RESUMO
Employees can play a decisive role in combatting climate change by engaging in green behavior at work. Research on employee green behavior has recently gained traction, with research results pointing to the considerable influence of positive variables (e.g., personal values, positive affect) on employee green behavior. While such positive variables lie at the heart of the scholarly discipline positive organizational psychology, there is scant research at the intersection of positive organizational psychology and employee green behavior. The current manuscript aims to give impetus to such research. To this end, the manuscript presents a systematic review of the literature on positive predictors of employee green behavior and identified 94 articles that investigate such predictors. We explicitly map these investigated predictors onto a positive (organizational) psychology frame of reference. Subsequently, we use the findings of the review to identify gaps and outline concrete suggestions for future research at the intersection of positive organizational psychology and employee green behavior, addressing both theoretical and methodological suggestions.
RESUMO
Personal growth initiative (PGI), defined as being proactive about one's personal development, is critical to graduate students' academic success. Prior research has shown that students' PGI can be enhanced through interventions that focus on stimulating developmental activities. Within this study, we aimed to investigate whether an intervention that stimulates development in the area of one's personal strengths (strengths intervention) has more beneficial effects on students' PGI than an intervention that stimulates development in the area of individual deficiencies (deficiency intervention). We conducted 2 longitudinal field experiments to investigate the effects of the 2 interventions on students' PGI (Experiment 1) and the potential mediating role of psychological capital (PsyCap) in this regard (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 105 (N = 105) university students participated in either a strengths intervention or a deficiency intervention. Results indicated that the strengths intervention increased the students' PGI in the short but not in the long term, whereas the deficiency intervention did not affect PGI. Ninety students (N = 90) participated in Experiment 2, in which we slightly refined both interventions by putting a stronger emphasis on the ongoing development of strengths (strengths intervention) or correction of deficiencies (deficiency intervention) by adding posttraining assignments. Results suggested that participating in both interventions led to increases in PGI over a 3-month period, but that these increases were bigger for the strengths intervention group. Furthermore, the relationship between the strengths intervention and PGI was mediated by hope as one component of PsyCap.
