Sustainable Green Human Resource Management Practices in Educational Institutions: An Interpretive Structural Modelling and Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach

Abstract

Green Human Resources Management (GHRM) is an alignment of traditional human resource practices such as strategies, policies, procedures, and rules to the latest green and sustainable environment responsive practices. Unlike corporates, the adoption of GHRM in educational institutes (EIs) is still in its infancy stage. Through an extensive literature survey, this study identified eleven challenges in adopting the GHRM “strategy”, ten on “policy”, nine on the “procedures”, and eight on framing the GHRM “rules” aspect. The aim is to identify and develop the relationship between major and minor challenges in adopting GHRM practices in EIs. Hence, this study has applied the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) technique to each GHRM practice and developed interrelation among such challenges and results verified with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The rankings of both techniques have been statistically verified with the Spearman Rank Correlation technique. The study concludes the lacking or insufficient considered four main pillars: clear vision and top management cooperation among these EIs to ensure sustainable GHRM practices from the strategy aspect perspective, benchmark in fixing accountability considering the policy aspect, suitable course curricula in universities focused on GHRM practices from procedural viewpoint, and transparency in EIs from the perspective of rules as significant challenges in GHRM adoption. The findings of the reported results can be further extended in cross-sectional and cross-cultural studies in further studies.

1. Introduction

Green Human Resources Management (GHRM) aligns traditional HR strategies, policies, practices, and rules to the latest green drivers encompassing sustainability, environmental responsiveness, knowledge capital preservation, resource efficiency, and acceptance of a unit as a socially responsible enterprise. The term green HRM is not very old and gaining popularity owing to increasing awareness of humanity toward environmental protection. Stockholm Declaration of 1972, popularly known as the Magna Carta for environment protection, has guided us to shape our actions in promoting and caring for environmental protection around the globe [1]. Hence, both the manufacturing and service sectors have stepped forward to take the onus and contribute honestly to the global environment [2,3]. Among all the segments of environmental improvement [4], the human environment is an area that requires comprehensive efforts on the part of concerned institutions. Environmental protection [5] requires a dedicated green workforce to understand and promote green culture in the existing system. The majority of the organizations in the world are adopting, applying, and transforming their existing HR systems to incorporate green and sustainable HR policies. Their dedicated teams, more or less, are working hard to transfigure themselves into a Green workforce. Even the modern EIs are not lagging on this front and have attempted to adopt all the practices related to GHRM [6]. These institutions have revolutionized themselves to assist their stakeholders’ environmental protection policies. The revolutionized green workforce will be more efficient, competitive, and ready to contribute more toward environmental gradation. Green HRM makes the stakeholders, employees, and incumbents ready to deliver positively.

Hence, GHRM in EIs is directly associated with protecting the environment within the system. It requires laying down green strategies, policies, practices, and rules and regulations to assist management, employees, staff, students, parents, society, and all other stakeholders. Once adopted in letter and spirit, it results in efficient usage of organizational resources, lesser costs [5], the attraction of talented staff [7], enhanced employee engagement, eco-friendly culture [1], a better public image, boosting the morale of employees, environment protection [5], and finally, enhanced competition. Modern-day organizations are adopting GHRM in terms of e-recruitment [5], e-training and development [7], green compensation, preserving knowledge base [5], green employer-employee relationships, better employee participation, and green buildings [7]. Hence, GHRM usually works as an instrumental strategy [8] for environmental up-gradation through a team of empowered green employees [9] and green organizational culture [1,4]. This paves the way for green strategies [10], policies, practices, rules [11], and regulations.

Despite considerable advancements in this area [9], this field is in its infancy stage, especially in the case of EIs. This study extends the existing literature by understanding the challenges faced by modern EIs in adopting GHRM. The pertinent question arises why there is a need to understand the application of GHRM in already established educational institutes these days. EIs need to be competitive, retain talent, require image building, attract better employees, develop eco-friendly culture, improve employee’s morale [12], be socially responsive institutes, and ensure sustainability, and finally, environment upgradation [13]. Green EIs are better strategized, choose excellent sustainable policies, follow best HR practices, and go ahead with the best rules and regulations. The challenges in adopting GHRM in EIs are different from corporate challenges. So, the present work has categorized various challenges from a detailed literature survey. The study has raised the research queries:

RQ1: Explore the major and minor challenges in adopting GHRM practices in EIs?

