Sustainability empowerment in the workplace: determinants and effects

Harrach, Christoph; Geiger, Sonja; Schrader, Ulf Article — Published Version Sustainability empowerment in the workplace: determinants and effects Sustainability Management Forum Provided in Cooperation with: Springer Nature Suggested Citation: Harrach, Christoph; Geiger, Sonja; Schrader, Ulf (2020) : Sustainability empowerment in the workplace: determinants and effects, Sustainability Management Forum, ISSN 2522-5995, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, Vol. 28, Iss. 3-4, pp. 93-107, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00550-020-00505-1 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/288358 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ORIGINALBEITRAG / ORIGINAL ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1007/s00550-020-00505-1 NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 Sustainability empowerment in the workplace: determinants and effects Christoph Harrach1·SonjaGeiger 1·UlfSchrader 1 Received: 6 December 2019 / Revised: 12 March 2020 / Accepted: 23 July 2020 / Published online: 17 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract There is a dynamic stream of research, which examines why and how employees contribute and respond to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Building on these micro-CSR findings, this article makes a contribution to a better understanding of employee engagement in CSR by considering its determinants and effects. The research centres around the established motivational concept of psychological empowerment in the workplace and applies it to sustainability. The authors propose a model of sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW) and empirically test the construct in a comprehensive framework. Results indicate that the sustainability-orientation of employees and the perceived organisational support towards sustainability act as two valid determinants of SEW. It is also shown that SEW has positive effects on job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Further results indicate that the sustainability-orientation of employees plays an important role as a moderator in the relationship between SEW and its effects. In the overall view, the paper contributes to micro-CSR research by showing that SEW is a valid construct that helps to answer why and how employees engage in CSR activities and what positive effects arise therefrom for organisations. The authors give an overview of these contributions and discuss the implications for researchers and practitioners in the field of CSR and HRM. Keywords Corporate social responsibility · Micro-CSR · Sustainability · Human resource management · Psychological empowerment 1Introduction There is a growing number of scientific publications with a micro level perspective on CSR or corporate sustainability (both terms are used as synonyms in this article), which try to understand the employees’ contribution to CSR activities in the workplace. It has become increasingly obvious that motivated employees are needed to anchor sustainable management strategically in organisations (Kramer and Porter 2011; Boudreau 2003; Greening and Turban 2000). Both for science and management, it is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms of why and how employees are Christoph Harrach christ[email protected] Sonja Geiger [email protected] Ulf Schrader [email protected] 1Institute for Vocational Education and Work Studies, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany willing to engage in CSR and which effects this creates for organisations. Carmeli et al. (2017, p. 1380) state that current CSR research mostly takes macro-level approaches into account and “focuses on the importance of formal management systems, processes, structures, and certifications”. As the integration of sustainability in the corporate DNA is a complex endeavour, a micro-level perspective is needed to understand the role of employees in this transformation process (De Roeck and Maon 2018;Lammetal.2015;Ramus and Killmer 2007). Aguinis and Glavas (2012)showed in their meta-analysis of the status quo of CSR research that only about four percent of the scientific publications deal explicitly with the role of employees. This neglect contradicts the findings of various authors (e.g. Lamm et al. 2015; Ramus and Steger 2000; Bliesner et al. 2013) that the role of individual employees is an important factor for successful CSR management. And it is also not considered that some employees do want to participate voluntarily in corporate sustainability activities due to a personal sustainability-ori- entation as an intrinsic motivation (Blazejewski et al. 2014; Bliesner et al. 2013; Harrach et al. 2014; Hesselbarth and Schaltegger 2014). K 94 NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 Micro-CSR reflects causes and effects of CSR on an individual level, and three types of micro-level CSR approaches are identified by Gond et al. (2017): 1) individual drivers of CSR engagement, 2) individual processes of CSR evaluation and 3) individual reactions to CSR initiatives. The authors note that the current micro-CSR research focuses “on reactions to CSR, to the detriment of CSR drivers and CSR evaluations” (Gond et