Examining airline employees' perceptions of sustainability, green organizational behaviors and their views on corporate reputation

With the globalization of the world, problems such as global warming and climate crisis have started to occur. In this process, the activities of businesses have a large share. This situation has paved the way for the formation and development of concepts such as sustainability and green organizational behavior. Airline businesses have also started to organize their activities in this direction. It has been observed that airline companies have started to carry out sustainable activities and the activities created play a role in the increase or decrease of corporate reputation. Employees' perceptions of sustainability and green organizational behaviors are important as the most important factor for airline businesses to carry out sustainability activities. This study was conducted to determine the sustainability perceptions, green organizational behaviors and views on corporate reputation of ground handling employees in airline companies. It aims to see how an airline business handles its reputation in line with employees' sustainability perceptions and green organizational behaviors. As a result of the employees' perceptions of sustainability and their views on the perspectives of green organizational behaviors towards corporate reputation, the importance of addressing the sustainability activities of the enterprises in terms of the attitude of the employees was determined. This situation will be effective in organizing activities to have employees with social responsibility and environmental awareness in the future. The research was carried out based on the idea that airline employees' sustainability perceptions and green organizational behaviors will increase the reputation of the business and make the business a reputable business and enable the employee to adopt the business. At the same time, the attitude of employees towards sustainability and green organizational behavior will show the position of the company in terms of the employee and the attractiveness of the company for the employee. In the airline companies in Istanbul province, the employees in the three most well-known ground handling companies of the country were taken into consideration. Since the managers are the decision makers in realizing the sustainability activities of the business and they will take a biased perspective in order not to damage the reputation of the business, the research is limited on the basis of employees. In the process of creating the interview form, the interview questions were prepared by making use of the relevant literature and the Green Organizational Behavior Scale developed by Erbaşı (2019), the Measurement of Corporate Reputation developed by Kocabıçakçıoğlu (2023): A Scale Proposal for Airline Businesses and Mucan, Kayabaşı and Madran (2016), Sustainability Perception in Managers and Application to Company Practices. Validity and reliability were ensured by explaining the location of the research, providing demographic information about the participants, explaining the research process in detail and sharing the data obtained directly with the reader. The participants were selected from ground handling employees in the same city but in different airline companies. In this direction, the participants were selected according to the purposive sampling method. Qualitative research method was used in the study. Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire as it enabled the employees to provide more detailed and up-to-date information and to listen to their perspectives. The qualitative research method was preferred in the study because it offers a more in-depth examination. The study was guided by the phenomenology research design, one of the qualitative research method designs. Businesses in aviation have very strict rules on the sharing of business information and sanctions are severe. Therefore, purposive sampling method was preferred. The interviews were conducted online (digital) due to time and space constraints. In accordance with qualitative research, the data were analyzed with the "Content Analysis Method". Six main themes emerged as a result of the analysis. These themes are; employees' expectations from sustainability activities, employees' obstacles in sustainability activities, environmentally friendly practices of the business, employees' environmental sensitivity to activities, employees' environmental participation in activities and employees' perspective on the reputation of airline companies. It has been concluded that employees have sustainability awareness, but there should be studies to expand this awareness, employees participate in business activities and take initiative at the point where there are no environmental activities, but sustainability perceptions and green organizational behaviors are not a priority in the reputation of airline businesses because employees primarily consider the products and services of businesses.