In pursuit of corporate sustainability: factors contributing to employees' workplace behavior

Abstract

Purpose

Achieving sustainability is imperative for all businesses but perhaps even so more in fashion retail. As a vital group of stakeholders, employees interact with all other stakeholders and play a critical role in the sustainability of an organization.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is to investigate internal and external factors that influence employees' harmful or useful behaviors based on the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) of morality.

Findings

The findings show that employees' perceptions of the moral responsibility of achieving corporate sustainability both as an internal corporate ethical value and as an external factor influenced their organizational citizenship behavior, as well as their propensity toward displaying counterproductive workplace behavior. Higher quality relationships with managers were found to strengthen the relationship between corporate ethical values (CEVs) and organizational citizenship behaviors.

Research limitations/implications

The objective of this study focused exclusively on the US fashion retail employees. Therefore, it is suggested that future research compares the cultural influences on employees as related to the moral responsibility of corporate sustainability.

Originality/value

This study is one of few studies which have explored the level of employees' perceived moral responsibility toward the notion of how corporate sustainability should be accomplished.

Citation

Lee, S.H. and Ha-Brookshire, J.E. (2020), "In pursuit of corporate sustainability: factors contributing to employees' workplace behavior", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 235-249. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-09-2019-0203