This study contributes to the growing literature on the intersection between human resource management and corporate sustainability (CS) and, in particular, on sustainable human resource management (interpreted here as HRM practices informed by the CS principles, thus aiming at economic, social, environmental and human sustainability simultaneously). In particular, this paper claims that the members of the HR professional community can increase their job satisfaction and decrease their intention to leave by implementing sustainable HRM. In addition, we test for the mediating role played by the meaning that HR professionals and managers attach to HR work. Indeed, when HR professionals and managers are involved in sustainable HRM perceive their job to become more meaningful as it has a broader scope which goes beyond the solely focus on economic performance, and that leads then to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intention. The study, which is based on 176 questionnaires collected through a cross-country survey, has been developed in partnership between the authors and a leading European association of HR managers and professionals. Our findings, which in general extend the knowledge on the employees’ perception of CS—employee attitudes relationships, represent a data-driven argument for a more active role of HRM in developing Sustainable HRM.

Introduction

In the past decade, there has been growing scholarly and academic interest in corporate sustainability (CS) and its intersection with human resource management (HRM) (Cohen 2010; Ehnert 2009; Mariappanadar 2014; Taylor et al. 2012; Arnaud and Wasieleski 2014). Taylor et al. (2012) argue that HRM systems play a dual role with regard to CS because they can operate both as a means to develop sustainability mind-sets, and as an end to promote the physical, social and economic well-being of employees, thus improving a company’s social performance (Rothenberg et al. 2015). Similarly, HRM can develop the environmental performance of the firm, through so-called green HRM practices (Renwick et al. 2013; Paillé et al. 2014; Dumont et al. 2016). As a result, HRM research—e.g., the edited volume by Ehnert et al. (2014) together with special issues in journals such as Human Resource Management, 51(6), Personnel Psychology, 67(4), Journal of Organizational Behaviour 34(2), Organization, 20(3) and Management Revue, 23(3)—has devoted growing attention to the intersection between HRM and CS, theorizing a new HRM concept, labeled “Sustainable HRM” (Ehnert 2009; Kramar 2013). This concept aims at simultaneously preserving, regenerating, and developing the economic, environmental, social, and human resources of the organization, thus supporting the very idea of CS. Notwithstanding the growing attention to the development of knowledge on the intersection between HRM and CS, and to the key features of sustainable HRM, available evidence shows that the HR professional community is not (yet) playing a key role in the development of CS via sustainable HRM. For example, in the US context, only 6% of members of the HR community consider their HR departments to play a leading role in defining and implementing sustainability strategies (SHRM 2011). Similarly, in the British context, a survey of 523 general managers shows that only 26% of them consider their HR department to contribute to implementing sustainability strategies and that only 13% consider their HR department to contribute to the definition of those strategies (CIPD 2013).