Green human resources management applications: Literatüre review and a scale adaptation study

Green human resources management is defined as practices for developing and sustaining the workforce's capabilities, motivation and opportunities to contribute to an organization's economic and environmental sustainability. In other words, green human resources management is primarily about creating a workforce that recognizes, undertakes and implements green friendly initiatives. Studies on green human resources management are critical as they investigate the role of human behavior in environmental management. In this context, the role of human resources is important in creating an environmental sustainability culture. Institutions should adopt green human resources management practices to gain competitive advantage in terms of corporate sustainability. It also has a great importance in creating brand image and respectability in the face of consumers. The fact that there have not been enough studies on green human resources both in our country and in the world indicates that new research is needed in this regard. In this study, it is aimed to present the awareness of the importance of Green Human Resources practices in order to sustain the existence of today's businesses, to compete, especially within the framework of social responsibility awareness, and to bring the green human resources management scale to domestic literature. In the study, first of all, due to the insufficient Turkish resources, a detailed literature review was made using foreign resources and a conceptual framework was created. Next, the 28-item scale in the research paper titled "Green human resource management: Development of a valid measurement scale" developed by Dr. Muzammel Shah, published in the Business Strategy and the Environment, consisting of seven aspects (green job design, green personnel selection and placement, green education and development, green performance management, green wage management, green occupational health and safety, green employee relations) was adapted to Turkish. The questionnaire was applied to 279 people by Human Resources Department managers and personnel of companies operating in İzmir, Aydın, Denizli and Muğla viii provinces (For those companies which do not have HR Department, it was applied by contacting their upper, middle and lower level managers face to face or online ways). In the analysis studies, two items of the 28-item scale were excluded from the scale due to low load value and overlapping structure. The findings obtained from the analysis studies showed that the sub-dimensions of the scale are reliable. It was observed that the reliability coefficients of the scale ranged between 0.79 and 0.91. In addition, as a result of the factor analysis, the seven-factor structure that includes the dimensions of green job design, green personnel selection and placement, green training and development, green performance management, green wage management, green occupational health and safety and green employee relations have been verified. As a result, it was determined that the scale, which is a reliable and valid measurement tool of 26 items, can be used in surveys to be carried out in Turkey. On the other hand, while it was seen that the Green Human Resources Management Scale differs according to the total work experience, it was determined that gender, age, education level, the position in which they work in the company they work, duration of work in the institution, marital status, total number of employees in the company they work for and the sector of the company they work for did not differ.