al. 2017, p. 227) and an integrated model is necessary to understand the mutual dependencies among those types. Other scholars (Glavas 2016; Rupp and Mallory 2015) emphasize that the relations between employees and CSR are influenced by various mediators (e.g. personal meaningfulness) and moderators (e.g. organisational support) which are also not well understood. De Roeck and Maon (2018, p. 609) emphasise apart from this that “extant empirical research efforts can often be characterized as exploratory, as the theories underlying the potential of CSR to affect employees lack integrative and systematic testing and refinement”. Micro-CSR-research is grounded in organisational psychology (Rupp and Mallory 2015). One highly relevant concept in this area is the main starting point of this paper: Psychological empowerment, which has an “extensive foundational literature, history, and use within organizations” (Maynard et al. 2012, p. 1232). This concept has already been used in micro-CSR research (e.g. Lamm et al. 2015; Tariq et al. 2016; Schrader and Harrach 2013;Harrach et al. 2019). The empowerment framework suggested by Seibert et al. (2011) has the potential to integrate aspects of each micro-CSR perspective identified by Gond et al. (2017) in one model. This article has three main objectives: First, we apply the concept of psychological empowerment in the workplace to sustainability, deriving an adapted model of “sustainability empowerment in the workplace” (SEW) which represents employee engagement towards sustainability at work. Second, we investigate determinants and effects of SEW in a framework by testing the resulting structural model. Third, we explore moderating effects of sustainability-ori- entation of employees with regard to SEW’s effects on organisational commitment and job satisfaction. The overall objective of the article is to deliver insights into the individual dimensions of CSR engagement, its drivers and consequences. The article is structured as follows: the introductory part presents a general explanation why employees are important stakeholders for successful CSR management, followed by a presentation of the concept of psychological empowerment alongside its determinants and effects. It is shown that psychological empowerment can be applied to micro-CSR by transforming it to the concept of sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW). Based on that, hypotheses on individual employee-specific and organisational determinants of SEW as well as on its possible effects on employeespecific attitudes regarding work are developed. These hypotheses form a model that is tested in an empirical study. The insights gained from a representative employee survey in Germany are discussed before finally implications for scientists and managers are presented. 2 Employees as important stakeholders in CSR CSR can only work if it is implemented by employees’ everyday behaviour. They should follow new sustainabilityoriented guidelines with regards to e.g. provisioning, energy use, or recycling activities. In addition to merely supporting existing policies, employees can foster CSR by engaging in sustainability-oriented innovation processes (e.g. Buhl et al. 2019). According to Carmeli et al. (2017), the need to understand employee involvement in the CSR management of organisations has two main reasons: first, employee participation in the workplace is a critical factor in achieving key organisational objectives. Second, promoting sustainability is a complex task that requires the involvement of all actors in the organisation. Acknowledging this necessity to involve all corporate stakeholders in CSR, Orlitzky et al. (2011) criticise the overemphasis of the organisational level and general neglect of the aspects of individual contributions in stakeholder research. Ramus and Killmer (2007) argue that participation in CSR for most employees is not formally required, but rather a voluntary task and thus extra-role behaviour. The overall difficulty in engaging employees in CSR is essentially influenced by a personal psychological predisposition (Shamir 1991). Thus, the associated personal evaluation of internal CSR activities is unique and can be seen as “a black box that needs to be opened” (De Roeck and Maon. 2018, p. 611). As employees have different opinions on CSR, insights into the personal preconditions of CSR engagement will be instrumental for their successful implementation. Two streams of research are relevant for this article to explain the CSR engagement of employees: on the one hand, this article is based on findings from work-life research at the interface of private life and work (from the fields of sociology and HRM). On the other hand, we refer to the social identity theory (from the field of psychology). Both streams, however, are intertwined with one another. The former has shown that there are interdependencies between the life-spheres of employees, so called spill-over effects (Edwards and Rothbard 2000). These reciprocal effects have already been transferred to the field of sustainable HRM research. According to the concept Green Work-Life Balance (Muster and Schrader 2011), there are mutual influences among sustainability-oriented values, attitudes, and K NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 