Glossary Terms for All Chapters

Chapter 1

Human resources - Human/employees who own or possess valuable resources/competencies

(job knowledge, skills, motivation, attitudes etc.,) choose to use those resources for achieving

organisational goals.

Human resource management - HRM as the systems, policies, and practices that influence

employees’ behaviour, attitudes and performance to achieve organisational goals and

strategies.

Strategic HRM - The pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended

to enable an organisation to achieve financial goals.

Mutual benefits perspective - This perspective holds the view that the effects of HRM or

bundle of high performance work practices benefits both the organisation as well as

employees.

Critical HRM perspective - Highlights that HRM practices used to benefit organisations

could lead to reduced employee benefits and hence organisational benefits and employee

benefits are two distinct but are also conflicting outcomes.

Paradox perspective - Paradox is about contradictory but interrelated elements that exist

simultaneously and persist over time.

The synthesis paradox perspective - to explore the tension in achieving diverse outcomes of

sustainability instead of suppressing or ignoring the tension.

The synthesis effects perspective - The simultaneous effects of reducing the unsustainable

impacts on stakeholders (e.g., employees, their families and communities) and environment

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while improving organisational performance highlights that these three polarities are not

mutually exclusive but are rather, mutually reinforcing in achieving sustainability.

Sustainable HRM – Explained from the synthesis effects perspective, it is about HRM

systems or bundles of HRM practices that engage employees to synthesis increased

organisational performance outcome while simultaneously reducing the unsustainable

impacts on environment as well as on employees and their families (i.e., stakeholders).

Corporate sustainability - As a business strategy is implemented by organisations to achieve

three outcomes of sustainability (economic/financial, social/human and environmental) which

are known as the triple bottom line concept.

Economic aspect of sustainability - Highlights the prosperity that the organisation create in a

community through a strong alignment of management practices to company profitability.

Social/human aspect of sustainability - The social dimension of corporate sustainability

facilitates equitable benefits for the community to enhance quality of life for the citizens

through paid work.

Environmental aspect of sustainability - Indicates the role of organisations in environmental

management to prevent and manage business practices that have potential long-term damages

to the environment.

Business case for sustainable HRM - The role of HRM system or a bundle of HRM practices

with pro- environmental and human characteristics to facilitate eco-efficiency and socio-

efficiency based on the relationship between financial performance of an organisation and its

environmental and human (social) performances.

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Beyond business case - Sustainable HRM from the beyond business case perspective focuses

on achieving HRM effectiveness by improving social and environmental performances

without being constrained by HRM efficiency from the economic term.

Sustainable HRM effectiveness - Achieving social and environmental performance along

with financial performance of an organisation based on factors or indicators like non-

substitutability of capital and irreversibility.

Chapter 2

Institutional theory – Explains how organisations develop strategic choices of organisational

practices as responses to its macro-, meso- and micro-level contexts.

Sustainable development - Development which meets the needs of the present without

compromising the ability for future generations to meet their own needs.

Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index (DJSI) - To develop opportunities and manage

economic, environmental and social risks, which investors consider as crucial for a

company’s competitive advantage.

Civil society organisations - Includes non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that aim to

serve particular societal interests by focusing advocacy and or operational efforts on social,

political and economic goals, including equity, education, health, environmental protection

and human rights.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - Are private and not-for-profit organisations and

they represent stakeholder perspectives and they play an important role to act as a

counterweight to business and global capitalism.

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Socially responsible corporate behaviour – Companies must not knowingly do anything that

could negatively impact on their stakeholders, and if companies do cause negative impacts on

their stakeholders then they should voluntarily rectify it.

Ethics of care - In the HRM context refers to the ethical choices companies face when

seeking to maximize profit as well as reduce the unsustainable aspects of HRM practices on

the stakeholders, such as environment, employees, their families, future HR supply and

communities, so as to maintain harmonious relations between the corporation involved and

the stakeholders.

Employment relations – It is relationship between employers and employees, employees and

their unions, employers and their associations and government that make regulations

governing employment.

