Environmental design and awareness impact on organization image

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how environmental design features of a green building contribute to the formation of employees’ organization image (OIM) through better environmental awareness (EAW) within employees.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a comprehensive literature review on environmental design features of a building, a theoretical model was proposed for investigation. Three putative paths linking workspace (WSP) to EAW, departmental space (DSP) to EAW and EAW to OIM were then tested relying on a survey data of 362 employees collected from three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified buildings by using structural equation modeling methodology as prescribed by Hairet al.

Findings

Significant evidence was found in support of all three purposed paths. Further, the study found that workspace and the DSP together explained around 46 percent of the variance in employee’s EAW, which then explained around 54 percent of the variance in the formation of the employees’ OIM.

Research limitations/implications

The study drew data only from green certified organizations. Future research should involve other green organizations or a larger sample of green buildings. The size and character of the sample were restricted by organizational constraints.

Practical implications

The organizations need to be extremely cautious of green concerns during the design phase in order to capitalize on the yields of better employees’ OIM. It also motivates the other organizational group toward the green building concept to increase the employees’ EAW and to enhance organizational values and image.

Originality/value

While the green concept has been a significant research topic for more than decades, barely any research has been conducted that focuses specifically on environmental design features of a green building on employees’ EAW and OIM. This study tries to make a link between green building design features with employees’ EAW and OIM. These links are rare in Indian perspective.