Because of the growing global environmental deprivation confronting current and future generations, there is a stronger focus on environmental sustainability and sustainable development growth (SDG) over the last decade [
12,
13,
14]. Indeed, the world was identified as the most critical market concern of the 1990s [
15]. Since then, it has spawned the idea of “Go Green,” which is a worldwide buzzword among academics, the financial and environmental, and the public because of disturbing climate change and global warming [
10,
16,
17,
18,
19]. This can be seen in the case of industries and other financial institutions where environmental issues affect living beings, such as global warming, acid rain, air and water pollution, ozone layer depletion, and climate change, and these are addressed through voluntary codes of conduct, including the United Nations Environment Programme-Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI), the Equator Principles for Project Finance, and others [
20].
Environmental issues are perceived to be a very significant selling aspect that has led to the green marketing idea, which focuses on designing marketing campaigns that fulfill consumers’ environmental wishes. Like conventional marketing, greening is related to the concept of social marketing by identifying green practices and perceptions that could be used to develop green ideas and goods for encouraging the inclusion of fiscal, social, and environmental considerations in the implementation of values. Green initiatives may be considered a socially conscious policy that reaffirms an organization’s dedication to its corporate social obligations and acts as a benchmark to improve the efficiency of an enterprise. For most sectors worldwide, this is often deemed as an obstacle to incorporate adequate and acceptable green policies essential for modern enterprises. It is necessary to remember the environmental commitment to companies that is becoming an important consideration for consumers to support their decisions.
Environmental performance evaluation (EPE) is a process developed by the International Standard Organization (ISO) to assist management in understanding and making decisions about an organization’s environmental performance by data collection and analysis and obtaining evaluation-based information on environmental performance. This study aims to provide the readers with basic understandings of green HRM, multiple valuable works on green HRM by others, and an improved range of green activities that can be used to build a healthy green workplace. The following are several attempts to suggest such HR environmental policies: to study the impact of green HRM practices on organizations’ environmental performance, mediating through the green climate and moderated through green organizational culture. Green HRM practices play a significant role in industry to boost environment-related issues. Organizations have enough chances of growth by being green and making a new responsive environment, which helps in substantial operational savings by decreasing their carbon impression.
By adopting green practices, firms can considerably reduce service costs by using energy-efficient, low-waste technologies. Green HRM can create a culture of concern for the well-being and health of our fellow employees.
Green HRM can improve the environment by recycling waste material, which makes the environment clean and sustainable. A sustainable environment enhances the air quality and ensures the health of the public. This study investigates the organization’s green HRM practices and finds ways to implement them to maintain the environment and improve business performance.
By adopting green practices, the environmental performance becomes sustainable, which helps the organization to achieve competitive advantages. A sustainable environment also makes society green, which makes sure the health safety of an individual. Green HRM practices in an organization and society ensure the sustainability of the domain.
2.1. Green Human Resource Management and Environmental Performance
The concept of green management was initiated as a part of business strategy during the 1990s [
21]. However, in the 2000s, it began to gain power. In essence, Wehrmeyer and Parker (1996) coined the term green HRM as the organized and intended integration of traditional HRM activities with the organization’s environmental priorities [
22]. Moreover, [
23] stressed the dire need to create correlations between human resource practices and sustainable development. In this context, a modern concept of economic growth is discussed that aims to promote politically, ecologically, and socially sustainable development through trade and foreign policy, financial and fiscal policies, agricultural, and industrial policies [
24]. The literature on the degree to which HRM is green is frequently analyzed on a spectrum of traditional HR practices: employment research, recruiting and placement, induction, preparation, assessment of results, and awards [
24].
Designing and implementation of new roles and positions to concentrate exclusively on environmental aspects of organizations can be referred to as reen work design [
25]. It includes combining various roles, duties, and obligations in each work relevant to environmental protection. In other terms, the addition of environmental factors into the work definition and, at the same time, the integration of green competence in job specification is an intriguing part of green job-research [
25].
Many businesses have already begun to adopt sustainability practices for environmental protection and each work description has started to directly provide at least one ecological maintenance requirement and even ecological concern [
24]. The green recruiting and selection process is based on environmentally friendly methods for recruitment such as internet resources and reduced paper use during the recruitment phase, and the use of green attitudes at selection [
26]. The green skills of individuals are essential to environmental success [
27]. Therefore, it is worth remembering individuals who value sustainability practices and adopt simple ecological activities such as recycling, carpooling, and energy saving. On the other side, even applicants who respect ethical commitments will be drawn to environmentally friendly and “green employer” organizations [
22]
Furthermore, [
25] notes that green induction entails familiarizing new hires with the organization’s greening activities and empowering them to show green interpersonal citizenship. New workers must have a genuine understanding and strategy for their organizational environmental culture [
28]. Organizations can take two approaches to this, i.e., general green induction and green work induction [
29]. Under general green leadership, companies provide prospective members with basic knowledge on strategies and procedures on environmental sustainability. New hires are focused on sustainability projects unique to their work during specific eco induction. Today, all these tactics in companies prove their merit.
