Does work engagement mediate the impact of green human resource management on absenteeism and green recovery performance?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2021-0215 |
| Published date | 22 February 2022 |
| Date | 22 February 2022 |
| Pages | 1092-1108 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Golnaz Darban,Osman M. Karatepe,Hamed Rezapouraghdam |
Does work engagement mediate the
impact of green human resource
management on absenteeism and
green recovery performance?
Golnaz Darban, Osman M. Karatepe and Hamed Rezapouraghdam
Faculty of Tourism, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, Turkey
Abstract
Purpose –This paper tests a research model that examines work engagement (WENG)as a mediator between
green human resource management (GHRM) and absenteeism and green recovery performance.
Design/methodology/approach –To gauge the aforesaid linkages, the authors used data collected from
employees and their supervisors in the international five-star chain hotels in Istanbul, Turkey. One-hundred
and eighty-two respondents completed the surveys.
Findings –GHRM fosters WENG. As predicted, WENG alleviates absenteeism and triggers green recovery
performance. Employees’favorable perceptions of GHRM (cognitive evaluation) give rise to higher WENG
(emotional response), which in turn directs their behaviors such as reduced absenteeism and higher green
recovery performance (behavioral response).
Originality/value –No empirical study has gauged the linkage between GHRM and WENG and
nonattendance behavioror absenteeism so far. Moreover, there are few empirical pieces in the current literature
that have tested the mechanism through which GHRM is associated with green and/or nongreen outcomes.
Keywords Absenteeism, Green human resource management, Green recovery performance, Hotel employees,
Work engagement
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Customer-contact employees have frequent interactions with customers, spend much time
serving themand responding to their complaints and establish strongrelationships with them.
Therefore, companies need to retain these employees who are high on work engagement
(WENG) and can deliver service quality and achieve customer satisfaction (Karadas and
Karatepe, 2019). Havingsuch work-engaged employees is also important for the management
of environmental challenges andacquisition of growth and development in the marketplace.
WENG can be defined as a state having three components: “vigor,”“dedication”and
“absorption”(Schaufeliet al.,2006). Work-engaged employees are energetic,are proud of their
work and feel happy while working intensely (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017).
One of the likely tools for having highly work-engaged employees is green human
resource management (GHRM), which refers to the human resource management aspect of
environmental management (Renwick et al., 2013). Employees who find that management
offers green human resource practices are likely to be high on WENG. These customer-
contact employees can accomplish positive outcomes such as eco-friendly behaviors and
organizational citizenship behaviors toward the environment (Pham et al., 2019).
In fact, human resource management is a significant tool to explain how organizations’
social responsibilities (e.g. environmental protection) are communicated, understood and
settled.
ER
44,5
1092
This work was from the first author’s master thesis, and its data came from part of a larger project.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 20 May 2021
Revised 21 December 2021
29 January 2022
Accepted 4 February 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 44 No. 5, 2022
pp. 1092-1108
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-05-2021-0215
GHRM aims to foster environmental sustainability via employe e engagement in
environmental management (Siyambalapitiya et al., 2018). Otherwise, companies’efforts are
doomedto failure withoutthe active participationof employeesin implementinggreen practices
or employeeengagement in environmentalmanagement (Renwick etal.,2013;Siyambalapitiya
et al., 2018). Research indeed indicates that GHRM boosts employees’green WENG, green
behaviors and nongreen positive work outcomes (Aboramadan, 2022;Rubel et al., 2021).
1.1 Purpose
Against the above backdrop, our paper tests the interrelationships of GHRM, WENG,
absenteeism and green recovery performance. The objectives of our paper are to assess: (1)
the impact of GHRM on WENG; (2) the effect of WENG on absenteeism and green recovery
performance; and (3) WENG as a mediator in the aforesaid associations.
Both absenteeism and green recovery performance are among the critical service worker
outcomes (Luu, 2018;Ozturk and Karatepe, 2019). Borrowing the definition of service
recovery performance from Babakus et al. (2003) and congruent with Ari et al. (2020), our
paper defines green recovery performance as service workers’own abilities and actions to
solve a complaint or failure surfacing from environmentally unfriendly efforts to the
satisfaction of the customer. This is also congruent with Luu’s (2018) definition of green
recovery performance. Absenteeism highlights the lack of physical presence (unplanned or
unauthorized) in the workplace (Løkke et al., 2007).
1.2 Contribution
Our paper enhances current knowledge on GHRM in the following ways. First, management
can strengthen the image of the company by investing in environmental sustainability and
green initiatives (e.g. Aboramadan and Karatepe, 2021;Hameed et al., 2021). To achieve this,
there is a need for the active involvement of employees (Paill
e, 2020). However, most of the
empirical studies on environmental management have paid particular attention to
companies’environmental sustainability programs or have focused on customers’or
managers’perspectives (e.g. Dumont et al., 2017;Wang et al., 2019). There is limited research
about service workers’green behaviors (e.g. hotel service workers). For example, Loureiro
et al.’s (2022) recent meta-analysis about proenvironmental behavior-related pieces states that
“...employee engagement with respect to ...pro-environmental behavior ...”(p. 14) needs to
be investigated. Green recovery performance is one of these behaviors that has received little
attention (Luu, 2018).
Second, although the relevant literature appears to delineate some evidence about GHRM,
empirical research about its consequences is still in its infancy stage (Ansari et al., 2021;Pham
et al., 2019;Rubel et al., 2021). More importantly, there is very limited literature about the
impact of GHRM on nongreen positive outcomes (e.g. Aboramadan and Karatepe, 2021;Ari
et al., 2020). This is a notable gap because we do not know whether the company’s green
human resource practices foster service employees’WENG and mitigate their absenteeism in
addition to an increase in their green behaviors.
Third, both conceptual and empirical studies have drawn special attention to the void
regarding the mediating mechanism linking GHRM to employee outcomes and the
importance of employee engagement in environmental management in the current
literature (Aboramadan and Karatepe, 2021;Chaudhary, 2020;Kim et al., 2019;Luu, 2018).
A recent study also underscores the need for additional research about GHRM in different
service settings (Aboramadan et al., 2021).
Fourth, majority of the studies in human resource management used cross-sectional and
self-report data, which raisedsome concerns among scholars (Edgar, 2020). This seems to be
valid for most of the empirical pieces on GHRM (cf. Aboramadan and Karatepe, 2021;Rubel
Impact of green
human
resource
management
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