| Asia now faces a new economic reality that is increasingly influenced by resource constraints and environmental challenges (Angel & Rock, 2000; Marquis, Jackson, & Li, 2015). The region, amid the growing awareness of environmental sustainability, is experiencing sweeping changes that give rise to the urgency of reforming models of economic growth and development. These changes involve environmental movements that have resulted in national governments setting more ambitious environmental targets and increased transnational collaboration. In 2016, for example, the 21 member nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum agreed to tariff cuts on 54 environmentally friendly goods—the first multi-lateral tariff-cutting arrangement in 20 years. The goal of such tariff cutting is to support access to clean technologies, facilitate the doubling of renewable energy use in the Asia-Pacific region by 2030, and reduce energy intensity by 45% by 2035 (APEC, 2016). This commitment to building environmentally sustainable economies has been accompanied by an emerging awareness of civil society where several countries (e.g., Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand) have embarked on societal governance in the wake of the 1997 Asia Financial Crisis (Zarsky & Tay, 2001). This increased awareness of environmental issues has encouraged the participation of a wider range of stakeholders in the areas of green production and management, including NGOs and consumers—the latter reported to be willing to pay more for products sourced from socially and environmentally responsible organizations (Marquis et al., 2015). These economic and societal transformations encourage organizations to integrate environmental management (EM) into their business models while presenting many new challenges. Among the various tools organizations are mobilizing to proactively address environmental issues, green human resource management (GHRM) is increasingly seen as essential for the successful implementation of green strategies and EM practices (Daily & Huang, 2001; Renwick, Redman, & Maguire, 2008; Wehrmeyer, 1996). The concept of GHRM is evolving alongside the broader literature concerning sustainable development (Bunge, Cohen-Rosenthal, & RuizQuintanilla, 1996; Howard-Grenville, Buckle, Hoskins, & George, 2014; Marcus & Fremeth, 2009) and has been established as a separate area of scholarship in the past decade (Jabbour & Santos, 2008; Jackson, Renwick, Jabbour, & MüllerCamen, 2011; Jackson & Seo, 2010; Renwick, Jabbour, Müller-Camen, Redman, & Wilkinson, 2016; Zoogah, 2011). |
