Green Human Resource Management and Employee Environmental Behaviour

Abstract

As organizations face mounting stakeholder pressure to demonstrate environmental responsibility, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) has emerged as a critical mechanism for embedding sustainability into everyday workplace practice. GHRM aligns recruitment, training, performance management, reward systems, and employee involvement with environmental objectives, but the pathways through which these practices translate into actual employee environmental behaviour remain incompletely specified within Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (OBHRM) theory. This paper develops and empirically tests a conceptual architecture in which GHRM practice bundles shape employee environmental behaviour through psychological mechanisms — green psychological climate, environmental knowledge, and green self-efficacy — grounded in Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) theory and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory. Using a cross-sectional survey of 268 employees across manufacturing, hospitality, and energy-sector organizations with formalized GHRM programs, complemented by 12 semi-structured interviews, the study finds that green psychological climate is the strongest correlate of employee environmental behaviour (r = +0.57), followed by green involvement and empowerment
(r = +0.49) and green training and development (r = +0.46). Green recruitment and selection showed the weakest, though still significant, association. Organizational green culture and green transformational leadership significantly moderate the climate-behaviour relationship. The paper contributes an integrative, empirically grounded model linking GHRM practice bundles to both task-related and proactive employee green behaviour, with direct implications for HR practitioners designing sustainability-oriented people strategies.