Green leadership’s predictors and outcomes

Abstract

The severity of environmental crises continues to escalate. Given that organizations are prominent contributors to those crises, it is important to understand the behaviours of the leaders of such organizations regarding environmental preservation. In this Review, we synthesize the literature on green leadership, defined as leadership that aims for environmental sustainability within organizations. First, we describe various green leadership styles and discuss the extent to which they can be considered as a single construct. Next, we describe the predictors and outcomes of green leadership and review the mediating and moderating mechanisms that link green leadership to favourable outcomes. We conclude by presenting future research directions that address limitations in the extant literature. Because organizations are prominent contributors to ongoing environmental crises, it is important to understand the behaviours of the leaders of such organizations regarding environmental preservation. In this Review, Aycan et al. describe and compare green leadership theories and synthesize research on the predictors and outcomes of green leadership.