Do Individual Preferences Affect the Environmental Decision-making Process in Teams? The Role of Participation

Literature on organizations and the natural environment has focused on the importance of individual managers and leaders. However, this literature has scarcely ever focused on individuals in the team context, even when teams have been considered to be key for a firms' environmental progress. Although teams' environmental decisions can be enriched by the different contributions of team members, it is necessary that team members actually participate and contribute their preferences during the decision-making process. We used an adaptation of the legislative dilemma task with 84 students to contribute to environmental management literature by analyzing members' participation during the team decision-making process. The results of this paper show how those members with environmentally proactive preferences have a higher participation during the decision-making process, and as a consequence they have a greater influence on the team decision. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.