Examining the impact of green human resource management on green innovative work behavior: A multilevel analysis

Abstract

The significance of green human resource management (GHRM) practices in promoting employees' environmentally friendly behaviors and enhancing environmental performance is well-documented in current research. However, the impact of GHRM practices at the organizational level on the eco-conscious behaviors of individual employees remains unexplored. Moreover, scholarly attention to employees' green innovative work behavior (GIWB) has been limited. This study explores the novel concept of GIWB from a strategic human capital (SHC) perspective. Drawing on signaling theory, this study proposes that GHRM practices act as signals emphasizing the importance of environmental sustainability, which may influence GIWB at the individual level. This research aims to assess the effect of various GHRM practices on GIWB and to explore how unit-level GHRM practices moderate the relationship between an employee's creative personality (CP) and their GIWB, using social exchange theory (SET) as the guiding framework. Data were collected from 163 HR managers and plant supervisors and 815 employees within Taiwan's environmental protection sector and then analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques. The findings reveal that specific GHRM practices significantly enhance employees' GIWB. Furthermore, it demonstrates that aggregated GHRM practices moderate the relationship between CP and GIWB. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how signals from organizational GHRM practices can foster GIWB among individual employees.