95 experiences in private life and behaviour in the workplace. Research shows, that the strength of the spill-over from private life to work depends on the degree of the sustainability-orientation of the employee (Harrach et al. 2014; Weinrich 2014; Lin et al. 2010;Buerkeetal.2013). For this article, the spill-over from private life to work environment may provide a central explanation why employees are engaging in sustainability in the workplace. Ramus and Killmer (2007, p. 558) show for example that “an employee’s personal predisposition toward protecting the natural environment has a positive relationship to his/her motivation to engage in corporate greening behaviours”. This goes along with findings in social identity theory that there is an individual desire for congruence of values and behaviour between employees and the company (Ashforth and Mael 1989). Previous insights from motivation and engagement theory (e.g. Kahn 1990) show that the more employees can bring in their whole personality to work, the more engaged they will be. There are many factors in the workplace that influence how much of the whole personality can be expressed. CSR activities, e.g. programs for energy saving, recycling or corporate volunteering, can be seen as one factor. In this context, Rich et al. (2010) have defined four mediators of the CSR-outcomes relationship: psychological safety, psychological availability, values congruence and purpose. Psychological safety is a state of mind, which supports employees to show more of their whole personality at the workplace. It is positively related to perceived organisational support which is also positively related to CSR (Glavas and Kelley 2014). “In other words, CSR can provide nurturing and safe environments in which employees feel a safe space to show up more as who they truly are” (Glavas 2016, p. 5). This alignment of the self-con- cept of employees with the organisational behaviour leads to a greater congruence of values (Vlachos et al. 2014) and together with improved self-esteem may lead to more fully present employees at work. This so-called psychological availability gives employees a good feeling about themselves because they can recognise that they are part of an organisation that does good. The fourth mediator identified by Rich et al. (2010) is purpose, understood as the feeling of employees that their work is contributing to the common good. According to Glavas and Kelley (2014)the combination of purpose and bringing the whole personality into the workplace could be an important factor to foster CSR activities. The psychological disposition for the wish to contribute to the sustainable development could be a reason, why some employees are attracted by CSR more than others. Those employees with a “green identity” (Blazejewski et al. 2014) have “an intrinsic motivation to protect the environment through work, and aims [sic] for consistency between home and work environmental behaviors” (Ciocirlan 2016, p. 2). There are different terms for these kinds of employees, such as sustchange agents (Bliesner et al. 2013), sustainability talents (Kirchgeorg 2004), sustainability-oriented employees (Harrach et al. 2014), sustainable intrapreneurs (Schrader and Harrach 2013), green employees (Ciocirlan 2016) or change agents for corporate sustainability (Buhr 2015; Visser and Crane 2010). These employees can play an important role as internal promoters of the sustainability development of organisations when they are proactively integrated in CSR. Beside the motivational aspects and willingness of employees, Kirchgeorg (2004) states that a strong CSR- strategy requires the ability (competence) and authorisation (self-determination) among executives as well as all other employees. Boudreau (2003) is also referring to this triple concept as an important indicator for the effectiveness in micro-CSR. He criticizes that too little focus is placed on the effectiveness of employee involvement in corporate practice. The three mentioned aspects willingness, ability and authorisation correspond to the dimensions of psychological empowerment in the workplace (Spreitzer 1995). In this construct, the effectiveness demanded by Boudreau (2003) is also considered a fourth dimension: impact. 3 Sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW) Psychological empowerment—as defined by Spreitzer (1995) based on Thomas and Velthouse (1990)—examines the individual employees’ perceptions of the extent to which they can perform their work in an independent, motivated, and self-effective fashion. It can be seen “as an intrinsic task motivation reflecting a sense of control in relation to one’s work and an active orientation to one’s work role” (Seibert et al. 2011, p. 981). The active orientation emphasizes that empowerment is a construct that reflects the employees’ perception, individual wishes and feelings about the possibilities to shape the work role. According to this, it becomes clear that psychological empowerment is not an organisational intervention, but a state of consciousness perceived by employees (Maynard et al. 2012). According to Spreitzer (1995, p. 1443f.), psychological empowerment manifests in four dimensions, which reflect the willingness, authorisation, ability, and