Translating stakeholder pressures into environmental performance – the mediating role of green HRM practices

Abstract

This paper contributes to extant research on green Human Resource Management (HRM) relying on the instrumental value of stakeholder theory, which implies that stakeholders impact on company decisions and their development of organizational resources and performance. Following that theory, the study conceives green HRM practices as a set of management processes that companies implement for responding to stakeholder pressures on environmental issues. Accordingly with those premises, we empirically test the distinct role that different green HRM practices (i.e., green hiring, green training and involvement, and green performance management and compensation) play in mediating the relation between pressures on environmental issues from two specific external stakeholders (i.e., customers and regulatory stakeholders) and environmental performance. Our findings, based on a multirespondent survey in which the respondents were Human Resource Managers and Supply Chain Managers operating in Italy, confirm the hypothesized mediation model. Our results (as well as their implications) are discussed in light of the recent calls to broaden the scope of HRM research, considering the embeddedness of the company in a socio-political context and exploring the role that actors and factors outside the company play in shaping its green HRM practices.

Green human resource management practices: scale development and validity

“…It has been suggested that individuals are attracted by an organization's green image in the process of GRS (Behrend, Baker and Thompson 2009). Companies with an environmental orientation are more likely to hire applicants possessing environmental knowledge and motivation (Guerci, Longoni and Luzzini 2016;Jabbour, Santos and Nagano 2008). Job-seekers also consider an organization's environmental performance as a standard of employee treatment, and they may feel pride in working for an organization with a good green reputation (Willness and Jones 2013).…”

Sustainable development and human resource management: A science mapping approach

“…With regard to empirical analysis of the sustainable HRM perspective, numerous qualitative (Guerci & Carollo, ; Haddock‐Millar, Sanyal, & Müller‐Camen, ) and quantitative studies (Diaz‐Carrion, López‐Fernández, & Romero‐Fernandez, ; Guerci, Longoni, & Luzzini, ; Saeed et al, ; Tang, Chen, Jiang, Paillé, & Jia, ) have been undertaken. Nevertheless, the field is somewhat fragmented, and given the growing sustainability concerns in the HRM literature, the following bibliometric analysis seeks to offer a “state‐of‐the‐art” snapshot of the field to gain a better understanding of its evolution and identify future research paths.…”

Corporate boards and environmental offence conviction: evidence from the United Kingdom

“…McIIkenny (2014) on Canada and Guerci, Longoni & Luzzini (2015) on Italy. A study based on a different environment such as the UK will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and environmental performance since the relationship may differ from one country to the other due to the legal and cultural differences.…”