Legitimacy of sustainable HRM practices - Managers develop schema (mental constructs)

about corporate social responsibility for sustainable HRM practices by absorbing the

messages that are delivered to them at business schools and through the professional

publications they pay close attention to (e.g., business magazines etc.).

Industry - Is a group of organisations that offer similar products or services.

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Chapter 3

Intergenerational perspective - Considers the impact of work being done now on future

generations.

Sustainability - There are multiple explanations of sustainability. At its core it is a

philosophy, an attitude, a lens through which to view the world. Within the workplace,

sustainability is focused upon the consequences of management practices for the

environment, for the individual and society in terms of work-life balance, happiness, health

and well-being.

Shadow side of HRM - By attempting to satisfy stakeholder expectations to do more with

less, there is tendency towards a culture of increasing working hours, work intensification,

high turnover, downsizing, and restructuring.

Paradox - A set of contradictory and incompatible poles all supported by apparently sound

arguments. A situation or statement that seems impossible or is difficult to understand

because it contains two opposing facts or characteristics.

HRM paradox - HRM enacts strategic logic in managing people and their expectations - both

individually and collectively, yet remains married to the traditional financial definition of

organisational success and economic rationalism.

Organisational-centric strategic perspective - A mechanistic, rational world view of

organisations that has enabled managers to design policies which act as levers to shape

behaviour and produce the outcomes which are desired because of the requirements of the

owners of the organisation rather than the needs of the employees.

Virtuous learning cycle - Ideal learning occurs in virtuous cycles—repeating cycles of goal

setting, observation (taking in new knowledge), testing (applying what has been learned and

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getting feedback on results), and reflection (figuring out which adjustments are needed to

improve one’s performance on the next attempt).

Vicious cycles - Endless cycles that have detrimental results.

Intergenerational equity - Making sure that current decision making time horizon does not

undervalue the interests of future generations.

Efficiency drivers - Pursuing the ability to operate with minimum time and waste.

Resilience - The quality of being able to return quickly to a previous good condition after

problems.

Acceptance strategy - Considers simultaneously the divergent demands without the need to

separate or prioritise them. Tension is expected, accepted, and room is made for it.

Resolution strategy - Transforms the tensions into a more manageable situation through

temporal and/or spatial separation, or through synthesis by mediation and formal process and

procedure.

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Chapter 4

Business strategy – The goal directed actions that managers use to achieve competitive

advantage for their business.

Corporate social responsibility – Actions of businesses that appear to further some social

good, beyond the interests of the organisation and that is required by law.

Organisational value system - Impacts on employees’ attitudes and behaviours to achieve

sustainable outcomes for all stakeholders involved.

Control based HRM - An authoritarian and hierarchical organisation which focuses on

improving efficiency and reduce labour cost for achieving competitive advantage.

Integrated sustainable HRM system - One in which HRM practices are holistically

interdependent and connected with business (i.e. business strategy) and organisational design

contexts to achieve competitive advantage for an organisation.

Organisational design – Shapes HRM strategies and practices using human-based system,

organisational structure, process and boundary.

Sustainable HRM system – The system should be not only concerned about employers’

expectations of employees meeting organisational goals but also be considerate of an

individual employee’s needs as well as stakeholders’ expectations (e.g. labor unions and civil

societies).

Sustainable HRM strategy – Highlights the priority of an organisation to secure and manage

the kind of HR aligned to organisational values that are relevant to achieve the synthesis

effects of corporate sustainability outcomes.

Characteristics of sustainable HRM practices - Indicate an employee’s perceived

organisational motives that facilitate an employee’s behaviour and attitudes to improve

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organisational performance along with organisational interventions to reduce the

simultaneous negative impacts on the stakeholders (i.e. employees, families and the society

etc.,) and environment.

Regeneration of HR base – Access to pool of HR for future supply to industries to achieve

sustainable organisational performance.

Anthropocentric value for environmental management - Focuses on maximizing

organisational benefits and in that process, it aims to limit the impact on environment.

Ecocentric values for environmental management - Aim to preserve wilderness areas, protect

the integrity of biotic communities, and to restore ecosystems to a healthy state of

equilibrium while utilizing the natural resources for economic activities.

