Does Greenwashing Affect Employee’s Career Satisfaction? The Mediating Role of Organizational Pride, Negative Emotions and Affective Commitment

Célia Santos (  celiafsantos@hotmail.com ) University of Coimbra Faculty of Economics: Universidade de Coimbra Faculdade de Economia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5002-2767 Arnaldo Coelho University of Coimbra Faculty of Economics: Universidade de Coimbra Faculdade de Economia Alzira Marques Instituto Politécnico de Leiria Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão: Instituto Politecnico de Leiria Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestao

their claims (De Jong et al., 2018;Delmas & Burbano, 2011), willingly misleading or lying to their stakeholders. It is worth considering its impact on the organizational identi cation of employees (Contreras-Pacheco et al., 2019). Individuals usually react less strongly to positive events than to negative ones, thus, unethical behaviors will have a great impact on employees. (Bauman & Skitka, 2012).
Understanding how they feel about their company's behavior might be quite challenging, especially when addressing aspects that do not directly affect their work experiences, such as greenwashing. However, employees' emotions toward the environmental conduct or communications of companies could still be relevant, as they might impact their motivations (Skudiene & Auruskeviciene, 2012) and their organizational commitment (Gupta, 2017). These outcomes can be turned into organizational success or failure (Azim, 2016), since long-term success depends on the level of satisfaction of employees with their careers ( Pizzetti et al., 2021). Third, drawing on appraisal and moral foundations theories this study presents new insights into the mechanisms behind their relationship. We suggest herein that these two theories help to explain the relationship between irresponsible and immoral behavior, such as greenwashing, and career satisfaction. The research argues that understanding the processes through which employees' emotions are affected by greenwashing will help enlighten management theory and practice, fostering the development of models and companies' ethical and responsible interventions that best leverage employees' strengths. It would also help managers acknowledge the hazardous effects of this practice and implement programs that are able to ful l employees' needs and aspirations, thus maximizing the returns of corporations at several levels.
Blending elements of appraisal theory of emotions (ATE) and moral foundations theory (MFT), this study is based on a cross-section sample of 398 Portuguese employees who recognize their employer as a greenwashing practitioner. This article is structured as follows: Section 2 presents literature review and lays out the hypotheses; section 3 describes the methodology; section 4 introduces the measurements; section 5 discusses the results, and the nal section provides conclusions and implications.

Literature Review And Hypotheses Development
Greenwashing has been recognized as deliberate communicative behavior with the purpose of gaining bene ts. However, it is harmful to society (Bowen & Aragon-Correa, 2014) and does not present any Nevertheless, calls for investigating the outcomes at the workplace, due to corporate social irresponsibility and greenwashing, have been made (Gond et al., 2017;Pizzetti et al., 2021). Additionally, very little attention has been paid to speci c features and role of emotions caused by irresponsible corporate behavior (Antonetti, 2020). There are only a limited number of studies that address the relationship of greenwashing and employees, and they are focused on employee behavior (Tahir et al., 2020) and loss of con dence (Blome, Foerstl, & Schleper, 2017 (Bauman & Skitka, 2012), and morality and emotions are connected (Cameron, Lindquist, & Gray, 2015), this article is based on the assumption that there is incongruence/mismatch, between the company's irresponsible behavior and the moral grounds of employees. As emotions are preceded by appraisals (Chapman & Anderson, 2011), we suggest that employees are likely to appraise company's greenwashing practices through a moral lens and react with negative emotional outcomes. As MFT (Haidt & Graham, 2007) suggests, employees should perceive greenwashing as an immoral act, which harms stakeholders, there being a gap/incongruence between employees and their company. The extent to which employees identify with the rm is related to their sense of mis(match) between their own moral concerns and that of their company (Bauman & Skitka, 2012). Furthermore, and considering ATE (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003;Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2014), emotions are triggered and distinguished by an appraisal (i.e. evaluative judgment) of the stimulus, as a (mis)match between expectations and goals. Individuals make moral attributions based on the information available (Bauman & Skitka, 2012), and considering that employees are internal members who have access to key information, thus they are aware of greenwashing activities. Hence, this study suggests that greenwashing perceptions signi cantly affect employees' present (i.e., organizational pride, negative emotions, and affective commitment) and long-term personal and work-related emotions (i.e., career satisfaction). Situational and contextual factors have been proven to contribute to career satisfaction (Joo & Park, 2010). Previous research suggests that corporate ethics values are linked to job satisfaction (Singhapakdi et al., 2015). Employees experience higher levels of career satisfaction when there is a closealignment between employee and company (Jung & Takeuchi, 2018). Morover, employees who are overall satis ed with the organizational context tend to be more satis ed with their career (Joo & Park, 2010). Consequently, employees who do not agree with companies' greenwashing behavior, will not be satis ed with their organizational context, and consequently might experience lower levels of career satisfaction. Based on the above arguments, this study suggests: H1: The perception of Corporate Greenwashing has a negative effect on the employee's career satisfaction.