effectiveness of employees’ engagement in work-related task fulfilment: meaning “is the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s ideals or standards” self-determination “is an individual’s sense of having choice in initiating and regulating actions” competence “is an individual’s belief in their capability to perform activities with skill” K 96 NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 Fig. 1 Integrated individual and team empowerment framework (Seibert et al. 2011, p. 982) impact “is the degreeto which an individual can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes at work” It is important to understand that empowerment can only develop in the combination of these four dimensions because”“the highest levels of intrinsic task motivation were proposed to emerge only when all four cognitions are high” (Seibert et al. 2011, p. 981). A comprehensive framework of psychological empowerment, its antecedents and consequences, has been proposed by Seibert et al. (2011)(see Fig. 1). Empowerment depends on the individual characteristics of the employees and on the organisational framework conditions in which the employees are embedded (Seibert et al. 2011). It can have a positive impact on various success factors in HRM, e.g. job satisfaction (e.g. Carless 2004; Harris et al. 2009; Liden et al. 2000) and organisational commitment (Brammer et al. 2007; Peterson 2004). Psychological empowerment has already been used in micro-CSR research (e.g. Lamm et al. 2015; Tariq et al. 2016, Schrader and Harrach 2013; Harrach et al. 2019). We assume that the shown empowerment framework in Fig. 1 may reflect central aspects of each of the three micro-CSR approaches identified by Gond et al. (2017) from a different angle. The core of the framework with the four empowerment dimensions may cover the individual evaluations of CSR. Gond et al. (2017, p. 231) mean by evaluations “the cognitive and affective processes by which people gather and organize information related to organizations’ CSR initiatives to form judgments about the initiatives, experience emotions resulting from their perceptions.” The antecedents of the empowerment framework reflect aspects which Gond et al. (2017) consider drivers of CSR. They define drivers as “factors that operate as predictors of, motives for, or forces that trigger CSR engagement” (Gond et al. 2017, p. 228). The attitudinal and behavioural consequences of the empowerment framework may stand for the individual reactions to CSR initiatives. Gond et al. (2017, p. 233) acknowledge that “CSR triggers multiple attitudes among and behaviors by individuals” and also distinguish these effects in attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. Behind this background, we define sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW) as the sustainability specific form of psychological empowerment as follows: Sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW) describes an employee’s CSR engagement by reflecting their sense of control in relation to their work in the context of sustainability SEW can be seen as an active orientation to one’s work role that reflects the employees’ perception, how their wishes and feelings about sustainability enables them to shape their work role by engaging in CSR activities. According to this, SEW may answer the question how employees evaluate their willingness and ability to engage in sustainability activities in the workplace, manifesting itself in the following four dimensions: Sustainability-meaning is the value of a work purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s sustainability ideals or standards. It describes the willingness of employees to integrate their sustainability-orientation in the workplace. This spill-over from private to work could be seen as a motivational factor, why some employees engage in CSR. Organisational activities in CSR may lead to a perceived strong congruence between the values, especially for sustainability-oriented employees (Rich et al. 2010; Harrach et al. 2014; Glavas and Kelley 2014). According to the social identity theory, a positive congruence of values leads to K NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 97 an improved self-esteem (Ashforth and Mael 1989)thatis positively related to empowerment. Sustainability-self-determination is an individual’s sense of having a choice in initiating and regulating actions towards sustainability in the workplace. This dimension is the degree of freedom to bring in sustainability-related aspects of the whole personality to work. It indicates how much the employee feels allowed to do so and depends on the extent to which an organisation integrates its employees into sustainable development. Lamm et al. (2015, p. 211) argue that “feelings of self-determination will be increased as the employee will be able to make choices” and they found empirical evidence that psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between this support and job satisfaction. Sustainability-competence is an individual’s belief in their capability to perform activities in the context of sustainability with skill. Ramus and Killmer (2007, p. 557) found evidence that “one’s belief in one’s own ability to successfully perform the action is an important