Promoting Environmental Performance Through Green Human Resource Management

Practices in Higher Education Institutions: A Moderated Mediation Model

Summary:
This study makes a threefold investigation to study the relationship among different
variables, namely: Green HRM practices, environmental performance, environmental passion
and individual green values. Doing business in a way that ensures the wellbeing of the
environment is mostly the idea of environmental performance. Green HRM can be defined as
the HRM practices of an organization that generates positive environmental outcomes.
Environmental passion refers to the positive emotion of a person regarding environmental
performance. Individual's green attitude and behavior comprise individual's green values. In
past literature, minimal effort has been made to study the influence of HRM on
environmental performance. Influence of an individual's passion for environmental‐related
outcomes has not also been investigated. Moreover, previous studies have ignored ethics‐
related moderators (e.g. Individual Green Values). Thus, this study aims to fill the gap by
examining the influence of green human resource management (HRM) practices on
environmental performance.

The theoretical base of this study is mainly on organizational citizenship behavior for the
environment (OCBE) and supplies‐values fit theory (SVFT). As the study argues that green
HRM practices have a significant impact on environmental performance. Therefore, proposes
Hypothesis 1: Green HRM practices will relate positively to environmental performance.
The study also argues that green HRM practices induce environmental passion. Thus,
proposes Hypothesis 2: Green HRM practices will relate positively to environmental
passion. Based on the beliefs that employees will feel pride, happiness and a sense of
accomplishment when contributing toward the environmental performance of the
organization, the study proposes Hypothesis 3: Environmental passion will mediate the link
between green HRM practices and environmental performance. Considering high individual
green values, the study proposes Hypothesis 4: Individual green values will moderate the
strength of the mediated relationship between green HRM practices and environmental
performance such that the impact will be stronger when the individual rates highly on green
values.

In data collection, a self‐administered survey has been conducted on 300 employees in the
context of the higher education sector (Public and Private) in Pakistan. The final usable
sample size was 214. Variables are measured by using different scales developed by previous
scholars after making slight changes. Five‐point Likert scales were used for all constructs.

The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the structure of the
relationship between the variables. Correlation analysis shows that green HRM practice is
positively correlated with environmental performance (r = .489**). Environmental passion
relates positively to environmental performance (r = .390**). Further, it has shown that
individual green value relates positively to environmental performance (r = .495**). In the
hypothesis testing, the results supported all the four hypotheses.

The study reveals that green HRM practices significantly enhance environmental
performance and green HRM practices positively relate to employees' environmental passion.
Furthermore, it has also seen that environmental passion partially mediates the association
between green HRM practices and environmental performance. Finally, it is also proved that
the influence of green HRM practices on environmental performance is statistically more
significant via environmental passion for employees with high individual green values than
employees with lower green values.

This study has made unique theoretical contributions by linking green HRM practices to
environmental performance under the framework of OCBE and by testing the moderation of
individual green value under the framework of SVFT. In response to the concerns of key
stakeholders on environmental issues this study contains some managerial implications as
well. For establishing the generalizability of the findings, future research can be done in
diverse industry contexts in different countries.