1. Introduction
With the globalization of the economy, environmental issues are becoming increasingly prominent on a global scale. In recent years, as carbon neutrality and carbon peaking targets continue to be promoted, an increasing number of companies are becoming aware of the importance of environmental responsibility. These companies are not only striving for energy saving and emission reduction in their production by setting green targets to constrain manufacturing activities, but also seeking green change in their management models to reduce potential environmental hazards. In the practice of green organizational change, leaders play a key and central role [
1]. There have been several types of leadership concepts for the study of green management, including sustainable leadership and green transformational leadership. Sustainable leadership is a leadership style that takes into consideration a comprehensive scope of complex interconnections among corporate profits, business growth, preservation of the environment, and social values, which emphasizes obtaining success in the long term based on strategic decision-making value [
2]. Compared with sustainable leadership that has a broader connotation, green transformational leadership, which reflects the green values of leaders and explains the mechanisms by which leaders influence green organizational change, places more emphasis on the environmental benefits of the organization [
3,
4]. Green transformational leadership, which is also called environmental transformational leadership, is a leadership style that aims to motivate employees to achieve green goals, shape the green vision of employees and promote green change in the organization [
5]. Previous research on green transformational leadership has illustrated its profound impact on employees’ environmental responsibility [
6], organizational citizenship behavior [
7], organizational citizenship behavior for the environment [
8,
9], and its importance for sustainable development at the organizational level [
4].
The green transformation of enterprises is a kind of profound organizational change. When an organization sets green transformation as a development goal, employees’ taking charge behavior plays an important role in advancing the goal [
10]. As a typical kind of extra-role behavior, employees’ taking charge behavior is a spontaneous and constructive behavior of employees that aims to change and influence organizations by implementing efforts to go beyond their own responsibilities, through more effective ways of working [
11]. Research on proactive behavior has indicated the relationship among different concepts, such as extra-role behavior, organizational citizenship behavior, and taking charge behavior. Proactive work behavior includes in-role and extra-role behavior [
12]. Extra-role behavior includes organizational citizenship behavior, voice behavior, helping behavior, and taking charge behavior [
12,
13,
14,
15,
16]. It should be noted that although these concepts have some similarities, they differ significantly in terms of connotations and measurements. Morrison and Phelps (1999) pointed out that employees’ taking charge behavior is remarkably different from organizational citizenship behavior; for example, compared with organizational citizenship behavior that is affiliative-promotive, taking charge behavior is more change-oriented and aimed at procedure improvement, bringing changes and innovative solutions to organizations [
13]. A review of the relevant literature showed that the influencing factors of employees’ taking charge behavior consists of two main aspects. The first is an exploration of the intrinsic elements that drive employees’ taking charge behavior from a cognitive and psychological perspective. Dysvik, Kuvaas, and Buch (2016) described the pathways by which employees’ intrinsic perceptions of organizational development can influence employees’ taking charge behavior [
11]. Love and Dustin (2014) explored the practical impact of emotional factors, such as psychological collectivism, on employees’ taking charge behavior, starting with the leader–member relationship and other aspects [
17]. Second, the external influencing factors on employees’ taking charge behavior are explored in terms of the organizational environment. For example, support from both organizations and leaders facilitate employees’ taking charge behavior [
18]. Leadership and allocation systems in the organization can also significantly affect employees’ taking charge behavior [
19]. In studies of the influencing factors of employees’ taking charge behavior, leadership has received widespread attention from scholars. As an emerging concept in the field of green management, green transformational leadership, which includes green influence, green motivation, green intellectual stimulation, and green personalized consideration as the main modes of action, contributes significantly to shaping employees’ green vision and motivating them to achieve green goals [
4]. Since the concept of green transformational leadership was introduced, it has received considerable attention from scholars in the field of green management [
20]. Prior studies have focused on the mechanisms of the effect of transformational leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior [
21,
22]. However, Robertson (2018) demonstrated that when transformational leadership is introduced into the field of green management and its functions are explored, there are many differences from the original concept of transformational leadership in terms of indicators, influencing mechanisms, and transmission pathways [
23].
Prior research has shown that green transformational leadership is positively related to organizational citizenship behavior [
7] and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment [
8,
9]; however, as we mentioned above, employees’ taking charge behavior is different from organizational citizenship behavior in several aspects. Organizational citizenship behavior places more emphasis on affiliative behaviors such as helping, sharing, and cooperating, which is the modest behavior that sustains the status quo [
24]. As a new kind of OCB, organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (also called organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment, environmental citizenship behavior) is defined as individual and discretionary behaviors that are not explicitly recognized by the formal work rules and that contribute to the protection of the environment [
25], including eco-civic engagements, eco-initiatives, and eco-helping behavior of employees [
26], which is still in the domain of OCB. In contrast, taking charge behavior is more targeted at changing the organization [
12,
26]. It involves risk taking, which means that taking charge behavior is more challenging than other types of extra-role behavior, such as organizational citizenship behavior [
27,
28,
29]. Currently, few studies have revealed the influencing mechanisms and boundary conditions of green transformational leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to further explore the relationship between green transformational leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior in the context of green transformation.
To fill these research gaps, we introduce self-determination theory, which divides the motivations that drive individuals to accomplish their goals into intrinsic and extrinsic motivations [
30], and further explains the elements of the external environment that drive employees to accomplish organizational goals [
31]. The introduction of self-determination theory facilitates our exploration of the influencing mechanisms of green transformational leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior, allowing our study to integrate the extrinsic motivation provided by the organization and the driving force based on individuals’ intrinsic motivation. Among the intrinsic motivations for employees’ taking charge behavior, personal initiative can reinforce employees’ sense of responsibility and prosocial motivation [
32], and self-efficacy [
33], which in turn supports employees’ taking charge behavior. Therefore, we adopted personal initiative as a mediating variable in the model for our study. In exploring external motivations for taking charge behavior, the role of green organizational identity cannot be ignored because it contributes to the construction of organizational green goals and promotes the formation of personal initiative, which in turn strengthens the relationship between green transformational leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior [
34]. Based on these mechanisms, we introduce green organizational identity as a moderating variable in the model.
We used two-stage questionnaire surveys to collect data from 429 employees in manufacturing enterprises undergoing a profound green transformation and conducted hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test the model. The results indicate that green transformational leadership has a positive impact on employees’ taking charge behavior, and that personal initiative plays a partial mediating role in the above relationship. Furthermore, green organizational identity positively moderates both the relationship between green transformational leadership and personal initiative and the indirect effect of green transformational leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior via personal initiative. Our study makes several contributions to the existing research and expands the theoretical understanding of green transformational leadership. The study incorporates personal initiative and green organizational identity into the influencing mechanisms of green transformational leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior for the first time, which introduces a new perspective on the study of green transformational leadership and enriches research on the boundary conditions of how green transformational leadership influences employee behavior. At the same time, the integration of these factors provides theoretical support for the application of self-determination theory in green management. Our study also provides a comprehensive response to the effect of various individual and organizational factors on employees’ taking charge behavior and the sustainable development of organizations.