental felt-responsibility
(β = 0.236, p < 0.05), thus Hypothesis 2 was confirmed.
GHRM significantly and positively affects environmental felt- F I G U R E 2 Path coefficients of theoretical model. For more
responsibility (β = 0.484, p < 0.01), indicating that GHRM played a conciseness. Figure 2 does not list the effects of the control variables.
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001
partially mediating role between TMT responsible leadership and
environmental felt-responsibility. This result supports Hypothe-
sis 3. GHRM is significantly and positively related to employee The magnitude of the effect was estimated to be 0.275 (p < 0.001)
OCBE (β = 0.899, p < 0.01), thus Hypothesis 4 was supported. with a 95% confidence interval of [0.111, 0.439] and zero was not
Environmental felt-responsibility has a significant positive effect included in this confidence interval. This result also supported the
on employee OCBE (β = 0.525, p < 0.001), supporting Hypothe- mediating effect suggested by Hypothesis 3. Similarly, the results
sis 5. GHRM affects environmental felt-responsibility significantly indicate that GHRM exerts a significant and positive indirect effect
and positively (β = 0.484, p < 0.01), indicating that employee envi- on employee OCBE through environmental felt-responsibility. The
ronmental felt-responsibility mediated the relationship between magnitude of the effect was estimated to be 0.635 (p < 0.01) with a
GHRM and employee OCBE. Therefore, Hypothesis 6 was 95% confidence interval of [0.115, 1.155] and zero was not included
supported. in this confidence interval. The results also support mediating effect
Combining Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 6, we can infer that suggested by Hypothesis 6.
Hypothesis 7 can also be verified, that is, TMT responsible leadership Finally, to validate the “2-2-1-1” model in the study
can promote corporate GHRM and then ultimately inspire employee (In validating the sequential mediation, we need to include both
OCBE by fostering employee environmental felt-responsibility. The TMT responsible leadership, GHRM as level 2 variables, and
standardized regression coefficients of each path and their signifi- employee environmental felt-responsibility and employee OCBE as
cance levels are shown in Figure 2. level 1 variables into the model for evaluation.), we conducted a
We conducted the additional test to verify the hypothesized hypothesis testing following Nohe et al.'s (2013) test and related
mediating effects. In order to verify the “2-2-1” (TMT responsible codes (see Table 6). As for the three-path mediated effect, the
leadership as an independent variable and GHRM as a mediating results indicated that TMT responsible leadership exerts indirect
variable are both evaluated at level 1, while employee environmental effects on employee OCBE through GHRM. The magnitude of the
felt-responsibility as an independent variable is assessed at level 2) effect was estimated to be 0.580 (p < 0.001). TMT responsible
and “2-1-1” (GHRM is reviewed at level 1 as the dependent variable, leadership was found to influence employee OCBE through envi-
while employee environmental felt-responsibility and employee ronmental felt-responsibility. The magnitude of the effect was
OCBE are assessed at level 2 as the mediator and dependent vari- 0.210 (p < 0.05). The positive linkage between GHRM and
ables, respectively) models in the study, we conducted hypothesis employee environmental felt-responsibility mediated the effect of
testing following the test method and related codes suggested by TMT responsible leadership on employee OCBE. The estimated
Preacher et al. (2011). The results are presented in Table 6. It shows indirect effect is 0.164 (p < 0.01) and the 95% confidence interval
that TMT responsible leadership exerts significant and positive indi- is [0.055, 0.273], where zero was not included in this confidence
rect effects on environmental felt-responsibility through GHRM. interval.
LU ET AL. 853
TABLE 6 Results on the mediating roles of GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility
BCa 95% CI
Bootstrapping Estimated value SE Lower Upper

TMT responsible leadership ! GHRM ! Environmental 0.275*** 0.084 0.111 0.439
Felt-responsibility (H3)
GHRM ! Environmental felt-responsibility ! Employee 0.635** 0.265 0.115 1.155
OCBE (H6)
Three path mediation
TMT responsible leadership ! GHRM ! Employee OCBE 0.580*** 0.142 0.303 0.858
TMT responsible leadership ! Environmental felt- 0.210* 0.104 0.006 0.414
responsibility ! Employee OCBE
TMT responsible leadership ! GHRM ! Environmental 0.164** 0.055 0.055 0.273
felt-responsibility ! Employee OCBE (H7)
Note: Level 1 N = 527, Level 2 N = 102;

