Sources of environmentally destructive behavior: Individual, organizational, and institutional perspective

A wide variety of indicators suggest that humans are destroying the earth a t a rapid rate. Forests, air, water, human health, and endangered species a re all in trouble. Overall, humans are creating economic growth by deprecia ting the capital in natural resources that allows for that growth. We argue that the lens of organizational behavior yields insights not otherwise vis ible to explain this behavior. We provide a multilevel analysis of the dest ructiveness of taken-for-granted belief and behavior. We consider (1) how h uman perception of environmental problems is affected by cognitive biases; (2) how individuals are influenced in these biases by the organizations of which they are a part; and (3) how institutions persist that guide our awar eness of our connections to the environment.