Green Human Resource Management for organisational citizenship behaviour towards the environment and environmental performance on a university campus

Abstract

The slow and inefficient environmental performance of universities is drawing the attention of scholars towards behavioural change in employees rather than just relying on technological upgrades. Drawing upon the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) theory, the purpose of this study is first to examine the influence of Green Human Resource Management (HRM) practices (green competence building practices, green motivation enhancing practices, and green employee involvement practices) on the organisational citizenship behaviour towards the environment (OCBE) of academic staff and, in turn, its impact on the environmental performance. Second, the mediating impact of OCBE between each of Green HRM practices and environmental performance is assessed. The data were collected from September until November 2017 on two campuses of a renowned public research university in Malaysia. Using quantitative research design, a structured questionnaire was used among the academic staff of the university. Convenience sampling was used to select the respondents from both campuses, and the Partial Least Squares (PLS) modelling technique was used to analyse the data, which comprised 122 respondents. Overall findings showed that three sets of Green HRM practices based on the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity framework had a significant impact on OCBE. Furthermore, OCBE had a significant relationship with environmental performance. For the mediation analysis, the results showed that OCBE exhibited by academic staff acted as a means through which the Green HRM practices of a university can positively influence the environmental performance of a university campus. The originality of this study rests in shedding light on Green HRM practices in the higher education sector and highlighting the critical role of academic staff’s environmentally friendly behaviour for improving the environmental performance of a university.