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
5 | DISCUSSION behaviors (Janmaimool & Khajohnmanee, 2020). The conclusion of

the current study is similar to the above findings. However, the differ-
Our study aims to understand how TMT responsible leadership influence with the existing literature is that our study focuses on the work-
ences employee OCBE and how GHRM and employee environmental place and verifies the positive impact of employee environmental felt-
felt-responsibility function together in this influencing process. The responsibility as motivation on employee OCBE and the key role of
findings of our study show as follows: employees in achieving corporate ES strategy.
First, TMT responsible leadership can foster the development and Forth, the linkage between GHRM and employee OCBE can be
implementation of GHRM in organizations. Previous literature has influenced by employee environmental felt-responsibility. The relationship
focused on the contribution of different positive leadership styles to between GHRM and employee OCBE has been adequately validated so
GHRM, such as supervisor's ethical leadership (Ahmad, Islam, Sadiq, & far. For example, organizational identification (Chaudhary, 2019), green
Kaleem, 2021) and supervisor's transformational leadership (Moin employee empowerment (Hameed et al., 2020), enablers of green culture
et al., 2020). Similarly, Jia et al. (2018) focused on CEO transforma- (Muisyo et al., 2021), green commitment (Ansari et al., 2020) and many
tional leadership and explored its positive impact on GHRM. Our find- other mediators can convey the positive indirect effects of GHRM on
ings are similar to these findings, and also focus on the TMT that can employee OCBE. However, all these studies ignore the important role of
determine the direction and strategy of the corporate (Hambrick & individual environmental felt-responsibility. Our study regards employee
Mason, 1984) in order to explore the impact of TMT responsible lead- environmental felt-responsibility as a motivation to encourage OCBE, ver-
ership that is responsible for the environment on corporate GHRM ifies that GHRM can promote the implementation of OCBE by fostering
(Maak & Pless, 2006). employee environmental felt-responsibility.
Second, TMT responsible leadership can partially influence Finally, the findings support the following chain of relationships:
employee environmental felt-responsibility through GHRM. According TMT responsible leadership promotes GHRM, which in turn facilitates
to Freire and Gonçalves (2021), responsible leadership can directly employee environmental felt-responsibility and finally leads to
influence employee felt-responsibility. Our study extends the relation- employee OCBE. Therefore, GHRM and employee environmental felt-
ship between the above two variables to multiple levels by introduc- responsibility play a sequential mediating role between TMT responsi-
ing GHRM as a mediator so as to achieve multi-level transmission of ble leadership and employee OCBE.
ES strategy within the company from TMT to middle managers to
junior employees. Furthermore, this indirect transmission relationship
is also consistent with Wood et al.'s (2021) findings, in which ethical 5.1 | Theoretical implications
leadership can indirectly stimulate employees to take responsibility
through organizational-level CSR and individual-level organizational The current study offers several important theoretical contributions
trust. to the literature. First, our study shows that TMT responsible leader-
Third, employee environmental felt-responsibility leads to ship plays an essential role in developing and implementing corporate
employee OCBE. Among the existing studies, Yue et al. (2020) ES strategy. Importantly, our study extends the scope of responsible
explored how consumer environmental responsibility can, directly and leadership research. Previous studies on responsible leadership have
indirectly, influence their green behaviors in the Chinese context. mostly focused on direct supervisors, exploring the effects of their
When it comes to education, college students' sense of environmental responsible leadership on corporate performance (Javed et al., 2021;
responsibility can also contribute to their pro-environmental Liao & Zhang, 2020), employee behavior (Afsar et al., 2020; Cheng
854 LU ET AL.
et al., 2019), and so forth. However, these studies do not take into Katzarska-Miller, 2014), with less attention paid to employees envi-
account that TMTs can perceive changes in the external environment ronmental felt-responsibility in companies. However, as a critical com-
more easily than middle managers (Ocasio, 1997), and they play a ponent of the organization, employees' perceptions of environmental
more important role in motivating all employees to commit to the real- issues can affect the effectiveness of corporate ES strategies (Steiner
ization of corporate strategies by making strategic decisions and et al., 2018). Therefore, our research model includes employee envi-
developing management systems within the company (An et al., 2013; ronmental felt-responsibility as the second sequential mediating vari-
Wang et al., 2020). To bridge this research gap, our study examined able. Our analysis shows that TMT responsible leadership could
