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Einblick in eine Lernzone im LC Gebäude

What's Green HRM about

What's Green HRM about?

Green Human Resource Management (Green HRM) as a research field includes all aspects and practices of HRM that pursue the goal of environmental sustainability. The aim is to reconcile the goals of companies and society without compromising financial performance. Green HRM has become an important applied field of research when it comes to developing businesses in an ecologically sustainable way.

Green HRM offers the opportunity to accompany and support long-term change of employees' mindset and behaviors, which are a precondition for environmental change in the entire organization. Ecological sustainability matters from an economic viewpoint, as it saves organizational costs, increases employee motivation and opens up new markets.

Study Design and Procedure

We collected data in several companies in Austria, China, Germany, India, Ireland, and the USA.

Our study design consisted of a quantitative and a qualitative part. First, we conducted an online survey with team members and team leaders who answered questions of pro-environmental attitudes, environmentally friendly behavior at work, and other personality scales. Second, to gain deeper insights into Green HRM and sustainable behaviors, we interviewed HR managers, environmental managers, CSR managers, team members and department heads in the respective companies. The semi-structured interviews took about 60 minutes each and covered topics such as implemented Green HRM practices at the company, challenges of Green HRM and environmental sustainability, tensions in sustainability and the interviewees' coping strategies to deal with these ambivalences.

In total , 14 companies participated in our empirical study. With their help, we collected useable quantitative data from over 200 teams and over 1500 team members and leaders. We further conducted 120 interviews across several countries and subsidiaries.
Thank you very much for participating in our study and for supporting our research project!