Green HRM and Green Organizational Culture as Drivers of Employee Sustainable Behavior in Higher Education: The Moderating Role of Environmentally Specific Transformational Leadership

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by embedding environmental consciousness into institutional systems and work practices. Faculty members in academia play a dual role by educating students and shaping future leaders. Drawing on Ability Motivation Opportunity (AMO) theory and Social Information Processing (SIP) theory, this study examines the relationship between green human resource management (GHRM) and green organizational culture (GOC) on employee sustainable behavior (ESB), and explores the moderating role of environmentally specific transformational leadership (ESTL) among faculty members in HEIs in Pakistan. A quantitative explanatory research design was adopted. Data was collected from faculty members across public and private universities in Punjab, Pakistan. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings reveal that GHRM and GOC have significant positive effects on ESB. In addition, ESTL significantly strengthens the relationship between GHRM and ESB. The study suggests that HEI aiming to align with SDGs can enhance ESB by integrating sustainability initiatives through GHRM, GOC and incorporating ESTL into leadership capacity building. The study offers an integrated empirical framework illustrating how organizational systems and leadership jointly promotes ESB in academia in a developing country context.