ABSTRACT
Organizations of various kinds, such as companies in different industries, public administrations, and universities, face the common challenge to improve their environmental performance. On the one hand, approaches on the organizational level like sustainability strategies, reporting, and management seem important. On the other hand, the individual perspectives and behaviors of members (employees, staff members, and students) are crucial for any story of success. In this chapter, we first review the literature on the impact of mindfulness on employee pro-environmental behavior. So far, research on mindfulness and pro-environmental behavior concentrates on consumer behavior instead of workplace behavior. In previously proposed research models, mindfulness served as the independent variable that leads to pro-environmental behavior, with other variables having a mediating effect. Second, we address the intention–behavior gap in workplace behaviors and hypothesize that mindfulness moderates the intention–behavior relationship in employee pro-environmental behavior, relying on self-control and self-determination theory. We conduct a pre-study with a student sample measuring intentions and behaviors in two points of time and find that in that context, the hypothesis cannot be confirmed. We finally discuss this finding and give suggestions for a future study design.
