How green human resource management can promote green competitive advantage: The role of green innovation

Abstract With growing public concerns about ecological issues, it has been increasingly critical for corporations to enhance their green competitive advantages. Utilizing a natural‐resource‐based view of firm and human resource management (HRM) perspective, we propose that green HRM (GHRM) promotes firms' green competitive advantages by facilitating two kinds of green innovation (i.e., green product/process innovation). Via a two‐wave survey study of chief human resources officers (CHOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs) from 69 companies in China, we find support that GHRM positively links to green product and process innovations, each of which will, in turn, have a positive correlation with a green competitive advantage. Moreover, an indirectly positive linkage between GHRM and green competitive advantage via two types of green innovation is also proved. Our study expands current research by demonstrating a positive effect of GHRM in building green competitive advantage and by revealing two parallel mechanisms of such effect.