نقش میانجی مدیریت منابع انسانی سبز و عواید زیست‌محیطی در رابطۀ مسئولیت اجتماعی و عملکرد صنعت هتل‌داری اصفهان

Abstract
Nowadays, corporate social responsibility and green human resource management have become two fundamental concepts in the management literature. Although, until now, numerous researches have been developed in parallel in both fields, it is necessary to investigate the relationship between both concepts and their impact on environmental benefits and corporate performance in more depth. Proving the existence of a direct relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate performance has recently attracted the attention of authors. Their findings have remained almost inconclusive, some studies have suggested a positive relationship, some studies have suggested a negative relationship or have simply stated that such a relationship does not exist. Studies related to hospitality are mainly theoretical and need theoretical review and theory elaboration. Positive, negative or neutral results obtained from the analysis of the direct relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate performance are not definitely reliable, because such a relationship may be affected by some other intervening factors that have been ignored in many studies. Researchers have not found any definitive relationship between CSR and firm performance. However, although the research in question has certainly paid more attention to the CSR-HRM relationship, a more comprehensive examination of the relationship between these two constructs, especially the potential link between green HRM and CSR, has not yet been conducted. Such an effort seems highly relevant and necessary, as there are several important links between green HRM and CSR that have not been adequately or systematically examined. The present study is therefore based on two premises: the first is an instrumental view of CSR-HRM; from this perspective, CSR-HRM research primarily considers CSR as a means to improve these practices insofar as they contribute to organizational goals. This is why this study considers that green HRM can act as a mediating variable between corporate social responsibility and financial performance and environmental returns. The second basis is an integrated


 
view of corporate social responsibility-HRM. The theoretical underpinnings of this view are stakeholder theory and “soft” or relational HRM theories. Research on how corporate social responsibility affects employee commitment and motivation is reviewed. The Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) theory was used to identify critical and important areas of green HRM that can be developed with corporate social responsibility policies and affect environmental returns. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility on corporate performance, considering the possible mediation of green HRM and environmental returns.
Research Method
Data were collected by distributing and completing online 420 standard seven-point Likert-type questionnaires with 34 items in hotels with more than 50 employees and three stars and above in Isfahan. The scales developed by Lee, Su, and Swanson (2019) were adapted to measure corporate social responsibility towards three main stakeholders: employees, customers, and society. Green human resource management was considered to consist of three components based on Pham et al. (2019) Tang et al. To measure environmental benefits through improvement in the use of power parameters developed by Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD) was used to assess the full range of environmental performance of a company. Also, eight items were used to examine the overall performance measures (market share growth, brand recognition, company market image, sales growth) and On the other hand, the performance variables are more consistent with the companies in the hotel sector (revenue per room, average occupancy, customer satisfaction level and employee satisfaction). Finally, the control variables including; hotel size and hotel floor were considered and the data were collected. They were examined using the variance-based structural equation method (partial least squares).
Findings
Hypotheses related to direct effects were tested first and before indirect (moderated) effects. Hypotheses were tested through a bootstrapping process with 2500 resampling and using a bias-corrected confidence interval (CI) of 95%. Findings showed: a) The effect of corporate social responsibility on performance is positive and significant with a coefficient value of 0.321 and a probability level of 0.002, which supports Hypothesis 1. b) The effect of corporate social responsibility on green human resource management is positive and significant with a coefficient value of 0.743 and a probability level of 0.0000, therefore Hypothesis 2 is also confirmed. c) Regarding the effect of green human resource management on environmental benefits, it was found that this effect is also positive and significant with a coefficient of 0.473 and a probability level of 0.0000, which indicates the confirmation of hypothesis 4. Finally, environmental benefits have a positive and significant effect on performance with a coefficient of 0.365 and a probability level of 0.0000, which indicates the confirmation of hypothesis 5. Also, examining the direct and indirect effects of corporate social responsibility on the performance of the Isfahan hotel industry shows that with the presence of two mediating variables, green human resource management and environmental benefits, the effect of corporate social responsibility on performance decreases from 0.321 to 0.128.
Conclusion
From the analyses conducted, it can be inferred that green HRM positively affects environmental returns, and these returns in turn affect performance, leading studies towards a new research direction on whether environmental returns fully or partially mediate the relationship between green HRM and performance. The findings of this study also contribute to the fields of corporate social responsibility and green HRM. Considering the literature on corporate social responsibility-HRM, and considering the scarcity theory that links the constructs of corporate social responsibility and HRM, an instrumental view of corporate social responsibility-HRM was adopted, following the recommendations of Kim et al. (2019), stating that corporate social responsibility has to strategically use green HRM with the aim of improving the organization’s performance outcomes (environmental and financial returns). An integrated view of CSR-HRM was also adopted, which allowed the use of the capability-motivation-opportunity theory approach to HRM because CSR affects the capabilities, motivations, and opportunities of human resources. Combining both views allows for an integrated framework that overcomes some of the ambiguities surrounding the relationship between CSR and firm performance, and by providing a framework that simply explains how CSR may be related to firm performance by including green HRM and environmental benefits as mediating variables, thus expanding the body of knowledge on CSR. Bringing together these two perspectives on CSR-HRM studies, as conducted in this study, could form part of the topics discussed in future research. In addition, corporate social responsibility is shown to be an enabling factor in green human resource management, or in other words, green human resource management supports corporate social responsibility activities through the development of green skills, green motivation, and green participation by providing empirical evidence in a way that both variables are linked. Finally, organizations help their workforce to take pride in their company's role in environmental protection through improving green human resource management and environmental benefits, which not only strengthens the commitment of human resources to their organizations but also can achieve successful environmental benefits by developing capabilities, motivations, and opportunities such as attracting and selecting human resources interested in green issues.