Enviromental sustainability: new perspectives for work and organizational psychology (WOP)

Environmental sustainability (ES) is a challenging topic which requires a multi-disciplinary approach to be addressed. However, some authors have recently highlighted the scarcity of research about this issue in work/organizational psychology (WOP) (Ones e Dilchert, 2012). In this study we provide an overview of the theoretical and practical contributions of WOP regarding ecological issues. We systematically reviewed the recent literature on ES, in environmental psychology and WOP. We considered the following key-words: “sustainability”, “green”, “organization”, “environment”, “environmental”, “corporate”, “firm”. The results of our work can be summarized in two conceptual maps. The first one refers to the main constructs studied by environmental psychology. These constructs can be classified in three main categories: “determinants of pro-environmental behaviors”, “life environment” and “health”. The second map suggests the main topics for a WOP oriented toward ES. These refers to: “green context”, “green employee”, “green leadership”, “corporate environmental sustainability”, “green hrm” and “green practices”. We underline the following implications for further research in the ES field 1) the limits of a psychological perspective only focused on individual behavior 2) the chance for WOP to give value to the “soft dimension” of firm operations, a dimension often neglected by the economic and technological literature, prevailing when environmental issues are dealt with. Even if our review cannot be considered completely exhaustive, given the great amount of sources, we hope that our study can contribute to the current debate about the role that WOP can play in approaching new questions and changes that characterize present organizational contexts.