Environmental consciousness should be considered a precondition for achieving triumphant environmental success by corporate workers at all levels. Therefore, environmental education is essential to improve the mindset and actions of the organizational participants [
29]. The focus was placed on providing such instruction for workers who would promote conservation and waste management practices. Training workers to generate green workspace research and energy conservation, execute rotations to prepare green management for the future, and improve green personal abilities may be regarded as valuable green training and growth strategies.
The green performance assessment is a performance assessment based on green standards that has a different aspect to the success in greening the performance feedback interview [
30]. Such green activity will show its merit since once an action is assessed to evaluate a person, its perceived value increases, and efforts are made to adhere. Thus, using green measures in the performance assessment scheme will speed up employee adoption [
17]. Moreover, [
31] have welcomed the inclusion of environmental sustainability priorities in the performance assessment scheme, as it guarantees that workers’ progress is regularly provided with reviews.
This involves the adaption of programs to reward the development of renewable skills, the usage of monetary and non-monetary environmental incentives (such as benefits, cash premiums, sabbaticals, gifts), and connectint green pay and reward systems to the green system activities [
5]. It must be emphasized that green habits are rewarded in the workplace, and carbon footprints are reduced. This can be seen as a possible instrument for promoting organizational environmental practices.
Green empowerment: encouraging corporate employees to make environmental choices and encourage them to take accountability for their actions that lead to cost appreciation, a sense of identity, and improved ecological efficiency. Such green behavior strengthens employees’ commitment to sustainability programs and their happiness after achieving their environmental targets.
People and their harmful activities have affected the world and the company [
4,
32]. Green human resources management functions can build an environmentally sustainable ecosystem for companies. The HR professionals and the cooperation of workers are responsible for protecting the environment [
33]. Different activities in HRM may be used to render it environmentally friendly. So, according to Cherian and Jacob (2012), the organization will achieve good results if it integrates human resources activities with environmental policies. Furthermore, [
31] indicated that if companies do not include their workers in ecological activity, they will affect their ecological success. However, [
34] noted later that many companies now rely very actively on protecting their community by their workers.
Green recruiting and selection are regarded as the strongest HRM methods in presenting applicants with the green HRM plan. One of the challenges facing HR people these days is to recruit and attract skilled people. Many organizations are still struggling to maintain their climate. It might help us get candidates who take the climate and sustainability seriously. This would help companies hit their environmental sustainability goal. Moreover, [
34] green training and advancement are often deemed an essential human resources strategy for organizational success in environmental performance. Environmental training is considered an essential method for developing human resources [
33,
35]. This type of training can create an employee ethos, such that green sustainable policies, including waste reduction and a pro-active attitude to the environment, are developed. According to the [
31] training curriculum, such activities as environmental protection techniques, energy conservation, safety recycling, and waste management may be used.
Green HRM practices can encourage people to engage in environmentally friendly behavior [
36]. The relationship between green HRM practices, such as green employment, green recruitment, green choice, green education, and green rewards, and the positive environmental performance is up to date by many scholars [
37]. With the help of green practices, organizations can achieve sustainability and competitive advantages. The essential elements of green HRM are sustainability and environmental activities, but a lack of resources in previous studies [
37].
Business organizations showcase themselves as natural conservatives in a range to pull incredibly savvy experts with excellent green information, adopting green practices and maintainability issues (Rawashdeh and Karim Al-Adwan, 2012). (Cherian and Jacob, 2012) pointed out that organizations focused on greening human resource purposes may be more efficient and generate positive outcomes. Conversely, companies not associated with employees who engage in green activities may be less efficient in ecological performance. Furthermore, [
31] suggested that ecological enterprises should focus on fascinating and selecting applicants with knowledge of the environment.
According to the author of [
38], the impact of HRM practices on business execution can be seen in two ways. The central approach is a methodology guide that considers the effect of a series of standard HRM activities on the success of an organization. The second strategy offers unique insight by exploring the impact of such HRM operations on the company’s execution. Since environmental efficiency drives business success, businesses in different industries use strategic ecological improvement practices to achieve a competitive edge [
39].
The economic and ecological success is highly dependent on its management policy [
1]. Changes to the organization’s environmental performance policy, facilities, and staff responses to it are often part of the procedure. A significant boundary state is a transition and organizations address environmental concerns such as energy and water conservation through employee behavior improvement, greenhouse gas pollution reduction, increased recycling efforts, and increased usage of public transportation.