motivational driver and appears to be predominant in the context of employee performance of extra-role pro-social behaviours”. The development of employee skills is one of the HRM’s core tasks in micro-CSR. Programs for competence building as employee education or trainings have shown a positive influence in the employee’s engagement in CSR (e.g. Ramus and Steger 2000;Galpinetal.2015). Based on the findings, the authors assume that fostering sustainability-oriented competences will foster SEW. Sustainability-impact is the perceived degree to which an individual can influence strategic, administrative, or operational sustainability outcomes at work. It shows the influence of employees on the CSR strategy and activities and measures the degree of perceived self-efficacy of the employees relating to CSR. Lamm et al. (2015, p. 208) state in this context “As a result, the cumulative environmental impact of a company is in part affected by discretionary decisions made by individual employees every day. While the impact of one individual’s decisions might be small, in the aggregate, the impact is significant”. This fourth di- Fig. 2 Sustainability Empowerment in the Workplace (SEW) framework mension of SEW is influenced by various factors that enhance employees’ feelings of impact “because of the greater availability of the material resources, power, and influence needed to accomplish tasks and work-related goals” (Seibertetal.2011, p. 984). For an empirical validation, the framework proposed by Seibertetal.(2011)(asshowninFig.1) needs specification with regards to SEW. Following the preliminary work of Lamm et al. (2015), who also adapted the framework of Seibert et al., we also neglect the team perspective and use only one contextual determinant. Since the sustainability-orientation of employees (SOE) and their spill-over to the workplace play a central role for SEW, we supplement the model of Lamm et al. (2015) with this individual determinant. At the level of consequences, we focus only on the attitudinal effects. We have made this reduction because we want to make a contribution to explaining the retention of talented employees as an effect of SEW, in particular for sustainability-oriented employees. We have selected job satisfaction and commitment as the two effects with the highest correlation to empowerment in the meta-analysis of Seibert et al. (2011). We expect the effects of SEW will be specifically strong for employees with high SOE. Fig. 2 shows an overview of the resulting SEW framework. 4Hypotheses In this section, the relations between SEW and its selected determinants and effects (as shown in Fig. 2) are specified in testable hypotheses. 4.1 Determinants of SEW 4.1.1 Perceived organisational support towards sustainability (POS-S) Various authors (e.g. Glavas 2016;Lammetal.2015) state that organisational support can foster employee engagement in CSR. Ramus and Killmer (2007) found evidence that this K 98 NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 is a dominant motivational driver to extra-role behaviours (e.g. participating in CSR initiatives). De Roeck and Maon (2018) argue that perceived organisational support (POS) is a central factor in micro-CSR. It “represents generalized beliefs made by employees concerning how much the organisation values their contributions” (Rhoades et al. 2001, p. 825). Lamm et al. (2015) have already adapted POS to CSR. They named it “Perceived Organisational Support towards the Environment” (POS-E) and defined it as follows: “the specific beliefs held by employees concerning how much the organisation values their contributions toward sustainability” (Lamm et al. 2015, p. 209). This support acts as the central determinant for SEW. It could be assumed that employees who perceive such support have a stronger feeling of being sustainability empowered. H1 The perceived organisational support towards sustainability (POS-S) is positively related to SEW. 4.1.2 Sustainability-orientation of employees (SOE) A sustainability-orientation of employees (SOE) results from their ecological, social, and economic attitudes and behaviours following the triple bottom line approach (Elkington 2013). We do understand this self-evaluation trait as an individual determinant of empowerment in reference to Seibert et al. (2011, p. 984) that “is thought to represent the fundamental appraisal one makes about one’s worthiness, competence, and capabilities in relation to one’s environment” towards sustainability at the workplace. There are findings in the literature that self-evaluation traits “influence the types of jobs and occupations people select” (Judge and Hurst 2007, p. 1213) to pursue work goals in harmony with employees’ values, attitudes, and intrinsic motivations (Sheldon and Elliot 1999). This is in line with micro- CSR research, which shows that SOE has an influence on employer choice (e.g. Weinrich 2014; Kirchgeorg 2004; Buerke et al. 2013; Greening and Turban 2000). Different scholars (e.g. Muster and Schrader 2011; Rich et al. 2010; Harrach et al. 2014) show that attitudes and behaviour in the context of ecological, economic, and social issues are transferred from private life to work (see Sect. 2). It is therefore assumed that the sustainability-orientation of employees has a positive