The in uence of greenwashing on organizational pride
Organizational pride is closely related to employee psychological attachment and identi cation with their employer (Schaefer et al., 2020). It is a strong positive feeling, such as the sense of joy, meaningfulness, self-esteem, pleasure and self-respect arising from organizational membership (Helm,  Positive perceptions of fairness and social welfare activities are likely to lead employees to feeling greater identi cation and pride of being a member of that company (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). In addition, the company's morality is a relevant trait that leads to identi cation and organizational pride (Ellemers et al., 2011). Hence, if the company acts in a socially responsible manner, employees believe that it has a conscience and moral sense (Li et al., 2020). However, if companies pursue unethical or irresponsible behavior, a similar, but opposite response should emerge. The greater the perceived incongruence, the more unlikely it is that employees will identify themselves with the company (Bauman & Skitka, 2012). The presence of corporate greenwashing may affect negatively employees as they are unwilling participants of unethical/immoral behavior (Walker & Wan, 2012). Thus, there is a clash between employees' moral foundations and their company's irresponsible behavior, as appraisal and moral foundation theories suggest. Hence, this article predicts that in employees who perceive their employer as immoral/unethical, there is a mismatch between the conduct of the company and the moral standards of employees, so they are not likely to experience organizational pride, thus: H2: Corporate Greenwashing perceptions have a negative effect on the organizational pride of employees.

The in uence of greenwashing on negative emotions
Negative emotions explain the trend in the negative moods and feelings that individuals experience over time and in different situations (Nikolaev, Shir, & Wiklund, 2020). These individuals are usually nervous, pessimistic, agitated, distressed and present feelings of worthlessness (i.e. a negative view of oneself) . This happens because customers are becoming more sensitive by the day to factors that negatively affect society, such as damages to the environment (Nasab & Abakari, 2016). Although these authors have focused on consumer outcomes, it is expected that greenwashing could also have similar effects on employees, as they are internal customers (Carlini, Grace, France, & Lo Iacono, 2019). Additionally, studies revealed that when there is an alignment between company's values and that of employees, these tend to be more positive and present lower levels of work stress and job anxiety (Singhapakdi et al., 2015). Similarly, several authors demonstrated that social and ethical transgressions foster negative emotions (Grappi et

