Green human resource management and the enablers of green organisational culture: Enhancing a firm's environmental performance for sustainable development

TLDR

Scholars have shown that green human resource management practices improve firms’ environmental performance, yet how these initiatives foster a green organisational culture and influence sustainable development remains unclear. This study investigates the link between GHRM practices, the enablers of green organisational culture, and a firm’s environmental performance. A large‑scale survey of 204 employees from Chinese manufacturing firms was conducted to collect data on GHRM practices and cultural enablers. Pro‑environmental HRM practices such as hiring, training, appraisal, and incentives foster key enablers—leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement, and employee empowerment—which mediate the positive effect of GHRM on environmental performance, offering managers actionable insights and implications for future managerial education.

Abstract

Abstract Scholars have shown that green human resource management (GHRM) practices enhance a firm's environmental performance. However, existing studies fail to explain how GHRM initiatives can enable a green organisational culture or how such a culture affects the environmental performance and sustainable development of the firm. This paper examines the relationship between GHRM practices, the enablers of green organisational culture, and a firm's environmental performance. We conduct a large‐scale survey of 204 employees at Chinese manufacturing firms. Our findings suggest that proenvironmental HRM practices including hiring, training, appraisal, and incentivisation support the development of the enablers of green organisational culture. We suggest the key enablers of green organisational culture include leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement, and employee empowerment. Our paper contributes to HRM theory in terms of originality and utility of research by explaining that the enablers of green organisational culture positively mediate the relationship between GHRM practices and environmental performance. Managers are provided with a detailed understanding of the GHRM practices needed to enable an organisational culture of environmentally aware employees. Finally, we address potential implications of this work for teaching green organisational culture to future generations of responsible managers.