The EIs understand the challenges in adopting sustainable practices, workable mechanisms to be adopted, restraints posed by each challenge, possible solutions, and follow-up strategy. It will help the EIs lay down appropriate procedures, policies, and rules and regulations to make their system sustainable and environmentally friendly. The study has limited its scope to identifying the major challenges only. Hence, the study has surveyed existing publications and attempted to explore the research gaps.

1.1. Identification of Research Gaps

There is no harm in saying that modern EIs are striving hard to convert themselves into green institutions, but the transformation rate is low, which has been understood from the lacunas in existing publications and leads to research gaps.

Not much work has been reported for exploring the major and minor challenges faced by EIs in adopting GHRM and understanding the need to adopt it as a foundation platform.

There is a dearth in the efforts required to overcome challenges faced by EIs. These challenges require us to provide pragmatic confirmations based on ISM and AHP framework as a theoretical model.

1.2. Research Motivation, Objectives and Intended Contribution of the Study

The survey has revealed a dearth of existing literature on GHRM in the EIs. Applying GHRM in EIs required critical attention and comprehension in a novel, structured manner. Most policymakers continuously talk about GHRM in corporate, but no positive and sincere moves have been taken in EIs. The present investigation has strived to fill the existing gap by understanding why EIs are not behind in adopting GHRM practices. The study has aimed to research objectives (RO).

RO-1 To explore the major and minor challenges to GHRM implementation in EIs.

RO-2 To model these challenges in adopting GHRM by such institutions with the help of ISM and AHP.

1.3. Expected Contributions of the Study

The contribution of the study will be:

• To recapitulate various disparate variables as challenges from literature as an autonomous challenge in the adoption of GHRM practices in EIs;
• Understand the driving and dependent power of each autonomous challenge in such adoption;
• Help the policymakers and all stakeholders in EIs to draw rational solutions for hassle-free early adoption of GHRM practices.

Henceforth, Section 2 of this work deals with the Material and Methods, and Section 3 describes the theoretical framework and the identification of challenges in the GHRM. Then, next, Section 4 discusses the results, variable analysis, and interpretation. Next, Section 5 deals with the discussion and contribution in terms of the upshots and implications of the study and finally, Section 6 offers concluding remarks on the study.

2. Material and Methods

The whole process of the present investigation has been discussed below.

2.1. Research Design

The challenges have been identified in four practices of GHRM, viz. strategy, policy, procedure, and rules and regulations in adoption. The study has adopted a descriptive research design with a snowball sampling technique in the case of expert selection for responses. The target population of the study is experts from universities and colleges. The data has been collected from a self-structured questionnaire comprising challenges in adopting GHRM practices in EIs. To reach a final questionnaire, a draft questionnaire was prepared, modified by two experts from a renowned university, and content analysis was done by a team of three experts from their respective fields and again reviewed by the previous experts. ISM and AHP techniques require a brainstorming session of selected experts from the respective field. Therefore, a meeting with 13 experts was made, for which an event was arranged at one commonplace. A specifically designed questionnaire was distributed among experts with varied experience in their fields to collect their responses. Naturally, there were chances of response error or some bias, which was later removed through personal mediation, and disagreement among views was reconsidered and discussed again. All the final responses were later summarized in binary coding, compiled in a datasheet, and analyzed with relevant research methodology. The secondary data has been taken only from the published sources. The study has analyzed information with the help of ISM and ranked various challenges, and verified with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The work flow structure of proposed investigation is shown in Figure 1.

