Abstract:

Carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals are incorporated into the overall situation of China’s economic and social development. In this context, enterprises should actively adapt to the requirements of green development and strive for the “dominant position” of future market competition. As a leadership practice that focuses on environmental well-being, an environmentally specific servant leader can be an important guarantee for the enterprise’s green development. As such, the concept of environmentally specific servant leadership has attracted much attention from both scholars and practitioners in recent years.
Environmentally specific servant leadership is defined as leading with motivation to develop pro-environmental values and knowledge in employees. Environmentally specific servant leaders tend to serve employees in their pursuit of green goals and contributions. Under the supervision of such leaders, followers can proactively acquire not only green-related knowledge and skills but also green value. Moreover, environmentally specific servant leadership is a practice of leadership that places environmental benefits over economic benefits for himself or herself as well as for the enterprise, focusing on contributing to the green and sustainable growth of the enterprise and a larger community.
This paper introduces the concept and measurement of environmentally specific servant leadership and systemically reviews its multilevel influences on employees’ green output, team green performance, and organizational green performance. Specifically, the outcome variables of employees’ green output include green behavior (low-carbon behavior, voluntary green behavior, organizational environmental citizenship behavior, and green performance) and green innovation (green creativity and green innovative work behavior).
Conservation of resources theory, role identity theory, social learning theory, self-determination theory, and theory of planned behavior are important theories that could explain why environmentally specific servant leadership leads to beneficial green outcomes. Specifically, conservation of resources theory was used to explain the mediating role of employees’ green crafting and green (creativity) climate; role identity theory was used to explain the mediating role of team green identification, employees’ green role identity, employees’ environmental engagement, corporate social responsibility and employees’ harmonious environmental passion; social learning theory was used to explain the mediating role of employees’ green self-efficacy and employees’ environmental self-accountability; self-determination theory was used to explain the mediating role of employees’ green intrinsic motivation; and theory of planned behavior was used to explain the moderation of perceived organizational support for green behaviors as well as pro-environmental person-group fit. Explaining the underlying mechanism of environmentally specific servant leadership, conservation of resources theory and role identity theory were both used at the individual level and team level, while the other theories were only used at the individual level.
Finally, this paper demonstrates six directions for future research. First, future research could explore environmentally specific servant leadership in the Chinese context, including the concepts, measurements, and contingency mechanisms. Second, future research should further integrate the double-edged sword effects of environmentally specific servant leadership on employees and leaders. Third, this paper suggests that future research explore the cognitive-affective mechanisms of environmentally specific servant leadership, constructing a parallel mediating model or an interactive mediating model. Fourth, future research could deepen the extant explorations about the relationship between environmentally specific servant leadership and team/organizational green outputs or expand the multilevel research about the consequences and their underlying mechanism of environmentally specific servant leadership. In addition, future research could also expand the research methods by using the experience sampling method, scenario simulated method, or behavioral experimental method. Fifth, future research should further expand the research sample to compare and explore the effects of environmentally specific servant leadership in different industries. Finally, this paper encourages future research to identify antecedents of environmentally specific servant leadership, such as the internal and external environment as well as the interaction between situational factors and personal traits.
This paper clarifies the effect and mechanism of environmentally specific servant leadership research for internal scholars. At the same time, we expect to have practical insights for enterprises to realize sustainable development through leadership practices and help achieve China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

Key words: environmentally specific servant leadership, green leadership, green behavior, green performance