The Influence of Green HRM Practices on Sustainability Reporting Quality: Evidence from Emerging Economies
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Sustainability accounting has evolved from voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosures to structured ESG reporting embedded within global governance frameworks. While existing research predominantly explains sustainability reporting through external pressures such as regulation, stakeholder activism, and legitimacy concerns, limited attention has been given to the internal organizational capabilities that shape disclosure quality.
This study develops a theoretical framework linking Green Human Resource Management (Green HRM) to sustainability reporting quality, addressing the microfoundations gap in sustainability accounting theory. Adopting a theory-driven integrative review approach, the paper synthesizes literature from sustainability accounting, corporate governance, and strategic HRM. It integrates stakeholder, legitimacy, institutional, agency, and signaling theories with resource-based and dynamic capabilities perspectives to construct a capability-centered conceptual model. The review identifies Green HRM as a critical microfoundational governance mechanism that enhances sustainability reporting quality through environmental human capital development, ethical climate formation, performance incentives, and innovation support. Reporting quality is reconceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing accuracy, completeness, verifiability, strategic alignment, and longitudinal consistency. Institutional conditions moderate the relationship between Green HRM and substantive disclosure outcomes. The study advances sustainability accounting theory by positioning human capital systems as internal drivers of credible ESG reporting and by proposing an integrated sustainability accounting framework grounded in organizational capabilities.
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