In the past 20 years, transformational leadership has become a hot topic in the leadership domain (Judge and Piccolo, 2004); many empirical studies have shown that transformational leadership has critical influence on employee behavior (Avolio and Bass, 1988; Bass and Avolio, 1994; Sosik et al., 1998). Transformational leaders inspire employees to shift their attention to the goals conducive to the long-term development of the organization and subordinates, in turn, may internalize the values advocated by their leader and incorporate them into their own self-concept (Shamir et al., 1993; Bono and Judge, 2003). If a transformational leader happens to have green values, we have reason to expect that he/she will exert an influence on his/her subordinates’ green behaviors (Robertson and Barling, 2013). For example, such a leader might motivate subordinates to overcome obstacles by paying more attention to things beneficial to the organizational environment, think about the sustainable development of the organization, and solve environmental problems in an innovative manner; When such a leader makes pro-environmental decisions and conduct pro-environmental behavior in organizations, he/she assumes a pro-environment role model for his/her subordinates. A green transformational leader can raise subordinates’ concerns about environmental issues by establishing good relations with them and then convey them his/her own green values. More than one scholar has highlighted a series of transformational styles exhibited in leaders’ pro-environment behaviors (Chen and Chang, 2013; Robertson and Barling, 2013). Based on Chen and Chang’s (2013) definition of green transformational leadership as well as Bass’s (1998) ideas, “leaders take a series of actions to motivate subordinates to meet the requirements of environmental protection and encourage them to thrive to exceed environmental performance requirements as far as possible.”

Transformational leaders usually depict a nice and attractive vision to their subordinates and emphasize the congruence between organization’s objectives and their personal values that will imperceptibly influence subordinates to internalize organization’s objectives into their own personal goals and make efforts to accomplish the goal (Shamir et al., 1993; Bono and Judge, 2003). Value congruence refers to the extent to which personal values are in accordance with the surroundings (Burns, 1978; Shamir et al., 1993). It has been used to explain why subordinates are willing to follow their leader and show their loyalty and support (Burns, 1978; Shamir et al., 1993; Klein and House, 1995). Green transformational leaders put more emphasis than usual on the organization’s green vision. They are devoted to the delivery of green values that are beneficial to the organization and environment, making subordinates consider work as a reflection of their own values. In this case, subordinates’internal motivation is involved with the realization of organization’s green objectives rather than external motivation alone. This is because completing these tasks is an embodiment of the realization of their values and these behaviors are in consistence with their self concepts (Shamir et al., 1993). Although green transformational leadership does not change subordinates’ value directly, it effectively links the values of subordinates and the value of work, and continually weakens subordinates’ perceptions of the difference between them, so the individual perception of values tend to become congruent (Klein and House, 1995). Besides, green transformational leaders usually show confidence in themselves and solicitude for subordinates, which drives employees to have a sense of pride and commitment (Dionne et al., 2004), thereby contributing to employees’ perception of value congruence between themselves and their leaders. Following this argument, we hypothesize the following.

Employees’ values are affected by the environment around them (e.g., the leadership style), which in turn, affects their behavior (Stern et al., 1999). In the field of leadership research, value congruence offers a good explanation for the phenomenon that leader behaviors affect subordinates’ behaviors to a large extent (Hoffman et al., 2011). Therefore, we focus on perceived value congruence as the key mediating process to explain the social influence of green transformational leaders. Values play an important role in the theory of transformational leadership (House, 1996). Within organizations, transformational leaders usually act as effective deliverers of values by assigning tasks and goals, raising subordinates’ self-awareness, and guiding subordinates to be concerned about the long-term goals of organizations (Bass, 1985), which would make their values accepted and internalized by subordinates (Shamir et al., 1993). Specifically, green transformational leaders emphasize organization’s green tasks and environmental values, describe green work ideological terms, and focus on higher-order environmental values. These actions enhance employees’ perception that helping organization to achieve its environmental goals is also a realization of their own values. Thus, subordinates come to see their daily work as congruent with personally held values and thus as more meaningful. Subordinates’ perception of holding the same values as their green transformational leaders should be associated with more employee green behavior.

Once subordinates perceive value congruence with their supervisors, they would be more willing to meet the leader’s requirements and exert themselves further to achieve organizational goals (Lau et al., 2007). Green behaviors are in accordance with organization’s long-term interests. When leaders show green transformational leadership style, subordinates’ attitude toward organizational environment would be more active and they would take the initiative to protect the environment. So green transformational leadership could promote subordinates’ green behaviors by enhancing their perception of value congruence with the leaders. Previous studies have also shown that green transformational leadership could promote employees’ green behavior at work (Graves et al., 2013; Robertson and Barling, 2013). In addition, there is empirical evidence that value congruence affects the effectiveness of transformational leadership. For instance, Jung and Avolio (2000) showed that value congruence mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and its influence on subordinates’ performance. Therefore, we come to the following hypothesis.

