Organizational Psychology Review, Ahead of Print.
Implementing sustainability is a complex and challenging process that requires the collaboration and commitment of multiple stakeholders within supply chains. Existing research has largely overlooked the role of individual employees who can act as change agents and proactively initiate and facilitate sustainability initiatives. In this paper, we propose a proactive job design perspective to understand how these sustainability champions can balance the demands and resources related to sustainability in and across organizations. We suggest that they can use a combination of self- and partner-focused sustainability regulation strategies to influence the sustainability resources of their supply chain partners and create inter-organizational Job Demands-Resources dynamics that can enhance or hinder sustainability implementation. We develop a set of propositions that can guide future research on this topic and offer practical implications for organizations that want to foster employee proactivity and sustainability in their supply chains.Plain Language Summary TitleSustainability Champions: How Employees can Redesign their Work Environment to Implement Sustainability in Supply Chains.Plain Language SummaryAlthough most people agree that sustainability is a critical issue, it appears to be rather difficult to integrate sustainability in supply chains because multiple players have to change their behaviors, it is generally costly, and people lack the resources that are needed to make a difference. In the current paper, we focus on the role of individual employees in this process and describe what they can do to work more sustainably. We propose that employees who operate at the borders of organizations where important sourcing decisions are made may function as sustainability champions that can drive sustainable development from the bottom up. When these actors are motivated to contribute to supply chain sustainability, they can proactively regulate the sustainability demands, such as additional costs or know-how, and the sustainability resources, such as managerial support or autonomy, in and outside their organization. In doing so, they can enable themselves to work more sustainably and stimulate their supply chain partners to do the same. This proactive behavior may eventually trigger a sustainability movement throughout the supply chain in which individuals are simultaneously challenged and supported to generate and share more sustainability resources. Our paper can inspire researchers to conduct research on the role of proactive employee behavior in complex inter-organizational collaborations and support organizations toward the successful implementation of supply chain sustainability.