Engagement in Sustainability Behaviors in Normative Social and Utilitarian Economic-Driven Organizations

We delineate a dual-pathway process that links two different types of organizational identity to members’ engagement in sustainability-related behaviors. Specifically, we explain how organizations with a normative social identity and those with a utilitarian economic identity foster such engagement by specifying two distinct human resource management (HRM) practices (commitment- and transaction-based) and demonstrating the different mechanisms whereby this process unfolds. This endeavor informs the community of scholarship and practice on sustainability by opening up new avenues for research and offering implications for policy and practice regarding the ways by which sustainability behaviors of members (employees and managers) in organizations with seemingly opposing identities can be promoted.