Sustainability actions, employee loyalty, and the awareness: The mediating effect of organization legitimacy

Researchers highlighted the need to increase our understanding about the effect of sustainability practices on employees. In this work, we argue that organizational legitimacy has a mediating effect between sustainability practices and employee loyalty. This structural relationship is analyzed on employees of Spanish public universities. Our results confirm the existence of the mediating effect proposed. The lack of organizational legitimacy makes sustainability actions irrelevant for employees. Results expand our understanding about the effect of sustainability among employees. In addition, they provide new evidence for practitioners in order to focus on organizational legitimacy for a better sustainability implementation.