The common agreement in human resource management (HRM) literature suggests that organizations willing to attract and retain human resources for running business in the future must change the prevailing situation where human resources are rather consumed than developed. In doing this, sustainable HRM has been introduced recently as a response to changes on societal level, labor market, and employment relations. Sustainable HRM is seen as an extension of strategic HRM and presents a new approach to people management with the focus on long-term human resource development, regeneration, and renewal. However, the attributes of sustainable HRM, as compared to mainstream HRM, are not clear. The paper aims at closing this gap by proposing and revealing the characteristics of sustainable HRM, namely: Long-term orientation, care of employees, care of environment, profitability, employee participation and social dialogue, employee development, external partnership, flexibility, compliance beyond labour regulations, employee cooperation, fairness, and equality. This is a theoretical paper.

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The accelerated movement of people towards cities led to the fact that the world’s urban population is now growing by 60-million persons per year. The increased number of cities’ population has a significant impact on the produced volume of household waste, which must be collected and recycled in time. The collection of household waste, especially in downtown areas, has a wide range of challenges; the collection system must be reliable, flexible, cost efficient, and green. Within the frame of this paper, the authors describe the application possibilities of Industry 4.0 technologies in waste collection solutions and the optimization potential in their processes. After a systematic literature review, this paper introduces the waste collection process of downtowns as a cyber-physical system. A mathematical model of this waste collection process is described, which incorporates routing, assignment, and scheduling problems. The objectives of the model are the followings: (1) optimal assignment of waste sources to garbage trucks; (2) scheduling of the waste collection through routing of each garbage truck to minimize the total operation cost, increase reliability while comprehensive environmental indicators that have great impact on public health are to be taken into consideration. Next, a binary bat algorithm is described, whose performance is validated with different benchmark functions. The scenario analysis validates the model and then evaluates its performance to increase the cost-efficiency and warrant environmental awareness of waste collection process.

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As a result of intensive robotisation over the past decade, employees have been constantly experiencing job insecurity, a term which refers to the perceived threat of job loss and the worries related to this threat. Previous studies have supported the detrimental effect of job insecurity on employees; however, the focus on happiness at work is still missing, despite the notion that a happy employee is essentially contributing to sustainable business performance. Trying to narrow the gap, the paper aims at revealing the linkage between job insecurity and happiness at work and its dimensions, namely job satisfaction, affective organisational commitment, and work engagement. Building on the hindrance stressor dimension of the stress model, and conservation of resources and psychological contract theories, the paper claims that a negative relationship exists between the constructs. Quantitative data were collected in a survey of robotised production line operators working in the furniture sector in Lithuania. As predicted, the results revealed that job insecurity had a negative impact on happiness at work as a higher-order construct and all of its dimensions. This finding should be taken seriously by organisations creating a robotised production environment while striving for sustainability.

Virtually all authors have implicitly or explicitly treated the "black box" as a linear causal process consisting of one or more smaller boxes, however the number of boxes in the "black box" and the content of each box differ in each model. Due to various approaches the mechanism by which HRM practices are translated into competitive success is complicated and not well understood till now, however some general trends could be highlighted.Purpose -Theoretically to discuss the causal pathway by identifying mediating variables in HRM and performance link.Paper object is the content of the "black box".Research method. The paper is built on the analysis and synthesis of scientific literature on HRM and performance link. HRM and performance linkAcknowledging the relevance of all types of resources to contribute to excellent performance, researchers emphasize that in the context of globalization human resources are vital to achieve success in the most effective and efficient ways [28]. It is generally accepted that "people are the key assets in the new world market and that all other assets are nothing more than commodities that can be purchased at market prices, because only the human asset has potential to learn, grow, and contribute" [29]. However, there is a continual debate as to what in particular provides value to the organization -human resources or their management [30]: 1) some authors maintain that sustained competitive advantage lies in the human resources and not in HRM practices per se, as the latter are well known; 2) other authors, though, highlight that competitive advantage is created through HRM practises and not human resources, as it does not suffice to hire best people in order to gain the competition; 3) third group of authors suggests a unifying approach to the critical role of both human resources and HRM in the enhancement of sustaining of competitive advantage.

Arguing for the necessity to re-think human resource management (HRM), as human resources are becoming scarce, HRM practices themselves can be even harmful for employees, and the mainstream HRM is more interested not in the employee well-being, but in the search for the link between HRM and performance, the paper introduces sustainable HRM as an alternative approach to people management. Sustainable HRM is seen as a design option, which allows one to maintain, renew and restore human resources. Although previous works have broadened the understanding of the meaning given to sustainable HRM and its core characteristics, research into how sustainable HRM translates into practice is still lacking. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to reveal the practices through which 11 characteristics of sustainable HRM are expressed in real people management in organizations. In doing this, qualitative data were collected from Lithuanian organizations using semi-structured interviews with 19 human resource (HR) managers. The research indicated a variety of applied practices, which differ by maturity. Care of employees, profitability, external partnership, fairness and equality, and employee development were revealed as the characteristics of sustainable HRM most explicitly expressed through HRM practices. Nonetheless, the organizations need more heterogeneous HRM activities, which simultaneously consider the economy, environment, society, and human aspects.

There is a widespread consensus in prior literature that innovative work behaviour is a crucial factor in enabling organisations to adapt to rapid changes, to gain a competitive advantage, and create a sustainable organisation. Despite its importance, knowledge about potential drivers of this behaviour is fragmented and inconsistent. As such, organisations may be restricted in their ability to innovate because they do not know how to induce the employees in a way that will encourage them to explore, generate, champion, and finally implement the ideas. Recently, human resource management (HRM) has been explored among potential drivers, considering it as primary means by which organisations can influence and shape the behaviours of employees. Despite the notion that HRM predicts innovative work behaviour, there is a lack in the literature of insights into the ways the organisations can stimulate behaviour by offering sustainability-focused HRM. Sustainable HRM refers to a new approach to people management with the focus on external business environment (openness), respect for the employee (respect), and balanced interests of employer and employee (continuity). Relying on the notion that organisations are gradually introducing sustainable HRM and trying to close the gap in the literature, the paper is designed to link a new approach to people management with innovative work behaviour. The aim of the paper is an initial assessment of whether sustainable HRM is a driver for innovative work behaviour. Disentangling four dimensions of innovative work behaviour makes it possible to determine whether sustainable HRM can stimulate different behaviour types linked to idea exploration, idea generation, idea championing, and idea implementation. The results of a preparatory survey of 306 employees working in Lithuanian companies showed that respect-oriented HRM and continuity-oriented HRM were positively related to innovative work behaviour and the appropriate dimensions (except for idea exploration in case of continuity-oriented HRM); meanwhile, there was no support for the relationship between openness-oriented HRM and innovative work behaviour. Overall, sustainable HRM was found to be a driver for enhancing innovative work behaviour and its dimensions.