The in uence of greenwashing on affective commitment
Employees may experience organizational commitment in three different ways: normative, continuance and affective commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990;Meyer & Allen, 1991). This study focuses on affective commitment, because it was demonstrated to be the most important aspect of organizational commitment (Chun, Shin, Choi, & Kim, 2013) and the one that could affect other components in the long run (Allen & Meyer, 1990). It re ects the psychological and emotional bond that employees develop with their company, it is the feeling of being part of the family, nurturing positive feelings and caring about them (Pereira et al., 2021). It is identifying and engaging with the company, nurturing a strong emotional attachment and engagement (Allen & Meyer, 1996;Meyer & Allen, 1991;Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). An employee that is affectively committed identi es with their company's goals, supporting it to achieve them (Allen & Meyer, 1996). This happens because there is value congruence between the employee and the company ( If employees nd that their employer is working in a socially responsible way, they enjoy being associated to it, leading to higher levels of commitment (Azim, 2016). Thus, ethical and responsible behavior, seen in CSR initiatives, increase employee commitment and sense of belonging (Bouraoui, Bensemmane, Ohana, & Russo, 2019). Thus, one might expect an opposite reaction when companies engage in irresponsible behavior, as greenwashing. Meaning that, where employees perceive their employer as immoral/unethical, there is a mismatch between the behavior of the company and the moral standards of the employees, so their commitment to corporate goals might decrease (Ha-Brookshire, 2017). Based on the discussion above, this article suggests that: H4: Corporate Greenwashing perceptions have a negative effect on employee affective commitment. Research has demonstrated that lower levels of affective commitment might result in risky outcomes such as lower performance (Allen & Meyer, 1996), ineffective behavior, low employee engagement, reduced job satisfaction, employee procrastination or absenteeism (Kaur, Malhotra, & Sharma, 2020). If employees are affectively committed to their company, it means that they identify with the organization (Kaur et al., 2020). They are willing to go the extra mile for the company (Ellemers et al., 2011). They are engaged to the extent that they put extra effort into their work, acquiring more knowledge and improving their skills, consequently performing better in their jobs and developing a sense of achievement, evaluating their careers in a positive way (Ngo & Hui, 2018). Research has also demonstrated that employees who are more engaged at work are also more satis ed with their career (Boštjančič & Petrovčič, 2019). So, there is a positive association between affective commitment and career satisfaction (Joo & Park, 2010). This paper thus suggests that: H7: Employee affective commitment has a positive effect on their career satisfaction.

The mediating role of organizational pride, negative emotions and affective commitment
This article suggests that employee appraisals of corporate greenwashing, expressing the mismatch between the moral values of employees and the irresponsible practices of the company, are expected to negatively affect career satisfaction, as stated in H1. It also suggests that greenwashing may lead to a decrease in organizational pride, as postulated in H2, a reduction in affective commitment, as stated in H4 and a growth of negative emotions, as expressed in H3. In turn, these outcomes might in uence career satisfaction, as assumed in H5, H6 and H7. Therefore, one may expect organizational pride, negative emotions, and affective commitment to be mediators in the proposed model. Affective commitment was previously used as a mediator to look into the conection between the actions of the companies and job satisfaction (Kaur et al., 2020). Organizational pride acted as a mediator in the relationship between organizational characteristics and performance, commitment or turnover reduction (Pereira et al., 2021) and negative emotions were also used as mediator between stressors and behavior (Fida, Paciello, Barbaranelli, Tramontano, & Fontaine, 2014). In brief, this paper suggests that greenwashing affects career satisfaction directly, but also indirectly through organizational pride, negative emotions, and affective commitment. Stated formally, it implies the following: H8: Organizational pride (a), negative emotions (b) and affective commitment (c) mediate the relationship between greenwashing and employee career satisfaction.

Method
Employees are incredibly important stakeholders but have often been ignored. Irresponsible behavior by companies, including greenwashing, affect employees in several ways. This study examines how employees respond emotionally to companies' greenwashing activities. Figure 1 presents the theoretical model of the current study.

