Mediating Role of Sustainable Development Goals in the Effect of Green Transformational Leadership on Employee Performance in the Aviation Industry

Abstract

The aviation industry is one of the significant sectors that create environmental pollution with the emission of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Bearing this in mind, the main goal of the present study is to determine the mediating role of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the effect of green transformational leadership on performance in the aviation sector and to make contribution to the literature. The study was conducted with 322 employees working in the aviation industry and the data obtained were analysed through the Smart-PLS program. The findings indicated that green transformational leadership had an effect of 0.146 on SDGs; SDGs had an effect of 0.190 on performance, and green transformational leadership had an effect of 0.108 on performance. Furthermore, it is found that sustainable development goals have a partial mediating role in the effect of green transformational leadership on performance and the result obtained by VAF calculation is realized to be significant. The study revealed that SDG1, SDG6, SDG10 and SDG14 items of the sustainable development goals were not fully understood by the participants. When the findings are considered, it can be stated that the study is important in terms of proving that green transformational leadership has an effect on performance and that a part of this effect can be explained by sustainable development goals. Even though this effect was explained more theoretically in previous studies, this issue has also been proven in practice. In addition, utilizing the Resource-Based View within the scope of the study also helped strengthen the theoretical infrastructure.

Keywords

• Green transformational leadership
• SDGs
• Performance
• Aviation
• Sustainability

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