Green transformational leaders usually highlight the vital importance of their green values, environment related issues associated with company’s long-term goals as well as their high-level expectations when communicating with subordinates. These expression of environmental values and expectations are essential in subordinates’ value internalization process. Social identity theory points to several kinds of identities (e.g., gender, ethnicity) in individual self-concepts, and identification with a certain role that makes individuals more sensitive to identity-related information (Tajfel, 1979). Therefore, if subordinates have higher identification with environment protection, they will be more sensitive to the environmental information conveyed by the leader and more inclined to internalize leaders’ green value. Green self-identity represents the degree to which the individual regards himself as an environment-friendly person (Werff et al., 2014). Individuals with a high level of green identity probably view themselves and green transformational leaders more as environment-friendly persons. Hence, such employees are more probably to interpret the vision and values conveyed by their green transformational leaders as green, thus experiencing a deeper congruence between their perceived value of the leader and their own. In sum, under the usual assumption of social identity theory, green identity moderates the relationship of transformational leadership and value congruence, which, in turn, moderates the indirect effect of value congruence between transformational leadership and employee green behavior. We therefore hypothesize:

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Ethic Committee of fat-food companies in Jiangxi. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the Ethic Committee of fat-food companies in Jiangxi. We adopted a two-way questionnaire design by conducting survey in one large manufacturing company in Hubei, China. In the first stage (time 1), we distributed questionnaires to 220 employees, and received 217 effective responses (98.64% response rate) after excluding invalid ones. And then, 1 month later, we distributed questionnaires to 217 supervisor-subordinate dyads (the employees who answered the questionnaires in the first stage and their direct supervisors). In sum, we received 193 effective responses of them (87.73% response rate). Of the 193 respondents, 101 are male (52.3%); the average age is 33.4 years old (SD = 7.46) and the average time for employees to work with their leaders is 3.06 years (SD = 3.41). As for the education level, average value is 2.15 (SD = 0.82), that means, participates have a tertiary education in average.

Specifically, in the first stage (time 1), subordinates were asked to evaluate the transformational green leadership style of their direct supervisors. And 1 month later (time 2), we asked subordinates to evaluate their personal perceptions of value congruence with the leader and green identity while we asked leaders to make appraisals to their subordinates’ green behaviors.

All the measurement scales used in our study were adopted from the west. In order to ensure their effectiveness in Chinese situation, some measures were taken: we first asked several management postgraduate students to conduct a translation- and- back-translation of these scales in a parallel, double-blind way (Brislin, 1980). Subsequently, we discussed the deviation by comparing the translation results with the original sentence and modified our statements properly. After these steps, we invited professors in organizational behavior and human resource management to evaluate the translation of original scales, some culture related usages and ultimately determine the most appropriate Chinese items. Among them, gender is encoded as a dummy variable and “1” represents “male” while “2” represents “female.” In addition, the education level is encode from 1 to 4, rating as “Secondary school (including high school) and below,” “College,” “Undergraduate” and “graduate and above,” respectively. Except for control variables, the measurement of the constructs in this study is by means of “six-point Likert scale from 1 to 6” rating from strongly disagreement to strongly agreement. The definitions and measurements of the constructs in this study are in the following: In order to assess the possibility of non-response bias, a comparison of the early response to those of late response was conducted. Results of variance analysis showed no significant difference between those two groups. Thus, non-response bias was not considered a problem.

We conducted omnibus confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to examine the discriminant validity of green transformational leadership, value congruence and green identity. We first ran a measurement model that included three measures (a three-factor model), and then compared it against other models. As shown in Table 1, the hypothesized three-factor model fit the data well (χ2 = 124.61, df = 62, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.07) and significantly better compared to other models (Δχ2 differences were significant at p < 0.001). The other models had lower CFI and TLI values (ranging from 0.27 to 0.71) and higher RMSEA values (ranging from 0.17 to 0.24). In addition, all factor loadings of the three-factor model were relatively high and significant (p < 0.01). Based on these results, we examined the three variables as distinctive constructs.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of green transformational leadership and employee green behavior from the value congruence perspective. Specifically, we extended previous research by testing a moderated mediation model of green transformational leadership and employee green behavior. Our path analysis results indicated that green transformational leadership is positively related to employees’ perceived value congruence and value congruence mediated by green transformational leadership’s effect on employees’ green behaviors. We have also found an interaction between green identity and green transformational leadership in predicting employee perceived value congruence. In addition, our results have shown that green identity moderates green transformational leadership’s indirect effect on employee green behavior through value congruence. This study has extended previous employee green behavior research by uncovering value congruence as an explanation mechanism that could enhance employee green behavior. These findings have several important theoretical and practical implications for green transformational leadership and employee green behaviors.