AHP is a methodical approach based on sociology and statistics for organizing and understanding complicated decisions. Thomas L. Saaty created it in the 1970s, and it has undergone substantial research and improvement. It offers a thorough and logical structure for organizing a decision problem, outlining and measuring its components, connecting them to overarching objectives, and assessing potential solutions. It is a precise method for calculating the relative importance of the various decision-making factors [14,15]. AHP begins by breaking down the decision issue into a hierarchy of simpler subproblems. Each hierarchy factor is given a numerical weight or priority, enabling various and frequently irreconcilable items to be evaluated logically and systematically. Every participant evaluates the relative value of each pair of elements by filling out the explicitly created questionnaire using pair-wise comparison. The AHP transforms these assessments into numerical values that may be analyzed and compared. The AHP’s last step determines the numerical priority for each influential factor/aspect. These statistics indicate how effectively each choice will achieve the chosen course of action, providing easy comparison of the numerous options [16,17].

2.2. Deployment of ISM and AHP Technique on Challenges in the Adoption of GHRM Practices in EIs

The technique of ISM [18] has the potential to deal with complex decision-making problems and to reach interweaving complex relations among them. The present challenges in adopting GHRM practices in EIs are quite interrelated and need to be examined in their mutual connection. Hence, the ISM technique is appropriate for building such interwoven relationships among these challenges. ISM technique uses binary coding with (0, 1) to establish relationships among these challenges. Later AHP technique [17] was adopted to re-rank these challenges and justify the ranking obtained with ISM. The steps to use ISM and AHP are shown in Figure 2. In addition, a statistical approach of Spearman ranking examination for correlation in the rankings obtained from AHP and ISM techniques has been tested with a 5% confidence interval significance level.

3. The Theoretical Framework of the Present Investigation

The present investigation has made an in-depth survey of existing challenges faced by modern EIs in transforming their traditional HR practices into GHRM practices. The survey comprised exploration of all related published work followed by screening and selection of final publications related to only GHRM circumscribed to EIs on available databases such as Elsevier, Springer, Emerald, etc., to avoid missing relevant work. The survey has examined the likely challenges faced by EIs in transforming their existing HR system into sustainable and GHRM and the applicability the of ISM technique [19,20] to the challenges so identified. This survey was done for the period 1982 to 2022. Unfortunately, there are only 549 studies on GHRM, mainly on corporate, whereas there are only five studies about EI.

3.1. Division of Existing Literature

The entire survey of the current literature has been carried out via three stages: the exploration phase, shepherding phase, and final phase.

The exploration phase consists of an extensive review of the existing literature related to barriers discussed by academicians, industry experts, and other research scholars. A comprehensive review is carried out to the literature on well-known, electronically published databases. The sole purpose is to avoid skipping any significant paper. Another survey is also performed to determine the scope of applicability of ISM upon challenges.

The shepherding phase consists of selected research work related to GHRM with keywords such as GHRM, ISM, Strategies, HR policies, HR practices, and HR rules and regulations. Moreover, the study has covered publications in the English language only and excluded articles published in books, conference proceedings, etc.

The final phase consists of publication selection. The study has considered only those studies dealing with the challenges in the transformation from traditional to sustainable GHRM Practices. In the next stage, the study was further confined to EIs and finally squiggled down on a paper to give them a common name and platform to represent as a challenge. Hence, the study has included the final eleven challenges related to strategy, ten related to policies, nine related to practices, and eight related to rules and regulations in such transformation.

3.2. Historical Background of the GHRM

GHRM is mainly associated with and emerged from the long deliberations of corporate sustainability and sustainable development. The main credit for pinning down the concept of Green HRM goes to Wehrmeyer, who proposed that the employee of any organization is the key component to achieving the solid aim of adopting the environmental awareness approach [21]. Ali has viewed the significant contribution of GHRM strategies [1] in environment management after the introduction of green marketing [22], green accounting [23], and green management practices. The study has attempted to envisage the role of GHRM from entry to exit process of employees and the role of HR processes in translating HR policies into green practices. The given role is extendable in all HR fields, including recruitment [24,25], selection [26], performance management [25], training and development [24], Pay and Reward System [27], and employment relation [25]. Now the [21] applicability of GHRM has moved further from corporate to EIs.