impact on SEW, in particular on the dimension of “sustainability-meaning”, which “involves a fit between the requirements of the work role and personal beliefs, values, and behaviours” (Spreitzer 1995, p. 1443) in the context of sustainability. H2 The sustainability-orientation of employees (SOE) is positively related to SEW. 4.2 Attitudinal effects of SEW As mentioned before, the article focuses on two effects, namely organisational commitment and job satisfaction. These HRM success indicators have the highest correlation with empowerment in the study of Seibert et al. (2011). There are many references in the micro-CSR literature relating the effects of CSR on commitment (e.g. Brammer et al. 2007;Turker2009; Hofman and Newman 2014; Farooq et al. 2014) with job satisfaction (e.g. Valentine and Fleischmann 2008; De Roeck et al. 2013, Dhanesh 2014). This could be due to an increased credibility of the organisation (Farooq et al. 2014). “Recent research efforts at the micro-level have also contributed to the business case of CSR by highlighting the positive impact of perceived CSR on employees’ job satisfaction” (De Roeck and Maon 2018, p. 615). It is assumed that SEW as an intrinsic task motivation reflecting the employees’ CSR engagement in relation to the work has a positive effect on the abovementioned HRM success indicators. H3 SEW is positively related to job satisfaction. H4 SEW is positively related to organisational commitment. 4.3 Moderating effect of the sustainabilityorientation of employees (SOE) There are findings that establish employees’ specific individual differences as moderators in micro-CSR research (e.g. Jones et al. 2019). Different types of employees have different needs and motivations regarding CSR. The assumed moderating effects could be seen in the context of the social identity theory as an individual confirmation that an employee is working in the right company when it comes to their personal perception of sustainability (Blazejewski et al. 2014). Peterson (2004)andTurker(2009) discovered that the relation between CSR and commitment is more pronounced in the group of sustainability-oriented employees. Social identity theory provides evidence that when employees perceive that organisational values fit their own, they are more satisfied (Carmeli et al. 2017). Based on these findings, we assume that the relationships between SEW and its effects should be stronger in the group of sustainabilityoriented employees. H5 The relation between SEW and job satisfaction is moderated by SOE. H6 The relation between SEW and organisational commitment is moderated by SOE. K NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 99 5Method The hypotheses were tested via structural equation modelling (SEM). The method allows to test measurement models for latent variables and structural models for the relationship of these variables simultaneously. For the analysis, the software SmartPLS (Ringle et al. 2015) was used for the variance analytical approach (Wold 1982) and the derived “partial least square” (PLS) method (Lohmöller 1989). 5.1 Measurement instruments SEW was operationalised on the basis of the four-dimen- sional questionnaire by Spreitzer (1995) with 12 items (Cronbach’s Alpha=0.94). Each was reworded to integrate the topic sustainability. POS-S was based on the five items POS-E scale by Lamm et al. (2015) (Cronbach’s Alpha= 0.78). SOE was developed using three sub-scales for the triple bottom line approach (Elkington 2013): Six items of the “Green Scale” of Haws et al. (2014) for the ecological dimension, six items for the social dimension based on the “Green Scale” that was adapted to social values and three items of the “frugality scale” (Lastovicka et al. 1999)for the economic dimension, (Cronbach’s Alpha= 0.93). Job satisfaction was operationalised according to Valentine and Fleischmann (2008) with three items (Cronbach’s Alpha= 0.87). Organisational commitment was measured using three items of the Bentein et al. (2002) scale (Cronbach’s Alpha= 0.92). All scale items were rated on a 5-point Likerttype scale from (1) Agree to (5) Disagree. A complete list of items is shown in Appendix A. 5.2 Sample In the empirical study an online survey was conducted. The participants were recruited through the online panel of the German market research provider Respondi AG. The panel meets the quality standards of the European Soci- Table 1 Overview of main hypotheses and results Hypotheses Path coeff p-value H1 POS-S is positively related to SEW 0.62 <0.01 – – H2 SOE is positively related to SEW 0.35 <0.01 – – H3 SEW is positively related to job satisfaction 0.34 <0.01 – – H4 SEW is positively related to organisational commitment 0.43 <0.01 – – Hypotheses Path coeff. SOE high Path coeff. SOE low Path coeff. diff p-value diff H5 The relation between SEW and job satisfaction is moderated by SOE 0.47 0.16 0.31 <0.01 H6 The relation between SEW and organisational commitment is moderated by SOE 0.57 0.21 0.36 <0.01 ety for Opinion and Market Research and is certified by ISO 26362 (Respondi AG 2018). The group of working adults older than 18 years was selected from this panel. The study was conducted with 1252 employees; it took place in January 2018. The sample meets the criteria of online representativeness based on gender and age for Germany. 