The road to more sustainable firms in the face of a pandemic: Changes needed in employment relationships

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we operate at work. Dealing with these changes may require new ways of thinking about our models of employment relationships, to create more sustainable organizations during troubled times. Sustainability can be understood as an attempt to strike a balance between the economic, social and environmental goals of companies—a balance that could drive a global recovery from the pandemic crisis. This essay focuses on the employer’s perspective and considers how firms can use different employment models to improve sustainability during the crisis. We propose two alternative employment models which we label “Oversustainability” and “Mutual Sustainability” that depend on the choice of the firm’s competitive strategy (proactive/innovative vs analyzer/following). We considered the contributions expected from employees and the inducements they were offered under each model. We believe these employment models can be advantageous for companies seeking to adopt proactive and analyzer-type sustainability strategies. JEL CLASSIFICATION M1

Green transformational leadership and green creativity? The mediating role of green thinking and green organizational identity in SMEs

“…Stakeholders and academics have urged organizations to develop policies that will achieve social, economic, and environmental goals. The concept of sustainability follows Lopez-Cabrales and DeNisi ( 2021 ), and can be defined as “an attempt to strike a balance between the economic, social, and environmental goals of companies,” and contextualize green leadership as a dimension of sustainability, while earlier green business models focused mostly on enhancing environmental process performance and asset utilization. However, newer models concentrate on growth planning, manufacturing methods, and pre- and post-design implications, resulting in enhanced long-term viability (Begum et al, 2022 ).…”

Turnaround and human resource strategies during the COVID-19 crisis

“…Examples of responsible restructuring in non-core areas include: employees’ early retirement packages; offering outplacement services and layoff notices in advance; transparent layoff criteria; and selective voluntary resignation plans with severance packages ( Cascio, 2002 ; Zatzick et al, 2009 ). Responsible HR practices are needed, especially considering that high pay can lead to high employee productivity ( Lopez-Cabrales & DeNisi, 2021 ; Rahmandad & Ton, 2020 ).…”

“…These aspects will help to further comprehend this complex antecedents-turnaround-HR-institutional pressures relationship, in line with Santana et al’s (2017) recommendations. Indeed, identifying the emotional tone and temporal focus of management, employees, and stakeholders in the company turnaround and HR strategies and practices will increase the chances of successfully overcoming the crisis ( Lopez-Cabrales & DeNisi, 2021 ). Social support plays an important role, especially during the current pandemic ( Bhumika, 2020 ; Madero Gómez et al, 2020 ).…”

The impact of employment relationships on firm sustainability

“…First, quasi-spot contract relations differ from underinvestment relations in their perception of fairness or balance between inducements and expectations. Underinvestment is clearly a situation of abuse by the company, whereas quasi-spot contract is a balanced transactional relationship (Lopez-Cabrales and DeNisi, 2021). Mutual investment and overinvestment relations are also different from each other, since, through the former, the organisation invests high inducements in those workers who contribute more due to their high performance and commitment.…”

“…This change in the strategic orientation of companies is affecting the human resource management of organisations, setting new ERs, which must be consistent with the new business scenarios and contexts (Lopez-Cabrales and Valle-Cabrera, 2020). Therefore, the main objective of this work was to analyse the extent to which ERs favour the sustainability of organisations (Lopez-Cabrales and DeNisi, 2021). It is worth highlighting that research on sustainability and sustainable development has become a topic of interest in the scope of economics and business since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (ONU), whose main objective was to create an agenda to face the new challenges of society and advance toward an economic, social and environmental development.…”