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Chapter 5

Stakeholder - Any individual or group who can affect or is affected by actions, decisions,

policies, practices or goals of an organisation.

Primary stakeholders - Are typically the shareholders and investors, employees, customers,

suppliers, the governments and communities that provide infrastructures and markets, and

they together facilitate the organisation’s survival.

Secondary stakeholder - Those who influence or affect, or are influenced or affected by, the

organisation, but they are not engaged in transactions with the organisation and are not

essential for its survival.

Simultaneous effects of HRM - In the framework of sustainable HRM theories simultaneous

effects highlight that HRM practices, such as HPWPs, work intensification, overwork etc.,

used to enhance organisational performances also have positive or sustainable and negative or

unsustainable impacts on employee well-being and environment.

Negative externality of HRM practices - An organisation’s failure to assimilate the cost of

negative impacts of HRM practices instead transferred to the stakeholders (i.e., employees,

their families and communities) and environment to manage the negative impacts.

Harm of work - Those high performance work practices used by organisations to extract

maximum skills, abilities and motivation of employees also simultaneously restricts

employees from achieving positive work related health and social well-being outcomes.

Direct costs of harm of work - The actual or proxy costs that are associated to an organisation

and the society to manage the harm of work.

Indirect costs of harm of work - Those costs associated with welfare loss due to reduced

ability to function as a “normal” healthy person both on the job and during one’s leisure time

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Welfare loss in the HRM context - An employee being restricted by the harmful aspects of

HRM practices for maximizing the utility function of paid work for improving an

individual’s psychological, social and health well-being outcomes.

Costs framework for harm of HRM practices - Suggests a sophisticated method to valuate the

costs of harm for the stakeholders or third parties to an organisation to manage the

psychological, social and work related health aspects of harm imposed on them by work.

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Chapter 6

Corporate governance – The mechanisms to direct and control a firm in order to ensure that it

pursues its strategic goals successfully and legally.

Board of directors – Is the centrepiece of corporate governance in a firm to take care of

investors interests.

Agency theory – Deals with the relationship between shareholders and managers, and

principal-agent problems.

Environmental management - Includes commitment and policy, planning, implementation,

measurement and evaluation, and review and improvement of environmental performance.

Environmental management system (EMS) - A tool used worldwide by any type of

organisation to enhance an organisation’s capabilities to continuously improve environmental

performance.

Anthropocentrism - The belief that there is a clear and morally relevant dividing line between

humankind and the rest of the nature, that humankind is the only principal source of value or

meaning in the world.

Ecocentric paradigm - Ethical responsibility to effect change at the human values, ethics,

attitudes and lifestyles to appreciate equality of the intrinsic value of human and non-human

as components of the ecosystem.

Greening of strategic HRM - HRM system that promotes change in management capabilities

(e.g. organisational learning) and create alignment with environmental sustainability (e.g.

energy efficiency, waste reduction etc.,).

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Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) theory - Managers’ performance will depend on their

ability to apply HRM practices, and that their motivation and the opportunity provided will

enhance this effect.

Pro-environmental management - Focuses on ecocentric organisational elements (e.g., goals,

values, management and HRM functions etc.,) that have an impact on nature.

Eco-effectiveness - Attempts to engage employees by using the ecocentric green HRM to

ensure that the EMS used in an organisation considers reversibility as the focus to preserve

the health of ecosystem.

Eco-efficiency - Aims to reduce environmental degradation using the anthropocentric green

HRM but in the long term the environment will lose its inherent abilities for reversibility.

Reversibility – Based on ecology science, reversibility is about the ecosystem’s ability to

maintain and to restore the functional performance of the system.

The synthesis effect of green HRM - Those sustainable HRM systems or bundles that

enhance both profit maximization for the organisation and also improve environmental

performance to benefit the society.

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Chapter 7

Universalistic or best practice perspective - Indicates that some HRM practices are always

better than others, and all organisations should adopt them in practice irrespective of the

contexts in which organisations operate.

