Manufacturing firms in emerging economies face growing pressure to improve their environmental performance while maintaining competitive positions. In this context, organizational capabilities related to human resources management and learning processes become particularly relevant. This study examined how green human resource management contributes to environmental performance and green competitiveness through organizational learning culture and employees’ environmental commitment. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, an integrated model was proposed to explain how learning-oriented human resource practices are translated into environmental and competitive outcomes through employee-level behavioral mechanisms. The model was empirically tested using survey data collected from manufacturing firms in Colombia and examined through partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that green human resource management strengthens organizational learning culture, which in turn fosters employees’ environmental commitment and enhances environmental performance. While organizational learning culture does not exert a direct effect on green competitiveness, its influence is fully transmitted through employees’ environmental commitment and environmental performance. These findings extend the dynamic capabilities literature by emphasizing the contribution of employee environmental commitment as a behavioral micro-foundation and offer relevant insights into aligning sustainability-oriented people management with competitive strategies in emerging economy contexts.
Murillo et al. (Sun,) studied this question.