Sample and data collection
For this study the authors used cross-sectional primary data from a sample consisting of 398 Portuguese employees. A pre-test (n= 30) was conducted to detect any potential issue, which allowed some minor adjustments to the questions to be made. The authors chose 10 employees, from different industries, and asked them to ll out the questionnaire which they shared with other employees, using snowball techniques. To assure anonymity and high standard of the survey, respondents were not asked to provide their companies' names. The size and number of companies whose employees took part in the study are not known.
Respondents were rst asked to specify whether they are currently employed or if they had been in the last year. Additionally, they had to say whether in their present or past work experience they perceived/recognized that their employer pretended to be environmentally responsible, but their actions did not match their claims (De Jong et al., 2018; Delmas & Burbano, 2011), by sending misleading messages regarding their environmental practices or environmental bene ts of a product or service. In the second part, questions were intended to measure the proposed constructs, and the last part included demographic questions.

Measurement
The measurements in the questionnaire were adapted from established and tested scales, which were translated and customized for the present study. The questionnaire contained 5 demographic and 26 closed questions to measure the proposed concepts. All the items were measured on a seven-point Likert scale, with anchors from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Metrics can be found in table 2, identifying the origin of the metric and the standardized regression weights. In order to minimize common method variance (CMV), the respondents were assured that their answers would be con dential and anonymous, that there were no wrong or right answers, and that their participation was crucial for the research. Aditionally, Harman's single-factor test was conducted, and CMB was not present in the study (Podsakoff et al., 2003).
AMOS 25, a structural equation model (SEM) tool, was used to perform a con rmatory factor analysis and to assess the psychometric properties of the scales and model t (Bagozzi & Heatherton, 1994). Data present convergent validity, as evidenced by all AVE above 0.5, and has reliability, evidenced by all CR above 0.7 (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 1998). It also has discriminant validity, based on the square root of AVE greater than any inter-factor correlation in the matrix (Hair et al., 1998) (see Table 3).

Direct effects
The results of this study are shown in Table 4. Six out of seven hypotheses are supported herein, which means that only H6 was not suported.

Indirect effects
To test the signi cance of the possible mediating effects of organizational pride, negative emotions and affective commitment, we conducted a bootstrap procedure with 2000 samples to create bias-corrected con dence intervals for the indirect effects.

Discussion
The current research analyzed a model connecting employee greenwashing perceptions with their career satisfaction, through mediation of organizational pride, negative emotions and affective commitment.
The study found that when employees perceive greenwashing positively, they seem to be less satis ed with their careers, they experience lower levels of organizational pride, less affective commitment e more negative emotions.
The results indicate that when employees realize that their companies engage in immoral or irresponsible activities, they tend to feel lower career satisfaction. ATE (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003;Moors et al., 2014) and MFT (Haidt & Graham, 2007) defend that the individual's emotions are a consequence of the appraisals that are done, considering what one believes it is right or wrong. When working in a company that deliberately deceives stakeholders about their environmental practices or characteristics of their products, employees' moral standards are de ed, because the company's standards con ict with their own. In this case, employees are unwilling participants of unethical/immoral behavior (Walker & Wan, 2012). Consequently, their emotional response is negative. When perceiving corporate greenwashing, employees feel that the company deceives and does not care about ethical or environmental aspects.
Consequently, the prospect of working for such company fades and employees do not experience satisfaction in the long run (i.e., career satisfaction). As expected, the results also suggest that greenwashing has a negative effect on organizational pride and affective commitment. Considering that the more employees perceive their company to be socially responsible, the more likely it is that employees will feel organizational pride (Schaefer et al., 2020) and affective commitment (Azim, 2016;Joo & Park, 2010), this research's results suggest that the opposite reaction also occurs. Meaning, that if employees perceive their company as socially irresponsible (i.e., practice greenwashing), they feel that it deceives and does not care about ethical or environmental aspects, so they wish to distance themselves from such behavior. Thus, it is even more unlikely that employees will feel proud of being part of this company or will experience affective commitment. Greenwashing affects career satisfaction not only directly, but also through organizational pride and affective commitment. As a matter of fact, hazardous greenwashing effects on career satisfaction seem to be ampli ed through the mediation of organizational pride and affective commitment. Al-Ghazali and Sohail (2021) found that organizational pride mediates the effect of CSR perceptions on career satisfaction. Again, our results demonstrate that a similar reaction occurs in the relationship between greenwashing and career satisfaction. That is, employee-rm value (mis)match, evidenced by organizational pride and affective commitment, act as mediators in this association. Previous literature has shown that responsible and ethical behavior, as CSR, brings bene ts for employees. Our results suggest that, on the opposite side of this behavior, there is greenwashing, representing immoral and unethical behavior that has a damaging effect on these stakeholders.

