Advancing corporate environmental performance through green human resource management and employee pro-environmental behavior: a narrative review

Abstract

The intensification of environmental pressures has established firms as both a principal source of environmental burden and an indispensable actor in environmental governance, motivating a search for organizational levers that translate environmental goals into measurable outcomes. This narrative review synthesizes research published mainly between 2015 and 2025, together with foundational theoretical contributions, on the relationships among green human resource management (GHRM), employee pro-environmental behavior (PEB), and corporate environmental performance, drawing primarily on Scopus and Web of Science. Rather than claiming exhaustive systematic coverage or asserting causal inference, the review integrates the multiple mediating mechanisms through which GHRM operates, positions PEB as an important proximal behavioral pathway to measurable environmental outcomes, and organizes the boundary conditions that shape GHRM efficacy across four analytical levels. On this basis, it advances an integrative framework centered on corporate environmental performance and articulates a research and policy agenda oriented toward emissions reduction and environmental governance.