Configurational perspective - Patterns of multiple interdependent HRM variables including

context variables are related to organisational performance.

Stakeholder care position - Reflects organisation and stakeholder relationships which are

understood according to the positive and negative configurational effects of interdependent

job contexts so as to minimise the harm of work and improve stakeholder well-being while

enhancing the financial aspect of corporate sustainability outcomes.

Work intensification - Includes both the extensive effort of work or overwork and the

intensity of work or workload.

Career life-cycle - Career opportunities provided by organisations to foster psychological

conditions to enhance willingness to perform better to achieve an individual employee’s

aspirations to progress up the organisation’s hierarchy for greater intrinsic and extrinsic

benefits.

Typologies of sustainable HRM practices – A set of characteristics of sustainable HRM

practices to minimize the harm of work caused by the negative configurational effects of job

contexts on employees while maximising benefits for organisations and individual employees

in each of the quadrants in the configurational model.

Organisation–stakeholder care position quadrant (OSCPQ) – Reflects the negative

configurational effects of job contexts on stakeholder care position in each quadrant of the

configuration model of job contexts.

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Career ready for sustainability typology - Include characteristics while implementing HRM

functions such as identifying potential prospective employees for the organisation and

providing pre- and post-employment training to develop sustainability competencies (KSA)

to align with the mutual interests of employees, the organisation and environment to facilitate

an employee to become career-ready for a future full-time position.

Sustainability awareness typology - Employee selection and training must include

characteristics that facilitate employees’ competencies to use social consciousness to align

with mutual interest of employees, organisations and the environment, and create awareness

of altruistic motivation and about being a sustainability champion.

Sustainability excellence typology – The characteristics of employee selection, training and

performance evaluation must include social consciousness for the mutual interests of

employees, organisations and stakeholders and strengthen altruistic motivation.

Corporate sustainability assistance typology – Includes characteristics that facilitate HRM

practices to achieve the reduction in harm of work on employees through organisational-level

work change interventions to achieve workplace wellness along with employee wellness to

enhance simultaneous benefits for an organisation and its employees.

Sustainability culture typology - The characteristics for this typology include considering

employees with proven sustainability and excellence credentials for sustainability leadership

roles.

Sustainability veteran typology - Include characteristics of HRM practices that facilitate

mentoring and succession planning for corporate sustainability for the benefit of an

organisation.

Legally abiding and benevolent organisation typology – The characteristics of HRM practices

for this typology are collective self-concepts, being benevolent, abiding by the employment

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law, and being ethical and fair in resource allocation, that match with employees’ inputs for

these jobs.

Sustainable work performance framework – It is about employee-level actions for high

performance, it focuses on organisational-level allocation of resources for employee recovery

and revitalisation for high work performance.

Proactivity - Innovative ways to complete some of the work tasks more effectively so as to

save energy and have vigour (i.e. time and energy) for performing other work tasks to

achieve high performance.

Vitality - Manage work performance resource constraints (i.e. time, energy and competence

constraints) effectively to achieve organisational performance as well as improved health.

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Chapter 8

Triple P - The “3P” refers to a business model developed to encourage social responsibility

and sustainability among businesses worldwide.

People: taking steps to ensure that operations benefit the company's employees

as well as the community in which it conducts business.

Planet: avoiding any activities that harm the environment and looks for ways

to reduce any negative impact its operations may have on the ecosystem.

(Example: controlling energy consumption or reducing carbon emissions).

Profit: dealing with the economic value created by the organisation after

reducing the costs of all inputs.

ROC-model

o The component ‘Respect’ refers to bringing the ‘human’ component back into

HRM. It means a renewed focus on respect for the internal stakeholders, the

employees, by implementing an appreciative and engaging HRM. This means

recognizing the richness and complexity of the target focus, namely

employees as human beings, and consequently the fact that this complexity

cannot be brought down to economic indicators (= appreciative and engaging

HRM).

o Openness brings the stakeholder perspective to HRM, it implies considering

HRM from the ‘outside in’, recognizing the occurrence of societal issues and

trends like diversity, the growing need for work-life balance, and an ageing

workforce, that require an organisational response. In other words, it

recognizes the social embeddedness of the organisation and considers relevant

institutional forces and stakeholder groups (= connecting and inclusive HRM).

