Green Talent, Greener Outcomes? The Role of Governance in Translating Green Hiring into Substantive Environmental Action

Abstract This study examines whether green hiring is associated with enhanced firm-level environmental outcomes, using a novel dataset of 19,248,635 job ads for Fortune 100 firms from 2009 to 2022. We find that such hiring is positively associated with environmental performance, particularly through improvements in environmental innovation, supply chain monitoring, resource efficiency, environmental product development, and stakeholder engagement. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the positive association is stronger when new green hires are distributed across diverse occupations and weaker when concentrated in top-level roles. In addition, green hiring is more strongly linked to outcomes in firms with strong sustainability governance, as evidenced by the presence of dedicated committees, environmental investments, standalone sustainability reports and environmental training. These findings indicate that green hiring’s potential benefits may rely on robust sustainability governance within firms. Such structures may help human capital investments yield measurable environmental performance gains and reduce the risk of green hiring becoming a symbolic gesture rather than a substantive commitment to stakeholders. However, the relationship concentrates only among firms in non-environmentally sensitive industries and larger firms. This study contributes to the environmental performance literature by providing new evidence on how workforce transformation relates to corporate sustainability and informs strategic approaches to building greener organizations.