Environmental Management: A New Challenge for Human Resources Personnel?

Abstract

Current research analyzes the importance of human resources managers in organizational sustainability through the acknowledgement of the external variables and innovatory practices, such as environment management. In fact, the latter is a challenge for organizations and consequently for the human resources’ area. Investigation comprised a revision of the literature: theoretical and empirical articles that deal with the role of human resources’ management and on the environmental issue which is daily in the news. The essay is divided into three parts: the first section emphasizes the role of human resources’ managers; empirical evidences of the activities of HR managers in international contexts are dealt with in the second part; the third section deals with the environmental management issue as a new challenge for HR managers. HR managers should acknowledge and incorporate in human resources practice the environmental dimension from the stages of recruitment, selection and training. If people with attitudes and competences in the environment are rewarded, they will contribute towards an effective environmental management and, consequently, improvements in organizational results will materialize.