Sustainability-oriented teams: how “green KPIs” reshape motivation and conflict

Abstract

This paper investigates how sustainability-oriented performance indicators (“green KPIs”) reshape team motivation, collaboration, and conflict dynamics. Integrating Self-Determination Theory, Goal-Setting Theory, and psychological safety research, the study demonstrates that well-designed green KPIs can strengthen autonomous motivation, enhance learning, and promote prosocial team identity. However, poorly structured or punitive sustainability metrics risk triggering controlled motivation, gaming behavior, greenwashing pressures, and interpersonal conflict. The theses proposes a typology of green KPI effects across process, outcome, stakeholder, innovation, and learning domains, showing predictable patterns of motivational benefits and conflict risks. It further outlines leadership routines—such as shared-credit rules, dual (leading/lagging) feedback, cross-functional ownership structures, and blameless review practices—that help convert KPI-driven tensions into constructive problem solving. The study concludes that green KPIs function as social technologies: when strategically anchored, transparent, and psychologically safe, they become engines of learning and sustainable performance; when imposed as compliance tools, they undermine engagement and distort results.