Sample PhD Proposal: The Effect of High-Performance Green HRM Practices on Work Engagement: A Mediating Role of Employees’ Psychological Predispositions Towards Environmental Sustainability

1. Introduction

As shown by a number of studies, Human Resource Management (HRM) practices such as recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, training and development, compensation, employee participation in decision-making, and career planning can have a positive effect on employee engagement in various industries (Alam et al., 2024; Urbini et al., 2021). This concept is usually defined as a positive state of mind associated with absorption, dedication, and vigour related to specific work tasks of the job in general. With more organisations recognising the significance of work engagement for achieving operational excellence, superior performance, staff loyalty, and commitment to shared organisational values, this raises the question regarding the factors directly and indirectly contributing to these positive outcomes (Mudannayake et al., 2024). Environmental responsibility is one of the concepts that has been expanding into the sphere of HRM during the last decade (Majeed et al., 2019; Singh & Pandey, 2020). Previously, this phenomenon was usually considered a part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the triple bottom line contributing to brand image and customer perceptions (Zihan et al., 2024). However, such authors as Aboramadan (2022), Kuo et al. (2022), Pham et al. (2020), and Song et al. (2020) noted that green HRM practices also provided multiple advantages for companies, including better green performance appraisals, higher compliance with environmental standards, greater employee engagement and retention, superior cost savings and efficiency, and increased levels of innovativeness.

With that being said, the body of evidence on green HRM practices’ implementation and the factors influencing its outcomes remains relatively limited, with some authors providing evidence that their implementation may require thorough planning to avoid adverse effects (Ren et al., 2018; Zhang & Sun, 2021). For example, Zhang and Sun (2021) revealed that the simultaneous utilisation of green training and green compensation created a negative effect due to the interactions between extrinsic and intrinsic employee motivations and the cognitive dissonance of self-standards, defined by Zhang and Sun (2021) as a discrepancy between employees’ psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability, such as environmental values or environmental responsibility clashing with organisational cultures promoting formal conformance with a strictly defined set of rules in this sphere, ensuring minimum regulatory compliance rather than large-scale green transformation. This complexity is in line with established academic theories, such as the social exchange theory, the person-organisation-fit, and the job demands-resources model, which suggest that specific organisational practices and demands must be aligned with employee expectations, characteristics, and personal views in order to produce the desired HRM outputs, such as increased work engagement, motivation, or job satisfaction (Ababneh, 2021; Ibrahim et al., 2024; Sivapragasam & Raya, 2018). The proposed study seeks to explore the role of employees’ psychological predispositions as a mediating factor influencing the relationships between high-performance green HRM practices and work engagement.

2. Background of the Research

Previous studies conceptualised green HRM practices as a set of activities including green recruitment, green training, green performance appraisals, and green rewards provision (Dumont et al., 2017; Tang et al., 2018). Such practices seek to ensure that all staff members share the same mindset in terms of environmental responsibility and sustainability and are willing to engage in the behaviours supporting this vision (Chaudhary, 2019). To stimulate these outcomes, organisations create sets of goals, reward systems, training and development programmes, and performance appraisals to ensure that employees demonstrating these activities and commitment get the required support and recognition (Fawehinmi et al., 2020; Hameed et al., 2020). A number of prior studies (Ababneh, 2021; Yu et al., 2020) linked green HRM practices with such organisational benefits as improved employee performance. However, such authors as Ababneh (2021) and Ibrahim et al. (2024) also noted that the resulting staff engagement levels from these initiatives could be affected by both organisational efforts and staff psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability.

