When firms adopt sustainable human resource management: A fuzzy‐set analysis

Abstract

Sustainable human resource management (HRM) is critical to sustainable corporate development. However, there is little systematic research examining the determinants of sustainable HRM adoption. We fill this void by identifying and introducing a configurational approach to examine when firms adopt sustainable HRM. Based on institutional theory, we develop a typology of institutional contexts associated with sustainable HRM adoption. We posit that institutional conditions in configuration facilitate firms' adoption of sustainable HRM. Thus, we hypothesize a primary institutional configuration where institutional support, institutional quality, and institutional infrastructure combine to promote the adoption of sustainable HRM. We further propose alternative types of configurations conducive to the adoption of sustainable HRM by introducing two organizational conditions: strategic leadership support and resource slack. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis on data from 57 cases in China supports our hypotheses. We find that the combination of institutional conditions promotes the adoption of highly sustainable HRM, and the two alternative types provide functional substitutes for the primary type: (a) strategic leadership support substitutes for the combination of institutional support and institutional infrastructure, and (b) resource slack substitutes for institutional infrastructure. We build an institutional configurational model to advance a holistic understanding of the theoretical drivers of sustainable HRM, contributing to the research on sustainable HRM, institutional theory, leadership, and resource slack.

Advancing the sustainability agenda through strategic human resource management: Insights and suggestions for future research

“…Potential boundary conditions (e.g., person‐supervisor fit, person‐group fit) were also considered. Jia et al (2023) provide a good example of applying a configurational perspective to investigate the determinants of sustainable HRM adoption. Integrating institutional theory, leadership, and resource slack, they developed an institutional configurational model that advances the understanding of the theoretical drivers of sustainable HRM.…”

“…To cope with causal complexity, the configurational approach suggests that multiple, but equally effective, solutions can coexist, through which firms can seek to achieve reconciliation between competing logics. The article by Jia et al (2023), published in this special issue, provides a good example of how a configurational approach that combines institutional configuration factors (i.e., institutional support, institutional quality, and institutional infrastructure) and organizational factors (i.e., strategic leadership and resource slack) can shed light on the way sustainable HRM is configured in firms in China.…”

Greening China’s digital economy: exploring the contribution of the East–West Computing Resources Transmission Project to CO2 reduction

“…Step 1: Calibration: Following prior literature (Howell et al 2022;Jia et al 2023), we employed the direct calibration method to transform the continuous quantitative data to fuzzy-set memberships based on three qualitative thresholds: "fully in" (i.e., more than the 75th percentile), "crossover point" (i.e., the 50th percentile), and "fully out" (i.e., less than the 25th percentile). For example, we coded a data center cluster with green investment in the upper quartile (the biggest scale) of all cases as "fully in" the set of high green investment.…”

Sustainable Human Resource Management, Green Human Resource Management, and Environmental Human Resource Management: Analysis of New and Emerging Terms Related to the Human Resource Area

“…Among other factors, greater environmental awareness, incorporating the concept of corporate social responsibility, and the Triple Bottom Line approach (TBL) pressured organisations to review their values, objectives, strategies, policies, and procedures. Such changes had repercussions in the human resources area, which also had to adapt to new demands to contribute to making organisations more sustainable (Westerman et al, 2020;Espuny et al, 2022;Rocha et al, 2022;Jia et al, 2023). In addition to Sustainable Human Resource Management (S-HRM), the literature presents other related terms, such as Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) and Environmental Human Resource Management (Environmental HRM).…”