Implementation of sustainability in human resource management: A literature review

Abstract

Orientation: Truly, organisations face the challenge of implementing sustainability in their daily activities.

Research purpose: This article examines the ways in which sustainability has been implemented in human resource management (HRM).

Motivation for the study: Sustainability has become increasingly important in organisations, particularly regarding HRM.

Research approach/design and method: This study used qualitative methodology and collected data by means of an integrative literature review that retrieved appropriate and relevant journal articles from the Business Source Ultimate database, as one of the EBSCOhost databases.

Main findings: The findings suggest that green human resource management (GHRM) was the most frequently implemented concept and was combined with rare cases of corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation. Sustainable human resource management (SHRM) was seldom implemented.

Practical/managerial implications: Interestingly, contemporary studies revealed the circular economy (CE) as an economic sustainability dimension in HRM, and likewise, the ascendance of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in HRM. Regarding the process of sustainability implementation in HRM, some links have been established between sustainability dimensions and HRM, but the incorporation of sustainability into HRM was not evident from the reviewed literature.

Contribution/value-add: This article ends with a discussion of some insights for future research. Moreover, the selection of sustainability and HRM in this article was significant given that sustainability can contribute towards a way of addressing and solving environmental, social and economic problems associated with organisations’ activities that could be fixed by HR. This demonstrates the existing strong compatibility between sustainability and HRM because HRM could fit in each sustainability dimension.