Rapid economic growth puts the natural environment under tremendous pressure. As a traditional chemical company, it is important to reconsider outdated business development models, develop innovative green initiatives for long-term growth, and choose approaches to address environmental issues. Determining how to encourage employees’ green performance while balancing environmental issues is crucial for chemical companies in the current social and economic environment. This study investigates the green transformational leadership style to enhance green performance of chemical company employees. It expands the field of environmental protection by employing two novel constructs: creative process engagement and green creativity. We collected 623 valid questionnaires from 98 teams (98 leaders and 525 employees) and used SPSS 26.0, HLM 6.0, and MPlus 8.3 to test the hypothesis. The findings revealed that (1) green transformational leadership positively influences individual green performance, (2) creative process engagement and green creativity mediate the relationship between green transformational leadership and individual green performance, and (3) individual environmental awareness positively moderates the relationship between green transformational leadership and green creativity. These novel findings contribute to the environmental literature and help chemical company managers in enhancing employee innovation and performance.

Innovation is critical to the growth and prosperity of an organization. In daily work, everyday innovation is more often developed by employees than large-scale institutional innovation. This research builds a multi-level framework to investigate how leader motivating language (LML) influences the everyday innovative behavior of employees in the international freight forwarding industry. In addition, we examined the mediating effect of individual-level self-leadership and psychological capital (PsyCap). We used HLM6.8 to perform hierarchical linear modeling on 551 valid questionnaires from 88 teams. The results showed that: (1) LML was a positive predictor of employees’ innovative behaviors, (2) LML positively affects employees’ self-leadership and PsyCap, and (3) self-leadership and PsyCap partially mediated the relationship between LML and employees’ innovative behaviors. We also used Mplus8.3 to conduct a multi-level path analysis to verify the robustness of the results. Further, we investigated the sequential mediation effects of self-leadership and PsyCap between LML and innovative behavior. These findings complement existing research and emphasize the importance of motivational language in organizational management.

Due to construction industry projects’ large-scale, long-period, and outdoor operation characteristics, employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) plays an essential role in cost-saving, high-efficiency, and environmentally friendly development strategies. This study discusses how to improve employees’ OCB from two levels of employees’ psychological factors and corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the organizational level. We verified this study’s hypotheses based on 336 valid questionnaires collected from 56 teams. The results indicated that (1) positive psychological capital (PsyCap) was a positive predictor of employees’ OCB; (2) PsyCap was positively related to employees’ prosocial motivation, and prosocial motivation partially mediated the relationship between PsyCap and employees’ OCB; and (3) CSR moderated the relationship between PsyCap and prosocial motivation and played a significant moderating role between prosocial motivation and OCB. These findings provide an empirical research basis for the theories of conservation of resources (COR), self-determination, and affective events. This research also has managerial implications for improving employees’ OCB in the construction industry.

In the field of organizational behavior, the influence of leadership in organizations and the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of employees have always been two hot topics studied by scholars. However, previous studies have mainly examined the OCB of baby boomers and Generation Xers. With millennials now entering the workforce, they will highly likely not take the initiative to engage in OCB due to their different values. Scholars have found that millennials respond well to ethical leadership. Although this statement has a theoretical basis, empirical research regarding this topic is still insufficient. Thus, this study explores whether ethical leadership can effectively promote millennials’ OCB. Moreover, the mediating effect of group-level ethical climate and individual-level affective well-being, and the moderating effect of individual-level moral identity, were examined. The study hypotheses were verified based on 384 valid questionnaires collected from 61 teams using Mplus 8.3. The results showed that (1) ethical leadership was a positive predictor of millennials’ OCB; (2) ethical climate and affective well-being partially mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and OCB; and (3) moral identity moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and affective well-being and the indirect impact of ethical leadership on OCB. These findings provide empirical support for applying social learning theory, social information processing theory, and conservation of resources (COR)theory. This research also provides several managerial implications through which managers can more effectively improve the OCB of millennial employees.

Purpose: This study intends to explore whether green transformational leadership is effective in promoting employee green performance. What role do moral reflectiveness and green crafting play in the impact of green transformational leadership on employee green performance?Design/methodology/approach: This study collected research data from a series of questionnaire surveys using a multisource and time-lagged design. We collected 582 completed questionnaires from 97 groups in chemical firms.Findings: The analysis showed that (1) green transformational leadership positively affected employee green performance and (2) moral reflectiveness and green crafting sequentially mediated the relationship between green transformational leadership and employees’ green performance.Originality/value: The 2-1-1 multilevel mediation model clarified how the perspectives of leaders and employees are associated, confirming that green transformational leadership successfully promotes the green performance of subordinates through value communication and resource provision. Chemical companies need green transformational leaders passionate about environmental issues to encourage employee engagement in sustainability initiatives, ultimately enhancing employees’ green performance and achieving sustainable development of the chemical organization.

Compared to the formal rules and regulations of large companies, leadership behavior has a greater influence on employee behaviors in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Unlike large enterprises, many SMEs have a weaker market position, and their survival and development depend on employees’ willingness to make additional efforts beyond their formal job duties. Thus, this study focuses on SME employees to explore the effect of ethical leadership on subordinates’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study proposes a multilevel mediating model, where ethical climate and ethical role modeling represent cognitive social learning perspectives at the team and individual levels, respectively, while affective well-being serves as an individual-level affective perspective. A total of 426 valid questionnaires from 71 teams were collected, and MPLUS was used to verify the study hypotheses. The results indicate that (1) ethical leadership has a significant positive impact on employee OCB; (2) ethical leadership also significantly affects team ethical climate, ethical role modeling, and affective well-being; and (3) the partial mediating effects of team ethical climate, ethical role modeling, and affective well-being are confirmed. This research provides empirical evidence for the mechanism between ethical leadership and employee OCB in SMEs.