Employee involvement in environmental management initiatives is essential, and they are most involved in partnering with companies concerned about environmental concerns [
40]. Using acceptable HRM procedures at all levels of the organizational phase, a review of companies with ISO 14001 qualification and their findings shows that organizations with high worker motivation have improved environmental efficiency.
Some considerations are critical when implementing green HRM activities, such as selecting applicants with a solid experienced environmental understanding and providing staff with regular environmental training [
30].
The efficiency of the organizational climate can be explained as activities that have a positive environmental effect. Organizations must carry out practical ecological programs to do this [
41]. Both pieces of research indicated the diverse GHRM practices that have a favorable and essential effect on organizational environmental practices. This would also give the rivals a competitive edge. After the discussion mentioned below, hypotheses are developed:
H1: GHRM has a positive and considerable impact on GPC.
H2: GOC is positively influenced by GHRM.
2.1.1. Green Psychological Climate
The green climate was identified as the climate for businesses that achieve sustainability objectives by implementing environmentally-friendly policies [
42]. A green psychological environment is thus a consciousness of individual green policies, processes, and practices that represent the organization’s green values [
5]. If the organization prepares a robust environmental policy, it signals the integrity of its employees at the core of the enterprise [
33]. Through following green HRM policies, companies deliver messages to workers on their environmental concerns above and beyond merely economic incentives to include employees in green decisions and activities [
31].
There is an association between the understanding of corporate policy and the productive green actions of employees through the green psychology of a corporate world (Norton et al., 2014). Employees cannot invest in the working climate as they are not directly liable for energy expenses and supplies [
42]. It is, therefore, necessary to explain the green duty of the company. Regarding the proper conception and evaluation of jobs; adequate green award helps articulate green workplace responsibility, fosters employee understanding of green benefit, and encourages employee interest in green business. Green psychological climates mediate the connection between green HRM and environmental success in the current study.
H3: GPC has a positive impact on SEF.
H4: GPC positively mediates between the GHRM and P and SEF.
2.1.2. Green Organizational Culture
The culture of an organization is supposed as “green” if the employees of the organization think and act outside the profit-seeking purposes to maximize the optimistic impact of organizational operations while at the same time reducing destructive operational events on the natural environment [
43]. Organizations with a green culture tend to measure and change several policies to solve problems associated with the environment. Such an organization takes steps to integrate policies for environmental development in the organizational mission and vision (Afum, Agyabeng-Mensah, and Owusu, 2020). Having a committed green culture applies pressure and prompts manufacturers to stay faithful to corporate values.
As stated by [
41], an organization desires to increase environmental performance which emphasizes the top management and takes a sensible struggle to invest in other organizational members concerning ecological initiatives. Such organizations integrate green practices into their mission statements to place corporate members and grow personnel skillful at solving environmental issues to achieve better quality environmental performance [
44].
One of the main reasons for accepting a green culture policy is to confirm that the idea of environmental sustainability fills the thinking of all organizational employees. As organizations accept a green culture based on a persuasive strategy, where all corporate employees are fully involved, environmental performance will likely improve. Therefore, the current study will investigate the environmental performance of green HRM practices by moderating the role of green organizational culture.
Previous research has shown that a green culture will benefit the workers of companies where they work, thereby influencing the association between green HRM and environmental change. To better explain the partnership, the present research examines green HRM activities utilizing ecological efficiency as an intervening element in the presence of a green organizational culture.
The sustainability program must be recognized as a company-wide goal that includes all aspects of business activity [
45]. The corporate culture improves sustainability and gains competitive advantages. Specifically, organizational culture development embraces the sustainability issues that are a vital source of sustainable competitive advantage.
The definition of corporate culture also appeared in green literature. Green corporate culture is a collection of principles, icons, assumptions, and organizations, representing the commitment or willingness to be an environmentally sustainable organization. Organizational culture is characterized as “a set of common mental assumptions that direct the action and perception of an organization by identifying appropriate behavior for various circumstances [
46]. Symbolism for environmental conservation and security inside a green society forms the attitudes and activities of association participants.
Many authors argued that green organizations must make drastic behavioral changes to address environmental problems. Greening aims to increase the quality of non-renewable and renewable resource use, minimize emissions, and modify organizations and procedures that perform operations in a reasonable way concerning the environment [
47].
Businesses choose to follow a green culture approach as management respect and express concern in protecting the environment [
48]. OGC is essential in helping businesses turn their renewable success approach into a green one. Management issues in industrial enterprises facing environmental constraints compromise two competing objectives. Through selecting the optimum level of green performance and competitive advantage, profits may be reduced and green performance to increase benefit [
49]. Companies without green culture can need limited capital to invest in a green strategy. These services may be allocated to critical corporate needs rather than environmental regulations by its management.
H5: GOC has a positive impact on SEF.
H6: GOC positively mediates between the GHRM and P and SEF.