Human resource management and sustainability linkages: Building theory from functionalist and interpretive paradigms.

Human resource management (HRM) has an important responsibility in supporting higher levels of business sustainability development (BSD). In the past decade, traditional strategic HRM focused on economic goals has been supplemented by environmental and social imperatives, framing a new approach called sustainable HRM (SHRM). My research addresses HRM and sustainability linkages. Little research has been carried out on how human resource (HR) professionals’ roles can fit with a spectrum of levels of BSD. In addition, the communication of HRM supporting sustainability has been explored privileging a quantitative approach. I argue that the relationship can be understood in a complementary way through qualitative and temporal analysis and that different scientific paradigms are needed to enrich the knowledge. The research is structured as a collection of three scientific articles. First, three typologies of HRM professionals’ roles for three levels of BSD are built grounded on roles and paradox theories through a methodological roadmap expressing inherently paradoxical roles and mindsets. This first article is based on a post-positivist, functionalist and universalist approaches. Secondly, a visual rhetoric analysis of photographs in sustainability reports is conducted in a single case study to interpret the messages embedded in the disclosure of the relationship of HRM and sustainability. Finally, the analysis is complemented by a temporal visual rhetoric analysis, which enables us to identify the themes of capabilities, relationships, vulnerability, happiness and national identity that go beyond the standardization of annual reports. The dynamic analysis suggests that the evolution of the disclosure is dependent on contingency in contradiction with sustainability commitment. The second and third articles are underpinned on a subjectivist, constructivist and contextual approach. This research concludes that there is a need to update the HRM roles for BSD and that the relationship between HRM and sustainability is the result of ideologies, contextual and contingent features that are hidden in visual artefacts. My significant contribution to the knowledge is that this research expands the SHRM approach by adopting functionalist and constructivist paradigms, as well as offering methodologies for typology building, unique visual rhetoric procedure and temporal analysis, bridging macro and organizational levels. It raises unexpected issues such as organizational myth making, legitimation of practices, and political and colonial heritages for discussion among practitioners, corporate governance and policy makers. This research illuminates the need to work simultaneously in normative and interpretative perspectives of mindsets to advance in a SHRM approach for the good of the planet.