As noted by Tran (2023), work engagement may emerge due to high levels of person-organisation fit, strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, enthusiasm, and other factors, including psychological predispositions towards job-related professional activities, that make a person fully focused and entirely occupied with them. It can be measured using several established instruments, including the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale introduced by Schaufeli et al. (2006) that includes the three aforementioned elements, namely vigour, dedication, and absorption. This phenomenon is also linked with a variety of valuable organisational outcomes, including employee task and contextual performance, customer loyalty, and burnout reduction (Christian et al., 2011; Salanova et al., 2005). These considerations inform the interest of HRM practitioners towards the factors and activities that influence the emergence of work engagement or the lack thereof and act as mediators in this process. With that being said, the body of literature linking green HRM initiatives with work engagement and possible factors mediating these relationships remains limited.

A number of studies (Haque et al., 2024; Singh et al., 2020; Tran, 2023) identified positive relationships between green HRM practices and employee engagement. With that being said, they mainly explored the concept of green work engagement as the realisation of behaviours contributing to organisational CSR and the triple bottom line. At the same time, the evidence linking high-performance green HRM practices with work engagement in a wider sense of employee productivity and commitment seen through the dimensions of absorption, dedication, and vigour remains limited, which forms one of the gaps the proposed project seeks to address. Additionally, the studies on green HRM practices by such authors as Ababneh (2021), Haque et al. (2024), and Zhang and Sun linked them with some dimensions of work engagement from the standpoint of established theories such as the job demand-resource model and the social exchange theory. However, these considerations did not include the possible influence of psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability as a possible mediating factor in such relationships that this thesis seeks to investigate.

3. Problem Statement and Research Gaps

While some of the earlier studies identified the possible influence of green HRM practices on work engagement (Haque et al., 2024; Singh et al., 2020), their research focus was placed on organisations as key actors in these relationships. With that being said, the willingness of staff members to embrace such behaviours may be affected by a variety of factors ranging from resource availability to personal views facilitating their compliance with established green performance standards or the lack thereof (Saeed et al., 2019; Yu et al., 2020). This presents a problem to practitioners due to the existing ambiguity caused by the limited evidence of possible mediators channelling the effects from green HRM practices to different dimensions of work engagement. While training and development can address some of the existing gaps, the findings of Ababneh (2021) and Ibrahim et al. (2024) suggest that psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability may influence work engagement as endogenous factors. For example, the findings of Tran (2023) and Zhang and Sun (2021) indicate that good person-organisation fit in this sphere may be critical for stimulating staff pro-environmental behaviours. The role of this endogenous factor as a possible mediator in the relationships between green human resource management and work engagement has not been investigated holistically by existing projects in the field, which forms the main research gap this study seeks to address. Additionally, existing studies of Haque et al. (2024), Singh et al. (2020), and Tran (2023) primarily explored work engagement as ‘green work engagement’ characterised as employee active participation in sustainable initiatives. The proposed thesis seeks to explore this phenomenon as a broader range of absorption, dedication, and vigour effects that are not limited to environmentally responsible behaviours.

4. Research Aim and Objectives

This study aims to explore the effect of high-performance green HRM practices on work engagement within the scope of the mediating role of employees’ psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability. This aim will be pursued along with the following research objectives, namely:

  1. To explore contemporary high-performance green HRM practices that significantly stimulate the employee green behaviours.
  2. To appraise the impact of these initiatives on the dimensions of work engagement including absorption, dedication, and vigour.
  3. To explore the mediating effect of employees’ psychological predispositions, such as environmental values and environmental responsibility, towards environmental sustainability in this relationship and its implications for recruitment, onboarding, and retention practices in environmentally responsible organisations.
  4. To develop and validate a comprehensive model integrating high-performance green HRM practices, work engagement, and employees’ psychological predispositions to provide a deeper understanding of the interplay between these variables and suggest how these implications can help modern organisations achieve higher work engagement levels through thoughtful application of green HRM practices.

