1. Introduction
Research has shown that countries that are rich in human resources, such as China, are confronted with the task of paying for the high costs associated with employee health while striving to achieve rapid social and economic development [
1], and that nongreen labor, which includes long working hours and poor labor protection, should be held responsible for this phenomenon [
2]. On the one hand, the working hours of Chinese employees continue to show an inverse growth trend, to the extent that they even exceed those observed in the Japanese labor market, a country that was once notorious for excessive overtime work [
3]. On the other hand, employee occupational protection needs to be gradually improved upon alongside the maturity of new technologies [
4]. In particular, the rapid development of information technology has accelerated industry competition and blurred the boundary between work and family life [
5], which has a negative effect on the psychological well-being of employees. The Chinese government has adopted many methods to protect the rights and interests of employees and their physiological and psychological health, for example, China’s national strategy, entitled “Healthy China”, which points out the need to maintain and protect people’s health in a comprehensive manner, and which strives to greatly improve the health level [
6]. Chinese employees are still suffering serious physiological and psychological harm as a result of poor labor protection mechanisms, overtime, and work overload [
7]. According to the Report on National Occupational Diseases in 2019, issued by the Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, there were as many as 19,428 new cases of occupational diseases nationwide. In 2020, 27,412 people lost their lives because of production safety accidents [
8].
A study of the reasons as to why employees choose non-green labor, in the context of increasingly perfect national policies, reveals that the psychological cognition of individuals is the direct factor that influences their behavioral choices [
9]. The root cause of employee physiological and psychological harm was that employees, either actively or passively, selected certain non-green jobs and had to sacrifice their own physical and mental health, as well as sustainable development. Therefore, this study examined the willingness of employees to work by referring to two elements: organizational management and employee work experience. At the organizational level, the management system limits the behavior of different production entities in the production process, which could also restrict the behaviors of employees. Thus, under the management framework, individual behavior is either a rational or irrational choice [
10], especially when individuals perceive the organization’s tendency to implement non-green labor system constraints, which will have direct consequences, as employees will reject working in a green way. Therefore, this study proposes that it is necessary to include institutional factors (especially organizational constraints on non-green labor) into the research category of the labor willingness of employees. In addition, one of the direct consequences of non-green labor for individuals is the blurred boundary that exists between work and family life [
11]. According to the theory of social cognition and boundary management, when an individual perceives that they have more control over the work-family boundary (that is, stronger boundary management capabilities), they experience a correspondingly higher level of self-esteem. As such, the individual has a greater sense of control over their behavior [
12], and they are more likely to choose a work pattern that is more beneficial to their physical and mental health. On the basis of the above conclusions, this study included organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and individual boundary management capabilities in the research framework so as to explore their effects on the vocational behavior choices of Chinese employees.
Furthermore, in terms of current management practices, research on the labor behavior choices of employees mostly focuses on turnover behavior, anti-productive behavior, and procrastination behavior [
13]. However, few scholars have examined vocational behavior and self-protection, and research studies have also failed to carry out a systematic exploration of sustainable development from a human resources perspective. An article published in
Nature pointed out that the 2030 sustainable development goals should include thriving lives and livelihoods, as well as healthy and productive ecosystems [
14]. It is evident that, in present-day society, the concept of sustainable development has gradually become recognized, and the health and the quality of life of individuals valued. Given the continuous innovation, and the development of technology in particular, the traditional employment relationship has been subversively reconstructed, and the structure and modes of employment have become more flexible and borderless [
15]. In light of this change, employees need to actively pursue professional growth in order to improve upon their life-long development capabilities. Therefore, this article proposes a mode of green labor that emphasizes the need to protect the physical and mental health of employees, while taking into account how employee sustainable development can be enhanced as a long-term goal. This study examined the individual willingness to conduct green labor, which was characterized by self-protective employee behavior, self-development, and labor behavior choices, so as to explore the mechanisms of labor behavior among Chinese employees in terms of factors such as institutional constraints, OBSE, and boundary management capabilities.
