From institutional pressures to employee involvement in organizational sustainability: The role of common good HRM

Employee involvement in organizational sustainability is critical to achieving long-term environmental, social, and economic goals, yet the drivers of such involvement remain underexplored. Drawing on institutional theory and social exchange theory, this study develops a cross-level serial mediation model to explain how institutional sustainability pressures may become associated with employee involvement in organizational sustainability. We propose that institutional pressures, as perceived by senior executives, are associated with employee-experienced common good human resource management (CG-HRM), which in turn relates to perceived organizational support and, subsequently, employee involvement in organizational sustainability. Using time-lagged, multisource survey data from 96 firms in China, we find support for the proposed model. The findings contribute a more micro-foundational account of how institutional sustainability pressures, as perceived by senior executives, may become meaningful at the employee level through organizational and psychological processes, and clarify the role of employee-experienced CG-HRM in explaining employee sustainability-related behavior.