whether TMT responsible leadership can actively promote employee positively influence employee OCBE through GHRM and employee
OCBE by developing corporate ES strategies. environmental felt-responsibility. This enriches the literature in terms
Second, our study concentrates on the implementation of corpo- of the intrinsic influence mechanism between TMT responsible lead-
rate ES strategy from a vertical perspective. Specifically, we maintain ership and employee OCBE.
that TMT responsible leadership promotes employee OCBE
through the development of a corporate management system,
which enhances employee environmental cognition. According to 5.2 | Managerial implications
our best knowledge, prior studies only examine how CEO respon-
sible leadership influences middle-level manager OCBE (Wang Our study also provides important implications for practitioners.
et al., 2021) or the role of direct supervisor responsible leadership Firstly, as the problem of global warming becomes more serious, the
on employee OCBE (Afsar et al., 2020; Han et al., 2019), without global environmental movement is also gaining momentum, which
capturing how corporate ES strategies cascade down to the requires companies around the world to consider the natural environ-
behaviors of employees. In a multi-level enterprise, employees are ment as an important stakeholder in order to take responsibility
more susceptible to the influence of middle-level managers (Maak & Pless, 2006). Therefore, companies should attach importance
(Brandes et al., 2004). GHRM relies on the downward promotion to the role of the TMT responsible leadership when developing and
of middle-level managers (Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989), and the implementing the organization's ES strategy. In particular, as the
GHRM perceived by employees reflects the degree of implemen- global need for responsible leadership becomes more urgent, compa-
tation of ES strategies by middle-level managers (Melinda & nies are more interested in a systematic process to select, train, and
Black, 1995; Wagner, 2015). In contrast, the current study communicate with TMT responsible leaders in time to ensure that
emphasizes that TMT responsible leadership can break through they are making a positive contribution to society (Dyllick &
multiple organizational layers via the “TMT ! management Muff, 2016; Muff et al., 2020). Specifically, when selecting TMT can-
system ! motivation ! employee” mechanism. Our findings thus didates, companies should first consider candidates with a view of
shed light on the internal influence mechanism between TMT sustainable development. They should also offer regular internal envi-
responsible leadership and employee OCBE. ronmental training to TMT members, thereby ensuring that they gain
Third, previous studies have mostly emphasized that the imple- a deeper understanding of environmental interests and other stake-
mentation of GHRM in enterprises needs to be horizontally aligned holder demands. Companies also need to train TMT members to culti-
through green recruitment, green training, and green performance vate a responsible leadership style. This could enable the TMT
management (Muisyo & Qin, 2021; Ogbeibu et al., 2020; Saeed members to set an environmental role model for their employees and
et al., 2019; Yong et al., 2019). They generally ignore the fact that prompt employees to proactively implement OCBE in line with organi-
GHRM can link corporate strategy with employee-specific behaviors zational expectations. As such, such training could contribute to the
in a top-down manner (Dubois & Dubois, 2012), and conflate GHRM development and implementation of companies' ES strategies. In addi-
with corporate strategy (Ismail et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2019). In tion, companies should set up communication channels between TMT
order to ensure the smooth implementation of ES strategy, companies and subordinates, regularly collect feedback suggestions from enter-
need to vertically align GHRM with their organizational strategy prise managers and employees on TMT environmental policies and
(Moktadir et al., 2019). The current study fills this gap by introducing management tools, so as to help TMT responsible leaders to self-
GHRM as the first sequential mediator. It confirms that GHRM devel- examine and self-correct, and ensure that the enterprise ES strategy is
oped by TMT's responsible leadership can transmit ES strategy to reasonable and correct.
grassroots employees, thereby ensuring vertical consistency in the Secondly, GHRM is receiving more and more attention globally as
perception of corporate ES strategy from the TMT down to an important tool for realizing corporate ES strategy and environmen-
employees (Malik et al., 2020). tal management (Ren et al., 2018). Enterprises around the world
Finally, our study explores how environmental felt-responsibility should pay attention to the critical role played by GHRM in realizing
can promote employee OCBE at the individual level, expanding the ES strategy. GHRM constructs a green work atmosphere and imple-
research scope of environmental felt-responsibility. Most previous ments green training and development, thereby stimulating employee
studies on environmental felt-responsibility have focused on educa- environmental felt-responsibility and prompting them to implement
