There are significant concerns about climate change adaptation issues in the construction industry, thus climate capacities – both relevant and specific – as well as leadership effectiveness are needed to strengthen organizational climate resilience. Despite their importance, empirical studies on these themes, particularly in the construction industry, are lacking. This study aims to fill this gap by providing evidence on a set of relationships among climate-specific capacity (CSC), climate-relevant capacity (CRC), leadership effectiveness (LE) in climate actions, and organizational climate resilience (OCR) in the construction sector of the UAE.
Building on transformational leadership theory and the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper builds and validates a conceptual model that tests how climate capacities (i.e. CSC and CRC) and LE impact the development of OCR. Particularly, the authors tested their conceptual model through structural equation modeling (SEM) using the SPSS AMOS path analysis on the survey data collected from 420 employees in the UAE construction industry.
The study finds a direct and positive relationship among climate capacities, LE and OCR. Moreover, LE positively moderates the relationship between CRC and OCR, whereas it negatively moderates the CSC–OCR relationship.
The research findings advocate that managers should consider CSC and CRC along with LE while managing climate change efforts to improve OCR.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article is the first to offer an empirical insight on a set of relationships among climate capacities, LE in climate actions and OCR. The new conceptual framework has both practical and research implications for managing climate change responses.
