Promoting Employee's Proenvironmental Behavior Through Green Human Resource

Management Practices

Summary:
Incorporation of environmental wellbeing with day to day human resource practices is an
important contemporary HR challenge. To create a position as an environment friendly
organization, an organization must engage its employees in corporate greening. The
responsibility of such engagement of employees in proenvironmental initiatives goes to the
HR professionals of the organization. Additionally, implementation of those initiatives also
depends on human resource management, because human resource management has the
ability to influence employee's proenvironmental behavior (willingness to engage in
environment friendly activities) through green HRM Practices (HRM activities which
enhance positive environmental outcomes). Though previous studies acknowledged the
significance of green HRM practices, there are very few studies that investigated how green
HRM practices can increase employees' proenvironmental behaviors. Therefore, this study
aims to fill these knowledge gaps by investigating the effect of various green HRM practices
on employees' proenvironmental behaviors.

Theoretical backgrounds of this study are supported by the concepts of different green HRM
practices; such as green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green
performance management and appraisal, green reward and compensation, and green
empowerment. As this study seeks association between the effects of green HRM practices
on proenvironmental behaviors among employees, proposes the first hypothesis of the study-
Hypothesis 1: Green HRM practices are positively related to employee proenvironmental
behavior.
Different circumstantial aspects affect proenvironmental behavior of employees. In this case,
proenvironmental psychological climate (employee's perceptions of organization's policies
and practices about environmental performance) is one of them. Therefore, the study
proposes-Hypothesis 2: Green HRM practices indirectly influence employee's
proenvironmental behavior through the mediation of proenvironmental psychological
climate.
The study considers employee’s environmental knowledge (knowledge and awareness about
environmental issues and solutions) as the moderating effect in the relation and proposes-
Hypothesis 3: Environmental knowledge moderates the effect of Green HRM practices on
employee's proenvironmental behavior.
Interview method was applied to collect the data from the managers and the questionnaires
method was applied to collect the data from general employees and supervisors. Total 456
employees and 347 supervisors were selected from diverse industry sectors (coal generating,
power industry, food, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries) in Pakistan. There were
36.2% managers and 64.8% employees of total sample size. After making necessary changes,
different items of measurement scale were adopted from previous scholars to measure the
variables. Five‐point Likert scales were used to measure the constructs.

All the developed constructs were validated and significant in confirmatory factor analysis.
Reliability score and average variance were also satisfactory. Correlation analysis shows that
green HRM practices correlated positively with proenvironmental behavior and
proenvironmental psychological climate. Proenvironmental psychological climate is also
positively and significantly correlated with proenvironmental behavior. In hypothesis testing,
the results of the study supported all the hypotheses.

Therefore, the study reveals that green HRM practices are positively related to employees'
proenvironmental behaviors. Further, proenvironmental psychological climate mediates the
relationship between green HRM practices and proenvironmental behavior. Finally, it also
shows that environmental knowledge moderates the relationship between green HRM
practices and proenvironmental behavior.

This study makes several theoretical contributions by investigating the catalysts of

employees' intentions to participate in green practices and by relating the issues like
proenvironmental psychological climate, environmental knowledge and awareness with
HRM and environmental sustainability. Indication of long-term growth and hints of
integration of green HRM practices in job description and job design are the managerial
implications of this study. To explain the effects of green HRM practices on
proenvironmental behaviors, future studies investigate other factors as mediators (e.g., green
commitment, job satisfaction, and green lifestyle) and moderators (e.g., environmental
consciousness and green self‐efficacy).