5. Contribution

The proposed project will make several contributions to the field of green HRM and work engagement. First, research on green HRM is presently undergoing an evolution, as shown by Alzyoud (2018) and Ren et al. (2018). In this situation, practitioners require a deeper understanding of the relationships between employees’ psychological predispositions, work engagement levels, and specific practices in order to make more informed and effective human resource management decisions (Ababneh, 2021). This study will propose a model linking these variables and providing empirically examined mechanisms of the mediating influence of psychological predispositions towards environmental sustainability on the relationship between high-performance green HRM practices and work engagement levels. This comprehensive concept will incorporate existing validated scales and will make a valuable contribution to the body of academic literature in the analysed field.

Second, the proposed study will expand the understanding of green HRM from the standpoint of work engagement. While prior studies primarily approached this problem from the position of organisational CSR (Ibrahim et al., 2024; Zihan et al., 2024), this thesis will focus on practical improvements at the level of employee performance rather than the organisational reputation management and brand development perspective. Third, the analysis of staff perceptions will produce valuable insights into the perceptions of green HRM practices in the workplace. These findings may help practitioners better understand the key barriers and facilitators to the adoption of these concepts and achieve superior results in this sphere (Pham et al., 2020). With work engagement being a crucial element contributing to both individual and organisational performance, this knowledge will be highly beneficial to modern organisations seeking to achieve superior work engagement.

6. Proposed Methodology

This study will use the quantitative research design in pursuing the aim and objectives (Creswell & Clark, 2017). The use of quantitative methods in social sciences would allow for validating and testing the understanding of the relationships between high-performance green HRM practices and work engagement, with employees’ psychological predispositions acting as a possible mediator (Costa & Condie, 2018). While these associations are intuitively understood, there is no empirical study to validate them in a real-world context (Kumar & Kothari, 2022; Hammond & Wellington, 2020).

Primary data will be collected using the survey strategy, with structured questionnaires distributed online to a sample of target respondents. Green HRM practices will be broken down into five theoretical constructs, namely: green training (measured on a three-item scale), performance management (measured on a four-item scale), recruitment (measured on a three-item scale), compensation (measured on a three-item scale), and involvement (measured on a six-item scale), previously validated by Tang et al. (2018). Work engagement will be measured as a combination of constructs related to the absorption, dedication, and vigour elements. Psychological predispositions are represented by pro-environmental behaviours and environmental attitudes (Flick, 2020).

These quantitative questionnaires will be distributed to 2,000 employees working in the hospitality industry in the European Union (EU). Assuming a 15% response rate, which is close to what was reported in previous studies (Aboramadan, 2022; Agarwal et al., 2012; Kuo et al., 2022), the expected sample size will be around 300 respondents.

Setting the research in the context of the hospitality industry helps address some of the urgent issues in the economy. The hospitality sector organisations have a significant impact on the environment, while also being exposed to observations from both industry regulators and the general public. The pressure to become more environmentally responsible has been growing, while staff recruitment and retention remain a major problem due to high turnover rates and burnout levels (Weber, 2017). Hence, understanding how green HRM practices interact with work engagement will be crucial for achieving the triple bottom line and balancing environmental, social, and financial performance.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) will be used to appraise the relationships between high-performance green HRM practices and work engagement (Ghauri et al., 2020). The measurement model will be estimated using the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), with internal reliability measured by the Cronbach alpha (Aityan, 2022). Convergent validity will be evaluated as a part of CFA using the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and the Composite Reliability measure. Discriminant validity will be tested using the Fornell-Larcker Criterion and the Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT). The coefficients in the structural model will be estimated with the paths analysis and hierarchical regression analysis. The significance of the mediating effects will be examined using the bootstrap analysis (Bairagi & Munot, 2019). The choice of the bootstrap analysis over alternative methods, such as the Sobel test, is substantiated by its capability to work with non-normal data, greater statistical power due to the use of resampling, bias-corrected confidence intervals, its greater flexibility in terms of compatible mediation models, and the lack of need for assumptions about data distribution. These provisions will allow the author to address the formulated research objectives and test both direct and indirect relationships between the selected variables.

References

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    William earned his doctorate in management. He has ten years of experience as an academic writer, specialising in subjects including Business, Human Resources, Management and Risk Management.

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