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o A third building block within the ROC model is Continuity. It is the long-term

perspective from the viewpoints of both the organisational relationship and the

employee relationship. Companies strive to create conditions under which they

can survive over a relatively long time, and sustainable HRM can contribute to

this process (= innovative and career oriented HRM).

Decent work - Involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income,

security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal

development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize

and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and

treatment for all women and men.

Transformational leadership - Is a leadership style in which leaders encourage, inspire and

motivate employees to innovate and create change that will help grow and shape the future

success of the company.

Self-determination theory - According to this theory, intrinsic motivation is caused by a few

fundamental needs that must be fulfilled. The needs responsible are called ABC-needs;

namely autonomy, belongingness, competence.

Isomorphism - Refers to a connection between the prevailing social norms and values and

other processes within an industry group.

Horizontal integration - Transparent translation of competences to HRM-practices.

Vertical integration - Knowledge of mission and goals gives insight in the main values an

competences.

Sustainable career management - Refers to all the processes and practices that manage the

development of individuals along a path of experiences and jobs with respect for employees,

openness towards different stakeholders and in view of continuity.

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Chapter 9

Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) – Is about the assessment and mitigation of risks

that may impact the health, safety or welfare of customers, employees, visitors, contractors,

volunteers and suppliers in a workplace.

Value drivers – HRM practices that are related to enhancing human capital for achieving

corporate performances.

Human capital - Individual characteristics that are beneficial for the organisation.

Stakeholder harm of work index - A catalogue to capture the harmful (unsustainable) aspects

of reduced psychological, social and work related health well-being outcomes for the

stakeholders (employees, their families, and the community) and the aggregate social costs of

welfare loss due to such harmful aspects caused by either a specific form of HPWP or a

bundle of HPWPs.

Social costs – The costs imposed on the society/government for managing the psychological,

social and work related health harm of work practices experienced by both employees and

their family members.

Self-regulation – A system which organisations voluntarily use to manage the harm of work

imposed on stakeholders and environment.

Occupational stress - Studies about work stressors (individual, group, organisational and

extra-organisational levels), appraisal and coping strategies on health and social (family)

outcomes of work stress.

Health harm of work - The health harm of work is defined as employee’s perception of

restrictions for positive health and work related leading indicators for negative health of

work.

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Social/family harm of work - The perceived severity of work restrictions imposed on family

activities and the prevalence of effects of social harm of work, which reduce social well-

being outcomes for employees.

Sustainable leadership - Is about those behaviours, organisational practices and systems that

facilitate enduring value for all stakeholders of organisations (i.e., shareholders, employees,

the environment, future generations and the community).

Green HRM practices – A bundle HRM practices deploying a firm-specific resource (i.e.

human resources) to increase the firm’s environmental performance on recycling of wastage,

increased use of renewable energy etc.

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Chapter 10

Sustainability reporting - Documentation of the efforts and progress made towards

improvements regarding economic, environmental and social impacts of businesses.

Global Reporting Initiative - International non-profit multi stakeholder organisation

which develops guidelines for sustainability reporting.

Global Reporting Initiative Framework – A framework for voluntary sustainability

reporting with an aim to increase business contribution trough transparency.

Performance indicators - They consist of quantitative and/or qualitative information about

sustainability outcomes.

UN Global Compact - World’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative created

by the United Nations.

B-Lab - Private non-profit organisation looking to establish “business as a force for

good”; carries out the B-Corp certification which includes the measurement of the social

and environmental performance of businesses.

B-Corps - Organisations that fulfil about half of the about 150 social and environmental

criteria and are certified.

Economy of the Common Good - Social movement that originated in German-speaking

countries, which represents an alternative economic model; this alternative economic

model is neither capitalist nor communist but has very strong democratic elements.

Common Good Matrix - Core element of the assessment of sustainable business practices

in the Economy of the Common Good; contains policy goals for different stakeholders

and values.