5. Discussions
To examine individuals’ willingness to conduct green labor and its underlying mechanisms, this study constructed a model that included the following influencing variables: formal/informal institutional constraints, boundary management capabilities, and OBSE. The results show that employees perceived strong institutional constraints and showed a lack of willingness to conduct green labor. As such, institutional constraints had a significant negative impact on individuals’ willingness to conduct green labor. Generally speaking, the traditional development method of human-resource-based countries relies on labor input in exchange for economic growth [
43]. This development model has also made organizations more inclined to implement high-level institutional constraints to ensure the quantity and quality of employee labor input. Combined with the data analysis results of this research, the non-green labor system constraints perceived by the respondents were relatively high, which indicates that China’s current development mode is still relatively dependent on labor input. Furthermore, the research results show that high-level institutional constraints inhibited employees’ green labor needs. While this finding illustrates the current universality of the non-green labor methods in China, it also highlights how employees are prepared to sacrifice self-protection as a result of such constraints. Studies have shown that stringent institutional constraints, particularly non-green labor constraints, such as longer working hours and greater workloads, not only harm the physical and mental health of employees [
44] but are also detrimental to the sustainable development of organizational performance [
45]. Therefore, within the context of China’s development, it is necessary to resolve this important issue. The government should plan the construction of the system at the policy level, improve the incentive rules for updating rewards and punishments, refine the management methods for participation from implementation to supervision, and open up a channel for workers’ suggestions and opinions. The government should provide guidance on a series of systems, reform the systems that restrict the organization of green labor, enhance the participation of employees, and continuously stimulate their willingness to conduct green labor.
The research results show that individuals’ boundary management abilities played a mediation role between institutional constraints and the willingness to conduct green labor, which indicates that an awareness among employees of their personal boundaries could be regarded as a mechanism to buffer negative external constraints, which is conducive to self-protection. With the intensification of institutional constraints, employees encounter work-related pressures and work tasks that are highly complex and malleable, which directly cause the expansion of work boundaries, such that the scope of individual life activities are squeezed [
46]. The continuous turbulence brought about by this blurred work-life boundary has placed significant pressure on individuals in terms of their behavioral choices. In the modern work environment, good boundary management capabilities are particularly important. On the one hand, strong boundary management capabilities can help individuals to maintain a work-life balance, and reduce the psychological anxiety caused by boundary turbulence or blurring [
47]. On the other hand, strong boundary management capabilities can also increase an individual’s sense of control over their work and life, as they become more autonomous in stressful situations and are, therefore, more willing to choose green labor methods. On the basis of the perspective of work-family resources, this research incorporated boundary management into the research framework and confirmed how it plays a mediating role between institutional constraints and individuals’ willingness to conduct green labor. This study further opened up the “black box” of institutional constraints that affect individuals’ willingness to choose certain types of labor and provided a new perspective for the study of employees’ labor willingness. The findings also highlight the need for organizational management systems to pay greater attention to the organizational behavior of employees, family members, and multiple work-family relationships simultaneously. Moreover, individual employees should also avoid excessive separation that makes themselves contradict the objective environment, which would only intensify work-related pressures. As such, employees should aim to achieve an appropriate level of integration between their work and family lives so as to meet the needs of both their work roles and personal roles at the same time. In addition, when formulating policies, organizations should also fully consider the separation of individual boundaries within the context of employees’ different preferences about work-family boundaries and provide corresponding management solutions for different preferences.
OBSE can significantly alleviate the negative impact of institutional constraints on individuals’ willingness to conduct green labor. Studies have shown that OBSE is a positive psychological resource that can act as a buffer against the negative impacts of organizational situations on outcomes [
48]. It is worth noting that the results of the existing research largely show that high OBSE stimulates high work engagement, which is significantly related to positive work attitudes. For example, Pierce and Gardner (2004) found that people with high OBSE often believed that they were distinctive, important, and meaningful within a certain organization or workplace, which may promote positive individual work behaviors and personal and organizational performances [
34]. Frone has proposed that [
49], as a psychological (work) resource, OBSE could not only help employees to cope with work pressure and reduced negative emotions, but also affect employees’ perceptions of their own environmental control capabilities (2000). These studies appear to indicate that individuals with high OBSE were more willing to contribute to the organization, which was different from the results of the present study, which found that high OBSE could moderate institutional pressure and encourage individuals to choose green labor by placing self-protection at the core. In fact, we believe that this difference does not exist; the positive correlation between OBSE and variables, such as work engagement and organizational affiliation, only indicate, to a certain extent, that employees place a high value on the recognition of their work and the organization. This correlation does not, however, mean that employees will choose to sacrifice their personal physical and mental health. Therefore, in a sense, we extended OBSE research to incorporate an antagonistic research category that took into account the relationship between the organizational system constraints and self-sustainable development. The findings highlight the effectiveness of OBSE in regulating individuals confronted with stressful situations, which elaborates upon previous research. In addition, we should actively establish organizational values and organizational management principles that focus on the needs of employees and establish a harmonious and fair organizational system to inspire more employees in the organization to work.