Conclusions And Implications
As the frequency of corporate greenwashing perception increases, a better understanding of its relationship with employees' emotions is of strong managerial and academic interest. This article explores the direct and indirect effects of greenwashing on career satisfaction added to the mediation effects of organizational pride, negative emotions, and affective commitment. The results show that the destructive path between greenwashing and career satisfaction as perceived by employees is established not only directly, but also through organizational pride and affective commitment.

Theoretical contributions
The current research complements present literature on greenwashing in several ways: rst, greenwashing is likely to impact employees signi cantly and, surprisingly, no study has theoretically or empirically linked greenwashing to employees' emotions. By focusing on the negative effects of greenwashing, both on the current emotional work and personal related effects (affective commitment, negative emotions, and organizational pride) and long-term work-related effects (career satisfaction), this study documents an important and yet unestablished relationship, advancing research on greenwashing literature. Second, it responds to the call for more research on greenwashing outcomes in the workplace that these two theories help to explain the relationship between irresponsible or immoral behavior, such as greenwashing, and employees' emotions. Greenwashing negatively in uences how individuals, in this case, employees, perceive and appraise the immoral actions of companies. Thus, allegations of immoral behavior lessen emotional ties between the employee and the organization.

Practical and policy implications
The current research also offers practical implications. It argues that understanding how employees' emotions are affected by greenwashing will help enlighten managers and promote their engagement in ethical and responsible activities that best leverage employees. By acknowledging the hazardous effect that greenwashing has on employees, companies ought to reduce these practices to ful l employees' moral needs and aspirations, which is likely to maximize companies' returns on several levels.
Environmental challenges are the order of the day. Therefore, this study intends to shed light on organizations and show how much they will bene t from being transparent and environmentally concerned. As positive feelings toward one's company foster more fruitful work behavior among employees (Oo et al., 2018), it seems clear that companies have much more to gain from behaving in a morally, ethically and environmentally responsible manner. It is crucial for managers to recognize and identify the aspects that promote career satisfaction (Al-Ghazali & Sohail, 2021). By fostering organizational pride and affective commitment, companies will consequently increase employee career satisfaction. For that matter, it is essential that the former present appropriate, true communication strategies and act responsibly towards the environment.

Limitations and future research directions
First, this study was performed in a speci c country: Portugal. Thus, the ndings can be different in other countries, as what is "right" or "wrong" depends on the ethical principles in a given social context (Schultz & Seele, 2019). Thus, future research could assay external validity of our ndings by testing the model in distinct cultural contexts. In this case, it would be possible to make cross-cultural comparisons. Second, it is possible that employees' emotions and attitudes towards Greenwashing are in uenced by the industry in which their company functions and their personal features (for example, tenure in the organization, tenure in the current position, years of business experience). Thus, future studies can incorporate these factors in the relationship between greenwashing and career satisfaction. Third, the hypotheses were tested in a single moment in time. Accordingly, longitudinal studies might be useful to better understand the cause-effects of corporate greenwashing on employees. Forth, this research conceptualizes employees as homogeneous, thus neglecting the reality of diversity in employees' perceptions and moral foundations. Not all individuals will appraise work context reality and respond to it in the same manner (Fida et al., 2014). So, individual differences in moral identity might be meaningful and, for that matter, future studies could use this construct as a moderator in the researched model.

Declarations
Competing interests: