Green Human Resource Management Practices and Organizational Sustainability Performance

Abstract

This study adopted a mixed methods approach to analyze the role of the green human resource management (GHRM) practices (green recruitment, green training, and employee environmental involvement) on organizational sustainability performance. During the quantitative part, 180 employees from ecologically aware companies filled out a structured questionnaire that included a five-point Likert scale for green recruitment, green training, employee environment involvement, and sustainability performance. The data of the survey were analyzed with descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression to determine the incremental contribution of each HR practice to the sustainability performance. In the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 HR managers to gain understanding of the implementation of green HR policies in practice, with responses from the interviews analysed thematically. Cronbach's alpha was computed to establish reliability of the research instrument in all constructs and the results were satisfactory. The results of the hierarchical regression showed that the three predictor variables (green recruitment, green training and employee environmental involvement) all made significant incremental contributions to the variance in sustainability performance, with the three variables working together accounting for 36.5% of the variance in sustainability performance, with employee environmental involvement being the largest. Through thematic analysis of the HR manager interviews, five themes emerged: embedding sustainability in recruitment criteria, green training as a culture-building activity as opposed to a compliance-driven one; grassroots momentum through employee-driven green initiatives; challenges of measuring and reporting sustainability performance; and the need for leadership commitment for effective implementation. The qualitative themes were shown to be substantively meaningful in terms of the pattern of incremental contribution found in the regression results through integration of the two phases. This results indicates that the most effective way to improve organizational sustainability performance is to focus on the net effect of the combination of GHRM practices, namely recruitment, training, and employee involvement practices.