How Proactive Environmental Strategy Facilitates Environmental Reputation: Roles of Green Human Resource Management and Discretionary Slack

Jinguo Zhao,Wei Sun,Huanxin Liu

doi:10.3390/su12030763

Abstract

Based on natural resource-based theory, we examined how firms’ environmental strategies and environmental reputation depended on their green human resource management and discretionary slack. From the perspective of human resource management, we hypothesized that proactive environmental strategy predicted firms’ environmental reputation through the mediation of green human resource management. We further proposed that slack resources, which can be used discretely by managers for environmental management, enhanced the hypothesized relationships. Using data from firms in environmentally sensitive industries in eastern China, we provided empirical support for our hypotheses. The findings highlight the vital roles played by managers and green human resource management in implementing firms’ environmental strategies and promoting firms’ environmental reputation.

Highlights

Environmental reputation is the level of environmental credibility ascribed to a firm by its stakeholders, representing perceived levels of past and possible future environmental performance relative to those of other participants in the same industry [1,2]
Our study examined how proactive environmental strategy affects firms’ environmental reputation within environmentally sensitive industries from a human resource management perspective
We proposed that Green human resource management (GHRM) mediates the relationship between environmental strategy and environmental reputation

Summary

Introduction

Environmental reputation is the level of environmental credibility ascribed to a firm by its stakeholders, representing perceived levels of past and possible future environmental performance relative to those of other participants in the same industry [1,2]. A good environmental image is a useful way of enhancing a firm’s competitiveness when society demands a cleaner environment [5,6] Under this circumstance, a growing number of firms have developed proactive environmental strategies to guide their environmental management practices [7]. According to the natural resource-based view (NRBV), a firm’s competitive strategies and its performance rely significantly on the firm’s specific organizational resources and capabilities [8,9,10,11] From this perspective, research on proactive environmental strategy indicates that proactive environmental strategy can benefit firms a lot and help firms gain competitive advantages, such as enhancing their image [12], financial performance [13], environmental performance [14] and eco-innovation [15]. The engagement of leaders and employees is fairly necessary to the implementation of firms’ strategies, few studies have taken human resources into consideration, especially from a systematic perspective [16]

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