School of Business and Management

Do organisations and employees perform

pro-environmental behaviours
symbolically: a multi-level perspective?

Lei Yang
PhD candidate at the School of Business and Management
Queen Mary University of London
Email: lei.yang@qmul.ac.uk

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What is pro-environmental behaviours

(PEB)?
• Definition of PEB: any action that intentionally seeks to minimise
negative behavioural impacts on the natural and built world (e.g.
Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002).

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Evidences showing the symbolic nature of

PEB
• For organisations:
• Greenwashing: a deliberate information management strategy in which firms can
selectively reveal positive information about their environmental performance while
hiding facts of less favourable activities (Lyon and Maxwell, 2011).
• Symbolic corporate environmentalism: the shared meanings and representations
surrounding changes made by managers within firms that they describe as primarily
for environmental reasons (Bowen, 2014, p.31).

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Evidences showing the symbolic nature of

PEB
•For employees:
•Boiral (2007) uncovered the ceremonial aspect of employees’ ecological activities under
the pressure of ISO 14001, which is one of the most famous environmental management
systems among organisations. There are deviations of employees’ work behaviours from
standard prescriptions proposed by ISO 14001, but these deviations are reduced as much
as possible during auditing.
•“Just like students who go over their notes before a final exam, the managers and
employees consulted— sometimes for the first time—ISO 14001 documentation; they
read the procedures, updated their knowledge, and attempted to ensure that the system
would be in order at the time of the audit.” (Boiral, 2007, p. 138).
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Definition of symbolic pro-environmental

behaviour (PEB)
• Symbolic pro-environmental activities are the representations of PEB in symbolic form
or the symbolic meanings attributed to eco-friendly objects and actions.

• Symbolic PEB can take place across two levels: the corporate/organisation level and the
employee/individual level.

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Aim of the research

To uncover the mechanisms underlying the symbolism of environmental activities

across organisational and employee levels via an integrated multi-level framework.

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Proposed multi-level framework of drivers

of symbolic PEB
• 1. Appropriateness motivation represents the organisation’s and employee’s intention to
signal conformity with taken-for-granted norms or external regulations via symbolic
environmental behaviour. Organisations and employees perceive symbolic environmental
behaviour as a way of adjusting, improving and symbolising the propriety of environmental
behaviours.

• E.g. the superficial adoption of environmental management system like ISO 14001, which
“demonstrates compliance with current and future statutory and regulatory requirements” (ISO
14001: Key benefits, 2015).
• E.g. employees may engage in PEB superficially to show conformity to external constraints
like ISO 14001 requirements or peer pressures.

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Proposed multi-level framework of drivers

of symbolic PEB
• 2. Competitiveness motivation refers to the organisation’s and employee’s intention to
obtain a competitive superiority among rivals via symbolic environmentally-friendly poses.

• There are two methods to achieve the goal: acquire resources and being differentiated from
others. The former tells how organisations and employees acquire competitiveness from
external resources (e.g. reputation). The latter demonstrates how organisations and employees
improve competitiveness through internal characterisation (e.g. identity).

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Proposed multi-level framework of drivers

of symbolic PEB
• Resources:

• E.g. enterprises can attain a positive reputation via seemingly green activities, and thus
temporarily improve a firm’s competitiveness through strengthening relationships with
stakeholders such as government, shareholder, and supplier.

• E.g. employees may engage in symbolic PEB to acquire, preserve or enhance resources like
personal reputation, and ultimately improve their personal competitiveness among other
employees.

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Proposed multi-level framework of drivers

of symbolic PEB
• Differentiation:

• E.g. enterprises can establish or enhance a green brand image only through symbolic actions
such as claims of future reforestation, plans to decorate headquarters or offices with a “green”
appearance.

• E.g. Employees can perform symbolic PEB to show who they are, or show which social group
they belong to. They can also engage in role-playing and fake a green identity via symbolic
environmental behaviours to respond to identity threats at the personal, relational, or collective
levels of identity in their organisational life in exchange for self-gains.

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Proposed multi-level framework of drivers

of symbolic PEB
• 3. Status motivation refers to the organisation’s and employee’s intention to signal or
strengthen their positions in social ranks via symbolic environmentally-friendly actions.
Organisations and employees can particularly benefit from the social hierarchical system
because higher status normally equals to privilege or prestige

• E.g. company can use symbolic environmental behaviour to showcase or improve its social
status within the industry in exchange of privileges and other economic benefits, because
organisations with higher social status are often encouraged and granted the power to define
green standards and codes.
• E.g. what employees consume in front of others may embody a symbolic meaning. For
instance, eating expensive organic foods or using high-tech eco-friendly products can showcase
an employee’s wealth and social status.
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Methodology
• This project mainly uses qualitative data to explore drivers of symbolic environmental
behaviours in both level.
• Study 1-organisational level:
• Semi-structured interview with sustainability managers from various universities
• The objectives of study 1 are: (1) to explore whether or not organisations perform symbolic
environmental behaviours; (2) to explore the motives behind those behaviours.
• Study 2 -employee level:
• Semi-structured interview with employees from a specific university. Interviews used critical
incident technique.
• The objectives of study 2 are: (1) to explore whether or not employees perform symbolic
environmental behaviours at work; (2) to explore the motives behind those behaviours.

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Study 1 Results
• External constraints:

• HEFCE carbon reduction target

• ISO14001 was adopted by some universities to show legal compliance as well as operational
functioning as a pro-environmental organisation
• University will face the risk of breaking the law (e.g. environmental legislation) and legal non-
compliance issues given that universities are found to underperform sustainably

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Study 1 Results
• Resources:

• HEFCE is a significant reason for universities to engage in sustainability as funding is an

essential resource for growth and improvement
• “The main reason that the sustainability team exists is to save university money’’
• “It is very much like a kind of PR (public relations), it’s good PR for the university”

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Study 1 Results
• Differentiation:

• Sustainability is a “selling point” for the university to stand out.

• Being environmental-friendly can improve the university’s uniqueness and specialty comparing
to other competitors

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Study 1 Results
• Status:

• “Providing leadership in this field”

• Setting an example - Sustainability is something the university can achieve and then enable
other university to replicate

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Conclusion
• The symbolic nature of environmental activities in both organisational and employee
levels is not a surprising finding, in most cases, researchers have explored it within
one specific context such as the organisational context (e.g. Boiral 2007) or the
household context (e.g. Griskevicius et al. 2010).
• This research is the first systematic analysis of the drivers of symbolic environmental
activities via a multi-level perspective (although not completely verified by now),
which explores the commonalities and differences among different motivators of PEB
and provides theoretical insights into the symbolic nature of environmental activities.
• A multi-level model also provides a parsimonious overview of common motives of
symbolic environmental behaviours across levels.

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Thanks for listening!

Q&A

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References
• Bowen, F. (2014), After greenwashing: Symbolic corporate environmentalism and society,
Cambridge University Press.
• Boiral, O. (2007), Corporate greening through ISO 14001: a rational myth?, Organization
Science, 18(1), 127-146.
• ISO 14001 (2015), ISO 14001: Key benefits, accessed 15 November 2016 at
www.iso.org/iso/iso_14001_-_key_benefits.pdf.
• Kollmuss, A. and Agyeman, J. (2002), ‘Mind the gap: why do people act environmentally and
what are the barriers to pro-environmental behaviour?’, Environmental education research, 8
(3), 239-260.
• Lyon, T. P., & Maxwell, J. W. (2011), Greenwash: Corporate environmental disclosure under
threat of audit, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 20(1), 3-41.

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