Green human resource management and employment law: regulatory frameworks for sustainability-driven workforce transformation in Saudi public universities

Purpose This paper aims to examine whether Saudi employment law and public sector labour regulations provide a sufficient legal basis for mandating sustainability-driven workforce behaviours in public universities under Vision 2030. Design/methodology/approach The study applies doctrinal legal analysis (Hutchinson and Duncan, 2012) with regulatory gap analysis and institutional theory to the Saudi Labour Law (Royal Decree M/51, as amended 2024–2025), the Civil Service Law, the Civil Transactions Law, Nitaqat and Vision 2030 instruments, structured around employer duty specification, employee obligation enforceability and metric integration. Every statutory citation is documented in Table 1. Findings Saudi employment law imposes general safety and conduct duties but no explicit environmental or green competency obligation. The amended Articles 42, 43 and 52 create training policy and model contract leverage points, while Nitaqat remains exclusively nationalisation focused. Sharia uncertainty doctrine does not bar green clauses; it disciplines their drafting towards individual, conduct based formulations. Practical implications The paper proposes bylaw and Nitaqat scoring reforms and three model contractual clauses, while weighing countervailing considerations of academic freedom, compliance cost and tokenistic compliance and drawing out lessons transferable to other Gulf, state directed and Sharia based systems. Originality/value The contribution is conceptual rather than temporal. The 2024–2025 amendments to Articles 42, 43 and 52 convert green human resource management from a voluntary managerial choice into an emerging object of coercive isomorphism, and four Sharia compatible design conditions, definiteness, proportionality, mutuality and transparency, govern the enforceability of the resulting duties.