Green human resource management in a family business setting: a fuzzy set approach

Sustainability in family businesses as an entrepreneurial initiative is an emerging research field. The literature assumes that owners, managers, and employees in family businesses adopt homogeneous sustainability practices as a global construct mixing social and environmental issues. However, green human resource management (GHRM), considered as an innovative process, is focused on understanding how regular managers and employees become green-oriented and aim for business sustainability by applying green policies and practices. Based on previous green HRM research, this study proposes to apply a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to identify the combinations of key practices observed in 513 family businesses in Quebec. This perspective helps to explain some of the boundary conditions and combinations of green HRM practices in family businesses based on more realistic insights by avoiding a merely linear analysis. We highlight four different pathways connecting green HRM system to economic performance. This study is the first to explore green HRM practices in family businesses. The paper concludes by discussing how the findings advance knowledge on sustainability in family business research.