Greening Human Resources for Elevating Value Creation in Organizations

1. Introduction

Globally, climate change is currently regarded as among the most challenging concerns of the twenty-first century (Shah et al., 2021). Because of this, businesses are now being thoroughly scrutinized for the effects of their activities on the environment (Chaudhary, 2021). Additionally, from a green marketing perspective, environmental issues have developed into a crucial selling element that can satisfy customers' desires in this regard (Freitas et al., 2020). Given this, it is obvious that creating or integrating suitable and fair green policies can be vital to helping contemporary businesses achieve improved environmental performance and to reinforce an organization's commitment to its corporate social responsibilities, acting as an industry standard for improving an organization's efficiency (Shah et al., 2021).

In this context, Green HRM policies, principles, or practices can be implemented to support both the adoption of a sustainable vision and the establishment of an eco-friendly workplace that promotes the responsible and effective use of corporate resources. The most frequently discussed form of sustainable HRM is Green HRM, which is sustainable HRM geared toward environmental sustainability (Piwowar-Sulej, 2021). Furthermore, although research into Green HRM has advanced over the past five years, it is still an emerging topic with a large body of unanswered questions (Tandon et al., 2023). For instance, there is little research that examines the correlation between the utilization of Green HRM practices and the attainment of sustainable environmental performance (Bajpai et al., 2022). More precisely, the potential for Green HRM to enhance staff productivity and create a competitive edge is still untapped (Khan et al., 2022). Considering this remaining gap, the following research questions will be used to discuss the value of developing Green HRM and its potential for performance growth:

• RQ1: What factors have prompted the development of Green HRM as a strategy for implementing sustainable business models?

• RQ2: How can Green HRM practices impact value creation and organizational effectiveness?

• RQ3: Which HRM-related challenges need to be addressed to achieve a firm’s sustainable development?

Similar to Chowdhury et al. (2023), an extensive systematic study was undertaken to find any relationships that seemed to be meaningful between Green HRM systems and a firm's sustainable performance. Additionally, a multistakeholder perspective was applied to highlight the benefits of implementing Green HRM practices for the firms in terms of their efficacy and value creation on the economic, social, and environmental fronts. In the aforementioned field of knowledge, where researchers have generally concentrated on describing a single dimension as an outcome measure, this approach, according to Nisar et al. (2023), provides a theoretical contribution. Consequently, this study adds to the limited body of academic research on sustainable HRM, which is lacking in understanding its effects (Chaudhary, 2021). What is more, in response to the research call made by Tandon et al. (2023), this study makes an effort to pinpoint the causes of and hindrances to the adoption of these green practices. As a result, it significantly contributes to the body of knowledge on Green HRM by demonstrating how to encourage employee participation in an organization's environmental program.

Finally, this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a literature review of Green HRM and how this one is embedded inside the group of Sustainable HRM strategies. Section 3 will present the methodology, followed by the analysis of the results in section 4. Finally, section 5 will present the discussion and conclusions obtained.