EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP OF GREEN HRM, EMS AND CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR

Suhaimi Sudin¹*, Zuliawati Mohamed Saad^2
1Mr., Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia, ssuhaimi@uniten.edu.my
²Ms., Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia, zuliawati@uniten.edu.my
*Corresponding author

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners believe that green management is the future of business or at least a competitive advantage in this fierce competition of business. Firms need to be competent in managing business while maintaining sustainable environment for the future generation and convincingly demonstrate corporate environmental citizenship behaviour (CECB) to show that they are able and capable in managing the green environment.  On the other hand, Human Resource Management (HRM) scholars argue that crafting and executing green management strategies required high level of knowledge, skills and competencies among the employees of the firm. Subsequently, CECB can only be part of the firm’s culture if the employees have the right knowledge, skills and competencies of green management embedded systematically in the corporate culture. Therefore, they argued that CECB as a result of painstakingly crafted and executed green management strategies required methodical HRM strategy, systems and practices. This new thinking of Green HRM, as termed by scholars in this area, which refer to the integrated HRM strategy, systems and practices that lead to the practice of effective green management and subsequently the demonstration of CECB by the firm, is a new field of study that need attention for further research. Many scholars argued that Green HRM will influence the practice of green management such as Environmental Management System (EMS) and practice of CECB. Integrated practice of HRM which consists of recruitment and selection of potential employees, training and development of employees in the light of green management practices, managing employees’ performance that congruent with green management performance and rewarding them accordingly, as well as get them involved in planning and implementation of the green management initiatives are proposed in the literature to be significantly influence the effective implementation of EMS and the demonstration of CECB. These propositions have been widely debated in the literature but seldom tested using empirical data from the industry. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between Green HRM, EMS and CECB. The study proposed that Green HRM is significantly related to EMS and CECB. We also explore whether EMS mediated the relationship between Green HRM and CECB. Based on the literature review, the study developed a researchable framework of these relationships and tests the relationship using data collected from the Electric and Electronics (E&E) industry in Malaysia. We conducted this study in three stages; firstly we explored the literature to develop the constructs of Green HRM, EMS and CECB. Secondly, using focus group interview we further explored the constructs and subsequently developed questions for empirical data collections. Finally, we collected empirical data from the E&E industry using questionnaire developed to test the proposed framework. From the data analysis, this study found that Green HRM is significantly related to EMS as well as CECB. It is also found that there is not enough evident to show mediating effect of EMS in this relationship. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding of how Green HRM influence the practice of green management and how its influence the demonstration of CECB by the firms. Based on findings, researchers in this area could further explore how individual HRM practices influence to the green management initiatives and CECB. Practitioners in this area could also use the findings from the study to effectively use HRM practices that significantly influence the practice of green management initiatives and CECB. Researchers could also replicate the same study using data collected from different industry or countries to get better insight of the viewpoint.

Keywords: Green HRM, Corporate environmental citizenship behaviour, Environmental management system