Exploring the impact of megaproject environmental responsibility on organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment: A social identity perspective

Highlights

• Investigation of organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment (OCBEs) in megaprojects.

• Identification of how megaproject environmental responsibility (MER) practices directed toward different stakeholders affect OCBEs.

• Significant impact of MER practices directed toward internal project stakeholders on OCBEs.

• Insignificant impact of MER practices directed toward external project stakeholders on OCBEs.

Abstract

The importance of organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment (OCBEs) has been clearly established in the environmental literature. However, the OCBEs construct has rarely been examined in the specific and increasingly important realm of megaproject environmental responsibility (MER). To fill this gap, this paper presents an individual-level analysis that explores the impact of project participants' perceptions of MER practices on their environmental commitment and OCBEs. The results show that project participants' perceptions of MER practices directed toward internal stakeholders (i.e., stakeholders linked by project contracts) are positively related to their OCBEs. This relationship is partially mediated by the environmental commitment of project participants. Conversely, project participants' perceptions of MER practices directed toward external stakeholders (i.e., the local community and general public) have only an insignificant impact on their OCBEs. These findings provide new insights for managing MER practices to stimulate the emergence of OCBEs and thereby improve environmental performance.

Introduction

Megaprojects are temporary endeavors with a large investment commitment, vast complexities (especially in organizational terms), and long-lasting impacts on the economy, environment, and society (Brookes and Locatelli, 2015). In the engineering sector, megaprojects refer to large-scale infrastructure projects that are usually financed by governments and are characterized by “enormous resource consumptions, significant environmental impacts, as well as a high level of risk, innovation, and complexity” (Flyvbjerg, 2014, Locatelli and Mancini, 2010, Locatelli et al., 2017a, Van Marrewijk et al., 2008).

In the global context of sustainable development, improving environmental performance is one of the most pressing and prominent objectives in megaproject management (Locatelli and Mancini, 2013, Zeng et al., 2015). As megaprojects increase their efforts in environmental management, the key challenge is to translate formal project policies into innovative and spontaneous individual initiatives (Locatelli et al., 2017b, Maier and Branzei, 2014). Where individual involvement is insufficient, the application of environmental management policies and systems tends to be disconnected from daily activities and to be implemented symbolically rather than substantively (Boiral et al., 2016).

Boiral (2009) defined organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment (OCBEs) as comprising “individual, voluntary, and discretionary social behaviors that are not explicitly recognized by the formal management system and that contribute to effective environmental management by organizations.” Examples of OCBEs include helping to resolve environmental issues, suggesting solutions aimed at preventing pollution, and collaborating with environmental departments to implement green technologies.

The megaproject is an exemplary case of a complex, dynamic, and temporary organization. Compared to “regular projects,” megaprojects have more ambiguous roles and boundaries, and more informal coordination activities between teams (Hanisch and Wald, 2014, Sainati et al., 2017, Van Marrewijk et al., 2008). As a form of innovative and spontaneous initiative that goes beyond the prescribed role requirements (Ekrot et al., 2016), OCBEs are essential to compensate for the limitations of formal management systems in megaprojects (He et al., 2015) and have far-reaching impacts on project success (Braun et al., 2013, Turner and Zolin, 2012).

The Shanghai World Expo project attached high importance to environmental protection and took a variety of environmentally conscious initiatives (Zhang, 2013). For example, it launched a “golden idea” activity to seek constructive suggestions from project participants and the application of these suggestions played an important role in reducing energy consumption and enhancing environmental protection (He et al., 2015). Astonishingly, although OCBEs have been extensively valued by megaproject management (as in the Shanghai World Expo), this research area remains underdeveloped. Furthermore, the social–psychological mechanisms that lead project participants to engage in OCBEs are as yet largely unexplored.

This paper contributes to megaproject management research by proposing and validating a predictive model for OCBEs. The findings in this paper can serve as a guide for megaproject managers to promote OCBEs and thereby facilitate the improvement of project environmental performance. According to the burgeoning OCBEs literature, “if individuals are aware that becoming sustainable is an important objective of their organization and the organization demonstrates an interest in supporting environmental responsibility practices, they may be more prone to reciprocate by performing OCBEs” (Paillé and Raineri, 2015, Raineri and Paillé, 2016). Nevertheless, why, how, and under what circumstances organizational environmental responsibility practices lead to individual OCBEs remains largely unknown (Paillé et al., 2014, De Roeck and Delobbe, 2012). Environmental commitment refers to a sense of attachment to and identification with the environmental goals and values of an organization, and it serves as a bridge between the organization's environmental responsibility practices and individual OCBEs (Raineri and Paillé, 2016). Therefore, this study empirically investigates the relationships between project participants' perceptions of megaproject environmental responsibility (MER) practices and their OCBEs, considering the mediating effect of their environmental commitment.

To date, scholars have explored the contextual antecedents of individual-level OCBEs in terms of organizational-level practices, including environmental management practices (Paillé et al., 2013), organization environmental policies (Raineri and Paillé, 2016, Paillé and Raineri, 2015), and human resource management (Paillé et al., 2014). The authors leveraged this body of knowledge, along with primary data, to provide guidelines for managing OCBEs in megaprojects. To analyze how project-level factors influence individual-level OCBEs, this study developed an empirical model in which MER practices were reflected by the perceptions of individual project participants. In the questionnaire survey, only on-site project participants who were directly involved in MER practices were considered as targeted respondents. These respondents were senior and professional individuals (with knowledge of MER practices), including project owners, contractors, and consultants.

This paper adopted a stakeholder-oriented conceptualization of MER practices, which refers to “megaproject environmental initiatives taking into account the interests of different stakeholder groups, including governments/owners, non-owner stakeholders (i.e., contractors, consultants, designers, and suppliers), the local community, as well as the general public” (Zeng et al., 2015). MER practices directed toward the four abovementioned stakeholder groups manifest themselves in very different ways. To better explain and predict OCBEs, it is necessary to distinguish how project participants perceive the four types of MER practices. These considerations lead to the following research question:

How do project participants' perceptions of MER practices directed towards the four stakeholder groups affect their environmental commitment and, in turn, their OCBEs?

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the theoretical foundations and presents the research hypotheses based on a literature review. Section 3 illustrates the research methods and analytical procedures. Section 4 presents the data analysis results. Section 5 discusses the research findings and their implications for megaproject environmental management. Section 6 summarizes the key ideas and suggests a research agenda.