3.3. Green HRM and Educational Institutions

The contribution of GHRM to EIs should be taken into account. These institutions are essential stakeholders in ensuring environment management [28] and green practices [29]. They set a precedent in categorizing, cossetting, invigorating, and nourishing environment-related issues and embarking upon and facing challenges. The employees’ adoption of green practices in EIs largely depends upon GHRM strategies, policies, procedures, rules, and regulations, extracted from extensive data mining of existing literature review and depicted in

Table 1. Challenges extraction from literature survey.

Challenge	GHRM Practices	Challenges Extraction Supported by Literature Survey
GHRM Adoption Strategies in EIs
SC1	Lack of top management cooperation	[1,30,31]
SC2	Poor supportive infrastructure on campuses	[32,33]
SC3	Lack of environmentally friendly HR practices	[1,7]
SC4	Lack of strategies for the preservation of knowledge capital	[5,34]
SC5	The communication gap between various levels of management	[35,36,37]
SC6	Lack of commitment and adaptation among employees	[25,38]
SC7	Personality and leadership deficiency in the academia in the implementation of GHRM	[35,37,39]
SC8	No vision for implementation	[1,31]
SC9	Lack of university-institutional understanding of GHRM	[32,33]
SC10	Lack of suitable GHRM Model for EIs	[1,7]
SC11	Lack of clarity and rationale about the objectives of HRM	[1,5]
GHRM Adoption Policy in EIs
PC1	Lack of awareness among stakeholders for GHRM practices in EIs	[5,7]
PC2	Lack of employee engagement and involvement	[31,40]
PC3	Lack of organization recognition for green employees	[7,24,25]
PC4	Lack of sensitization toward waste minimization among various managerial cadres	[41,42]
PC5	The communication gap between various levels of management	[35,36,37]
PC6	Lack of grievance redressal mechanisms for issues about GHRM	[43,44]
PC7	Lack of accounting model of social cost and benefit analysis for academia	[31,41]
PC8	No clear e-recruiting and selection procedure	[45,46,47,48]
PC9	Failure to fix accountability for implementation of GHRM	[5,31,49]
PC10	Lack of benchmarking in EIs for GHRM	[32,38]
GHRM Adoption Procedure in EIs
PrC1	Lack of transformation from traditional to GHRM practices	[24,50]
PrC2	Lack of training and development programs	[5,49]
PrC3	Lack of inter and intra-departmental cooperation	[31]
PrC4	Lack of suitable course curriculums in universities sensitizing GHRM Practices	[32,33]
PrC5	No accepted procedure to fill the gap generated in planned versus actual outcomes	[9]
PrC6	Lack of standard operating procedure for administering GHRM on campuses	[4]
PrC7	The inability of small institutions to afford ERP solutions for GHRM	[9,31,50]
PrC8	Lack of MIS and MDSS in EIs for such practices	[41,51]
PrC9	No centralized warehousing of employees’ credentials for green initiatives	[9,31,50]
GHRM Adoption Rules and Regulation in EIs
RC1	Lack of readiness to adopt the Reduce-Refuse-Recycle policy	[41]
RC2	Lack of support from government and regulatory bodies	[28,52]
RC3	Lack of green audit practices	[34,52]
RC4	Lack of transparency in EIs	[9,33,52,53]
RC5	Failure to develop rule book for GHRM	[36,41,51]
RC6	Lack of adherence of stakeholders to stick to rules laid down	[54,55,56]
RC7	Deviation from GHRM is not a punishable offence in EIs	[54,55,56]
RC8	Following green initiatives is entirely a voluntary act	[40,54,56]

.

4. Results of ISM and AHP

The results have been derived first with the ISM technique and later cross-tested with the AHP technique. Finally, their ranking has been compared with the Spearman correlation technique.

4.1. Application of ISM Technique on GHRM Practices and Analysis

The ISM technique has been deployed on the challenges related to GHRM adoption in EIs. This section deals with Structural Self-Interaction Matrix (SSIM), Initial Reachability Matrix (IRM), Final Reachability Matrix (FRM), Level partitions, and ISM model diagraphs construction for each practice related to GHRM.