52.2% of the respondents were male and the age groups were 18–29 years (13.8%), 30–49 years (48.8%) and older than 50 years (37.4%). 6Results As SEW is a novel concept, we checked the quality of the measurement model(s) before analysing the hypothesis, the moderating and mediating effects in the structural (inner) model. The analysis found that the measured constructs were all both reliable and valid. All associated quality criteria and the complete process for a multistage PLS analysis with the associated quality criteria are shown completely in Appendix B. The following results can be presented in the analysis of the structural model referring to the hypothesis (Table 1). A highly significant and strongly positive relationship between POS-S and SEW was found (path weight 0.62) confirming H1. The relationship between the individual determinants SOE and SEW was also highly significant (with a lower path weight of 0.35), thus confirming H2. The results show that SEW is positively and significantly related to job satisfaction (path weight 0.34, H3 confirmed,) and organisational commitment (path weight 0.43, H4 confirmed). The explanatory power of the model shows that the latent variable SEW is substantially explained by its determinant variables (R2= 0.66). The predictive power for the effects of SEW on job satisfaction (R2= 0.12) and commitment (R2= 0.18) is rather low. To test the moderating effect of SOE, the sample was split in four quartiles, resulting in a 0.25-quartile (high sustainability-oriented employees, n= 328) and a 0.75-quartile (low sustainability-oriented employees, n= 318). In the group of highly sustainability-ori- K 100 NachhaltigkeitsManagementForum (2020) 28:93–107 Fig. 3 Path coefficients and explanatory power in the SEW framework (in brackets: values for subsamples, employees with low sustainability-orien- tation vs. employees with high sustainability-orientation) ented employees, the model has an increased explanatory contribution to the variables affected by SEW (job satisfaction R2= 0.22 and commitment R2= 0.33) compared to the overall sample. The results corroborate that SOE acts as a moderator for the attitudinal effects of SEW. This means that the effects of SEW are significantly more pronounced in the group of sustainability employees, which confirms H5 and H6. Fig. 3shows central empirical findings in the SEW structural model. Mediating effects of SEW between its determinants and effects could only be found towards organisational commitment. A partial effect for POS-S and a full effect for SOE has been revealed. An acceptable quality of the model can be confirmed with the SRMR (Standardized Root Mean Square Residual) value of 0.09 and other criteria demanded by Henseler et al. (2014) (see further discussion of the model quality in the appendix). 7 Discussion 7.1 Research contributions With this research paper, the established construct of psychological empowerment has been applied to micro-CSR: sustainability empowerment in the workplace (SEW). SEW stands for an active reflection of employees of how their individual wishes and feelings about sustainability enables opportunities to engage in CSR in their work role. Determinants and effects of SEW were proposed and tested empirically in a comprehensive SEW framework. All related hypotheses have been confirmed, which shows the relevance of the considered drivers and reactions. This work is a continuation of former scientific micro- CSR approaches that found that the original empowerment construct acts as a mediator between organisational support for the environment and commitment in the group of sustainability-oriented employees (Lamm et al. 2015). This article goes a few steps further and makes the following contributions to the theory. First, the original empowerment construct was fully adapted to make employee-spe- cific engagement in CSR measurable, thus creating a new relevant construct. Second, two central antecedents of empowerment identified by Seibert et al. (2011) were adjusted to micro-CSR. The empirical findings demonstrate that this adjustment can explain organisational and individual determinants towards employee participation in CSR. Third, the SEW framework was tested in a representative employee survey. The results show that the assumed relationships are highly significant. SEW is substantially explained by its determinants POS-S and SOE (R2= 0.66). The predictive power of SEW for job satisfaction (R2= 0.12) and commitment (R2= 0.18) is rather low for the average employees, but higher for those with a strong sustainability-orientation (R2= 0.22/0.33). Thus, it could be demonstrated that there are significant group differences between sustainability-ori- ented and non-sustainability-oriented employees in the effects of SEW towards job satisfaction and commitment. Our results are not directly comparable with the results of Lamm et al. (2015) due to different measurement methods. However, it seems evident that the relationship between POS-S and SEW is stronger than POS-S and Spreitzer’s established empowerment construct used by Lamm et al. (2015). It becomes also clear that the effects of the conventional empowerment used by Lamm et al. 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