Augmenting environmental sustainability through the exchange of green creative ideas - evidence from an emerging economy

Leader trustworthiness and perceived green reputation is becoming increasingly important for driving the exchanges of green creative ideas within a team. Effective exchanges of green creative ideas is relevant for building organisational strategies that align with the United Nations global compact environmental sustainability principles and it further helps advance the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDG). Evidence from emerging countries though, is limited. This paper contributes by investigating the case of the Nigerian manufacturing sector, wherein organisations have achieved little success in cultivating the effective exchange of green creative ideas. Through the lens of the social exchange and stakeholders’ theories, this study investigates the predictive powers of leaders’ trustworthiness and perceived green reputation on green creative ideas exchange among their respective team members. We utilised a cross-sectional (time lag) data collection method, totalling 350 participants from 21 different manufacturing organisations. Results indicate that perceived green reputation, integrity and benevolence are positive predictors of green creative ideas exchange. Surprisingly, we find that perceived green reputation attenuates the positive relationships between benevolence, integrity and green creative ideas exchange. Furthermore, we find that perceived green reputation reinforces the link between ability and green creative ideas exchange. Based on our findings, leaders and practitioners may therefore, consider augmenting and exhibiting more benevolence that could support the increase of team members’ perception of their green reputation. Policies can be instituted to further ensure that leaders maintain perceived green reputation that is grounded on all trustworthiness dimensions.