tion (Aarnio-Linnanvuori, 2019; Janmaimool & Chudech, 2020) or OCBE. To implement GHRM, companies should strongly emphasize
individual citizens (Gupta et al., 2021; Huang et al., 2021; Reysen & green recruitment and selection. They need to offer environmental
LU ET AL. 855
training for middle managers as well as HR employees, especially responsibility, organizational commitment, green climate, and individ-
recruiters, to ensure that they understand the importance of environ- ual motivation may also mediate the relationship between responsible
mental protection. HR also needs to actively promote the company's TMT leadership and OCBE. Future studies are, therefore, rec-
green image and environmental policies during recruitment. In addi- ommended to include those factors in their research models to further
tion, HR should pay attention to candidates' environmental knowl- explore the influence of responsible TMT leadership on organizational
edge and environmental concepts during recruitment, and give environmental performance.
priority to those with high environmental felt-responsibility traits. Fur-
thermore, enterprises should offer employees training on environmen-
tal protection knowledge and skills, thereby enhancing their 6 | CONC LU SION
environmental awareness; they should also regularly carry out envi-
ronmental protection activities and encourage employees to engage The current study showed that the realization of corporate ES strat-
in these activities. Responsible TMT members or other managers in egy requires support from the corporate TMT level, as well as
the enterprise should demonstrate their environmental awareness, employees. Our findings highlight the importance of the corporation
thereby enhancing employees' environmental awareness. They should as a collective in achieving environmental performance. Our study
facilitate employee environmental felt-responsibility by continuously revealed that the facilitative effect of TMT responsible leadership on
advocating the enterprise's environmental protection policies. Finally, employee OCBE can be realized through the sequential mediating
HR should develop appropriate green performance evaluation criteria, effect of GHRM and employee environmental felt-responsibility.
which could help employees establish awareness of corporate sustain- Between them, GHRM partially mediated the relationship between
ability norms. They also need to combine green compensation with TMT responsible leadership and employee environmental felt-respon-
guidance, assessment, and feedback, and provide incentives and sibility; employee environmental felt-responsibility partially mediate
rewards for employees' environmental behavior, thereby stimulating the influence of GHRM on employee OCBE. We hope that our find-
their intrinsic motivation for environmental protection. ings will inspire further research on sustainable development
Thirdly, the design, promotion, and implementation of a corporate ES and GHRM.
strategy should not be the responsibility of a single department alone, but
should also integrate members at all levels (Dubois & Dubois, 2012) in ACKNOWLEDG MENTS
order to maximize the synergy of the system. Since social communication This research was financially supported by Chinese National Science
has a great impact on middle managers (Song et al., 2014), companies can Foundation Grant (71974189); the Youth Project of Chinese National
strengthen middle managers' awareness of ES strategy by reinforcing the Science Foundation Grant (71603255); the Key Project of Chinese
trickle-down effect of TMT responsible leadership, thus ensuring that mid- National Science Foundation Grant (19ZDA107); State Key Program
dle managers correctly and effectively downstream the specific practices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (2132003).
of ES strategy and provide employees with positive guidance. Finally, ES
strategies require employee participation and implementation (Harris & OR CID
Tregidga, 2012). Therefore, companies should also attach importance to Hui Lu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5300-3454
the role of employees as implementers, and cultivate employee environ-
mental felt-responsibility by providing role model guidance from leaders, RE FE RE NCE S
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Does top management team responsible leadership help

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N environmental changes and strategic decisions (Wu et al., 2002). In

leadership not only pays more attention to the common interests of

Hypothesis 1 to Hypothesis 6 suggest that TMT responsible leader-

3 | METHOD 3.2 | Measures

TABLE 1 Reliability and validity tests

Composite reliability Convergent validity Discriminant validity

TABLE 2 Comparison of model fits

χ2 df χ 2/df RMSEA CFI TLI SRMR

TABLE 3 Descriptive statistics, correlations, and reliability coefficients

TABLE 4 Model comparisons

SRMR within group (

Note:*** p < 0.001.

T A B L E 5 Path coefficients of the

Table 5 shows the estimated normalized coefficients of struc-

TABLE 6 Results on the mediating roles of GHRM and environmental felt-responsibility

Bootstrapping Estimated value SE Lower Upper

Note: Level 1 N = 527, Level 2 N = 102;

5 | DISCUSSION behaviors (Janmaimool & Khajohnmanee, 2020). The conclusion of

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