Abstract

The growing concerns over the environment and the depletion of the earth’s natural resources have led to the creation of green initiatives in many countries and have also been the major contributor to the changes in practices of major companies around the world. Literature has already affirmed the benefits and competitiveness that companies have placed on their human resources. However, not much has been researched about the environmental friendliness created through green resource management practices. China is a major country with some of the largest carbon emissions in the world that has inspired actions that would lead towards preserving the environment. The study looks through the works of Shen, Dumont, and Deng (2019), who wrote a journal on “Green human resource management in Chinese enterprise that Routledge first published in 2020.

Through reviewing the journal, we hope to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of green human resource management (GHRM). We also hope to create an understanding of how this might help increase the company’s overall competitive advanced in the current changing business environment. The study hopes to sensitize stakeholders on the importance of the concepts of HR towards the protection of the environment alongside the devotement in the growth of the company. The relevant conceptual model was tested using cross-sectional data collected from businesses in China. The results indicated that employee life cycle, education and training, employee empowerment, and manager involvement all positively impact learners’ in- and extra-role green behavior. In contrast, reward systems only have a positive effect on extra-role green behavior and attitude.

Keywords: Green HRM, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental Management, employee recruitment, organizations behavior.

Introduction

Green Human Resources Management (GHRM) is defined as a collection of policies and procedures that encourage companies to embrace environmentally conscious, energy, and socially beneficial behaviors to build an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, and socially responsible establishment. Many companies have also started employing green CSR policies, which may be defined as the environmental component of CSR – the need to consider the ecological benefits of the company’s activities and thus minimize behaviors that could jeopardize future generations from enjoying the enjoyment of the natural resources the country. This is not only towards benefiting the environment but also works towards building the organization’s corporate image (Alam & Islam, 2021).

Most global governments’ growing concern for the environment was one of the motivating factors for most scholarly work (Ahmad, 2015). There has been increasing waste emission from companies around the world, and China is one of the major emitters for chemical emissions from factories and industries. The depletion of natural resources degradation of the environment has become a growing global issue among most governments worldwide, which has caused the establishment and enforcement of countermeasure policies to companies to reduce the diverse effect they have on the environment (Zhu et al., 2021). This has resulted in organizations scrambling to find cost-effective environmental strategies that can be implemented with the minimal financial outlay and organizational disruption.

Although going green is a cost-prohibiting endeavor for most companies, some have started seeing the competitive advantage obtained from this approach. Businesses with a strategic mindset have recognized that they cannot continue to prioritize profits above the environment. This is because research has uncovered that 55% of people worldwide have become passionate about conserving the environment that they have begun paying more for products and services that would work towards this objective (Marylhurst University, 2017). While many companies have established some form of a sustainability program in their activities, many still don’t put a much deeper consideration into the company’s sustainability action can act towards promoting the model of the business, in turn raising the company’s competitive advantage (Escaler, 2020).

Background Information.

Although green human resource management provides companies a new and unorthodox way to attaining these green objectives, the specifics of how, why, and if this is likely to occur were unknown. China’s contribution to the global corporatization and consumerism explosion over the last two decades has been astounding. Unfortunately, extraordinary corporate and personal income development has resulted in greater consumeris