4.1.1. Structural Self-Interaction Matrix (SSIM)

In constructing SSIM related to the challenges in GHRM adoption, four alphabets (V, A, X, and O) have been used to develop inter-relations between any two challenges. For example,

V—Challenge α will help to achieve challenge β;

A—Challenge β will help to achieve Challenge α;

X—Challenge α and β will help to achieve each other;

O—Challenge α and β do not have any type of relation.

The relationships so derived, in actuality, have been shown in

Table 2. SSIM on challenges in adoption of GHRM in EIs.

	Challenges associated with strategy
Strategy	Challenge Code	SC2	SC3	SC4	SC5	SC6	SC7	SC8	SC9	SC10	SC11
	SC1	V	V	V	V	X	V	V	X	V	V
	SC2		X	X	A	V	A	A	O	V	A
	SC3			O	X	O	A	A	X	A	A
	SC4				A	A	A	A	A	A	A
	SC5					V	A	A	O	O	V
	SC6						A	A	O	O	A
	SC7							V	X	V	V
	SC8								V	V	V
	SC9									V	V
	SC10										V
Challenges associated with Policies
Policies	Challenge Code	PC2	PC3	PC4	PC5	PC6	PC7	PC8	PC9	PC10
	PC1	O	X	V	V	V	V	V	A	A
	PC2		V	A	A	A	O	O	A	O
	PC3			A	A	O	O	O	A	O
	PC4				A	O	O	O	A	A
	PC5					V	O	O	A	O
	PC6						O	O	O	O
	PC7							O	O	A
	PC8								O	O
	PC9									O
Challenges associated with Procedures
Procedure	Challenge Code	PrC2	PrC3	PrC4	PrC5	PrC6	PrC7	PrC8	PrC9
	PrC1	A	A	A	A	A	A	A	A
	PrC2		V	A	V	A	A	A	A
	PrC3			O	O	A	O	O	O
	PrC4				O	O	O	O	O
	PrC5					A	A	A	A
	PrC6						A	X	X
	PrC7							X	X
	PrC8								X
Challenges associated with Rules and Regulations
Rules	Challenge Code	RC2	RC3	RC4	RC5	RC6	RC7	RC8
	RC1	X	A	O	A	V	A	A
	RC2		V	O	O	O	X	X
	RC3			O	A	A	A	V
	RC4				O	O	O	O
	RC5					V	V	A
	RC6						V	A
	RC7							A

.

4.1.2. Reachability Matrix

The initial reachability matrix is obtained from the SSIM matrix already drafted from the challenges derived in adopting GHRM. First, the letters V, A, X, and O are converted into binary numbers (‘0’, ‘1’). Then, the conversion rule helps find the relation between each challenge [16].

From this conventional conversion rule, an initial reachability matrix has been obtained. Then, transitivity checks have been applied, and a final reachability matrix, as shown in Figure 3, is obtained along with each challenge’s driving and dependence power (DP), and CD stands for challenge code, as shown in Figure 4. This matrix has been used to evaluate all levels of partitioning for all the GHRM practices. Finally, the later power of each challenge was calculated and ranked. The lower the rank, the higher the power of each challenge, as shown in Figure 5, which contributes more toward calculating the dependency factor. From here, the ISM diagraphs have been constructed. Before that, it is necessary to cross-examine the ranking obtained through the ISM technique; hence, the results have been obtained with the help of AHP [17].

4.2. Application of AHP on GHRM Practices

AHP has been deployed on various challenges related to GHRM adoption in EIs. AHP methodology, as shown in Figure 2, is in line with the various steps [14,57]. It consists of pair-wise comparison of different attributes/challenges. The results obtained by various experts (Section 2.1) for GHRM strategy, policy, procedures, and rules are shown in Figure 6.