There are three theoretical contributions of this study. First, this is one of the first demonstration of the effect of green transformational leadership on subordinates’ green behaviors from a value congruence perspective. The value mechanism is been rooted in the transformational leadership (Shamir et al., 1993; Brown and Treviño, 2009), yet, our understanding of green transformational leaders’ influence on employee green behavior has remained immature. Most of previous studies had adopted the perspective of subordinates’ green consciousness or general internal motivations (e.g., Graves et al., 2013; Robertson and Barling, 2013; Kura, 2016) to explore the internal influencing mechanism of green transformational leadership on employee green behaviors. Our study has demonstrated that green transformational leadership did enhance subordinates’ green behaviors through value congruence, which extends the explanation mechanism of green leadership style on employee’s green behaviors.

Second, this study has indicated that the consistent relation of values between green transformational leader and subordinates didn’t remain constant, especially when there is a striking difference in employee green identities, that is green identity could improve the effect of green transformational leadership on subordinate values. This means that the limitations of green transformational leadership will be exposed when confronting employees who are far from “green.” Individual identity largely affects one’s perception of the outside (Turner et al., 1987). It has been demonstrated in our study that employees with low green identity were less sensitive to green cognition in relation to the surroundings. This finding should be helpful for the scholars to better understand the influencing mechanism of green identity on the employees in an organization.

Furthermore, our study has indicated that in the Chinese culture, green transformational leadership also plays a positive role in promoting green behavior among the subordinates. Previous research samples of green transformational leadership were selected from western developed countries (e.g., Robertson and Barling, 2013; Kura, 2016; Mittal and Dhar, 2016), While few studies have explored such leadership’s effect from developing countries [with the exception of Graves et al. (2013), whose findings are consistent with ours]. For the developing country (e.g., China), the culture and value in the workplace may be largely different from the developed country (e.g., the west countries). The findings of our study validated the effects of green transformational leadership on shaping employee’s green behavior in Chinese culture.

The demonstrated influence of green transformational leadership on value congruence highlights the importance of green transformational leadership in creating green value for employee green behavior. We have found that when organizations adopt suitable training programs to cultivate leaders’ green transformational leadership style, the actual benefits they could receive from that afterward were much more than we had expected. In the past, companies usually enhanced green behaviors of their employees through external rewards. But in our study, we have noticed that if the leader could show a greener transformational style, subordinates would more probably accept and internalize these green values of their leader, enhance their own perceptions, and eventually improve spontaneous green behaviors on their part.

As with any research, this study also has several limitations. First, the study’s findings have limited generalizability beyond organization studies because the data were obtained from multiple units within the same Chinese company. Future research examining the processes linking green transformational leadership and employee green behavior in different industry sectors or in other cultures should ascertain the extent to which our findings can be generalized. Second, we have suggested that green transformational leadership will assimilate the values of subordinates. However, the cross-sectional data collection methods used in our study are still not enough; more longitudinal designs of the specific formation mechanism of this process are required in the future. For example, the value forming speed may be faster in the early stages of leader-subordinates contact.

Third, our focus in this study has been on employee green behavior. To extend our findings, we encourage future studies to further identify and examine individual and team processes that influence employee green behavior as well as team employee green behavior. Generalized green transformational leadership approaches may include a distinct domain-relevant and employee green behavior-relevant vision that the employees in the team can identify with. Moreover, future multilevel approaches may consider cross-level relationships, thereby highlighting the importance of the situational context for employee green behavior.

Finally, the utility of transformational leadership and its sub-constructs have been critiqued previously (Van Knippenberg and Sitkin, 2013). Our study using a single dimensional measurement and conceptualization on green transformational leadership may limit our theory to determine which green transformational leader behaviors contribute to employee value congruence. However, our scale has been well-validated in previous (e.g., Robertson and Barling, 2013; Kura, 2016) and our study. Future research investigating different discrete green behaviors, such as green vision communication, may enhance our understanding of how green transformational leadership engender employee green behaviors.