Green Human Resource Management in a Swedish Context : An exploration into the translation of literature to practice in self-proclaimed sustainability-focused companies

Sammanfattning: Title: Green Human Resource Management in a Swedish Context Subtitle: An exploration into the translation of literature to practice in self-proclaimedsustainability-focused companies The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of green human resourcesmanagement practices within Swedish companies by applying a qualitative contentanalysis on a series of semi-structured interviews. The literature review gives a short introduction to the emerging research field of GHRM by presenting it in contrast with human resources management, highlighting the fiveareas mentioned in the research questions. The qualitative content analysis shows that the companies included in the study, with aself-proclaimed sustainability focus, do implement and utilize GHRM practices withinsome of the studied areas. The analysis concludes that the area of employee relations isheavily influenced by GHRM practices, whereas it only partly influences the area ofrecruitment and selection as well as the area of training and development. When itcomes to the areas of performance management and reward management the studyshows that, at this point, GHRM practices are negligible. The theoretical contributions very much coincides with the results of the analysis,whereas the practical contributions lie in the uncovering of actual practices regardingGHRM in Swedish companies. The research questions for the study are: How (if they do) Swedish organizations with a self-proclaimed sustainability focus,implement and utilize ‘green’ practices within the area of recruitment and selection? How (if they do) Swedish organizations with a self-proclaimed sustainability focus,implement and utilize ‘green’ practices within the area of performance management? How (if they do) Swedish organizations with a self-proclaimed sustainability focus,implement and utilize ‘green’ practices within the area of training and development? How (if they do) Swedish organizations with a self-proclaimed sustainability focus,implement and utilize ‘green’ practices within the area of reward management? How (if they do) do Swedish organizations with a self-proclaimed sustainability focus,implement and utilize ‘green’ practices within the area of employee relations?