Future Fit Framework - Framework created by the non –profit foundation Future-Fit

which includes absolute corporate performance objectives or thresholds to achieve in four

broad sustainability areas.

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Assessment of sustainability performance - A framework (i.e., B-Corp, Economy of the

Common Good etc.,) for evaluating the sustainability performance of a company, either

independently or compared to other firms.

Leading indicators for occupational health – Work related psycho-social and biological risk

factors that have the potential to predict future negative health outcomes for workers, and

should be amenable to changes by organisational level interventions to prevent negative

health outcomes.

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Chapter 11

HR roles - A relatively stable structure of the social interactions in a work related position.

HR competencies - The underlying meta-abilities and attributes of an employee for achieving

improved performance in HR roles while interacting with social job/position contexts.

Strategic HR roles - Roles which develop and implement a value-enhancing HR strategy for

firms and to participate in business strategic making processes.

Strategic HR competencies - The ability of HR to develop and implement an effective HRM

system that is instrumental to achieve a firm's strategic goals.

Sustainable HR roles - Roles are about HR professionals managing the opportunities and

constrains of corporate sustainability using stakeholder relations management (including

employees, consumers and environment) to achieve sustainable HRM performance outcomes.

Sustainable HRM performance outcomes - Include improved organisational performances

and prosocial organisational behaviour towards the key stakeholders (i.e., employees, their

families, supply chain HRM practices and the society) and environment.

Integrated sustainable HR roles - HR professionals improvise and construct new knowledge

through role identity construction by engaging in interdependent dedicated sustainable HR

roles to achieve sustainable HRM performance outcomes.

Fusion of sustainable HR roles - HR professionals to develop innovative sustainable role

identities by involving in multiple sustainable HR roles and continue to reframe and maintain

the role tension based on prosocial conscience to achieve sustainable HRM performance

outcomes.

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Sustainable HR competencies - The underlying attributes of HR professionals that are

important for achieving sustainable HRM performance outcomes (i.e., improved

organisational performance and prosocial organisational behaviour).

Prosocial behaviour – Employees exhibit greater reciprocity with others depending on the

degree of cooperation, and strongly inclined to exhibit the same level of cooperation as they

expected from others.

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Chapter 12

Globalisation - Highlights the closer integration of worldwide economies and countries

through trade, technology and reduced transportation costs.

Glocalising - Companies seeking to generate a geographically concentrated inter-company

division of labour.

Free market economy – A less interventionist government system of economic exchange.

Business ethics - Goes beyond the legal requirements for common good, and it includes

norms, standards and expectations that reflect a belief in what employees, consumers,

shareholders and the global community regard as fair, just and consistent with the respect for

and protection of stakeholders’ moral rights.

Corporate social responsibility - Corporate profits and societal interests are mutually dependent

and need to be viewed from a long-term perspective.

Global sustainable HRM - The universal values of HRM that are transferred by MNEs/MNCs

to subsidiaries in varied host countries, based on congruence and divergence in culture, social

and institutional systems, to improve organisational performances as well as reduce the

negative social and environmental outcomes imposed on stakeholders (i.e. subsidiary

employees, host country environment and society).

National culture - Facilitates and/or inhibits employee behaviour subconsciously and that

moulds organisational work culture.

Social good - Refers to individual and community welfare encompassing a range of issues

across different realms, such as preservation and improvement of the local ecology,

enhancement of living conditions, and increased availability of livelihood opportunities.

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Dharma - Highlights work as a duty for the ‘social good’ and is the means by which to

acquire wealth through righteousness (i.e. social responsibility) for salvation.

Human rights - The inherent value of each person, regardless of background, where we live, what we

look like, what we think or what we believe. Human rights are based on principles of dignity, equality

and mutual respect, which are shared across cultures, religions and philosophies. They are about being

treated fairly, treating others fairly and having the ability to make genuine choices in our daily lives.

Institutionalizing global sustainable HRM practices – Organisational level processes, such as

employee training and education, are used to facilitate implementation of the divergent

universal values of global sustainable HRM practices to subsidiaries of MNEs.

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