Don't Just Train, Inspire: The Critical Role of Motivation in Corporate Green Behavior

ABSTRACT This study examines how green training influences corporate green behavior, with a particular focus on the mediating role of organizational green motivation. Drawing on the resource‐based view and the ability‐motivation‐opportunity framework, we propose a model in which green training builds environmental capability and fosters motivation, which in turn drives organizational green behavior. Using a mixed‐method design that combines a structural equation model with data from 136 Spanish employees and five focus groups, the findings reveal that green training significantly enhances organizational green motivation, but neither training nor organizational motivation alone produces a significant direct effect on corporate green behavior. These results suggest that the pathway from individual motivation to collective organizational action depends on structural and cultural conditions that training interventions alone cannot provide. The study contributes to the green HRM literature by reframing green training as a motivational rather than a behavioral mechanism, and by extending the AMO framework to show that the opportunity dimension—understood as the organizational structures and systems that enable action—is the critical missing link between motivation and corporate green behavior.