There are 55, 45, 45, and 28 comparisons for attributes/challenges of GHRM strategy, policy, procedures, and rules, respectively. The comparisons for GHRM strategy, policy, procedures, and rules achieved a consistency ratio (CR) of 7%, 9.1%, 6.9%, and 8.3%, respectively, with the maximum principal Eigenvalue achieved being 12.06, 11.22, 10.93, and 8.81. The CR is less than ten per cent, which suggests that the judgment made by decision makers when allocating values to the matrix for pair-wise comparisons is highly accurate. The weights and ranks attained are depicted in

Table 3. AHP results and statistical association of rankings obtained with ISM.

Strategy	SC1	SC2	SC3	SC4	SC5	SC6	SC7	SC8	SC9	SC10	SC11
ISM Rank	3	5	7	11	8	5	1	1	4	10	8
AHP Rank	2	6	9	11	8	5	3	1	4	7	10
Weight (%)	20.30	7.30	3.00	2.50	3.00	8.60	15.80	20.50	12.50	3.50	3.00
Number of comparisons = 55; CR = 7.0%; Principal Eigen-value = 12.06; Eigenvector solution: 6 iterations, delta = 3.6 × 10−8 R = 0.911 statistically significant p = 0.00 at α = 5%
Policy	PC1	PC2	PC3	PC4	PC5	PC6	PC7	PC8	PC9	PC10
ISM Rank	4	8	5	6	3	7	9.5	9.5	1.5	1.5
AHP Rank	4	6	9	8	3	7	10	5	2	1
Weight (%)	11.40	4.30	3.20	3.30	14.20	3.90	3.10	5.00	23.20	28.50
Number of comparisons = 45; CR = 9.1%; Principal Eigen-value = 11.22; Eigenvector solution: 6 iterations, delta = 5.0 × 10−9 R = 0.726 statistically significant p = 0.018 at α = 5%,
Procedure	PrC1	PrC2	PrC3	PrC4	PrC5	PrC6	PrC7	PrC8	PrC9
ISM Rank	9	6	7.5	1	7.5	3.75	3.75	3.75	3.75
AHP Rank	9	8	6	1	7	4	3	5	2
Weight (%)	3.10	3.50	3.80	36.00	3.70	9.60	12.00	8.90	14.70
Number of comparisons = 45; CR = 6.9%; Principal Eigen-value = 10.93; Eigenvector solution: 6 iterations, delta = 5.8 × 10−9 R = 0.895 statistically significant p = 0.00 at α = 5%
Rules	RC1	RC2	RC3	RC4	RC5	RC6	RC7	RC8
ISM Rank	7	3.75	7	3.75	1	7	3.75	3.75
AHP Rank	8	7	5	2	1	6	4	3
Weight (%)	4.80	6.10	8.60	14.20	40.30	7.50	8.60	10.00
Number of comparisons = 28; CR = 8.3%; Principal Eigen-value = 8.81; Eigenvector solution: 5 iterations, delta = 1.3 × 10−8 R = 0.730 statistically significant p = 0.04 at α = 5%

.

There is a need to compare the ranking obtained through AHP and ISM techniques. Hence, the Pearson rank correlation has been applied to each GHRM practice. The R values of 0.911, 0.726, 0.895, and 0.73 are statistically significant with p values of 0.00, 0.018, 0.00, and 0.04 at α = 5%, showing agreement in the ranking of GHRM strategies, policies, procedures, and rules, respectively, for ISM and AHP. The AHP results and statistical association of rankings obtained with ISM can be seen in Table 3. The study has a shown high statistically significant correlation between the rankings obtained with the help of both techniques. Hence, it is possible to model/represent these challenges in the form of ISM diagraphs.

4.3. ISM Diagraph Construction in Case of Adoption of GHRM Practices in EIs

An ISM digraph is constructed from the final partition levels after all possible iterations between the antecedent sets, reachability sets, and deriving intersection sets. The investigation has derived the ISM diagraphs on each GHRM practice, Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 9 and Figure 10.

4.3.1. Challenges in the Adoption of GHRM Strategy in EIs

GHRM have identified HRM practices such as employee involvement, talent management, employee development, performance management efficiency of HR processes, and measuring HR [58]. These practices are essential to managing knowledge capital and ensuring a sustainable environment. GHRM ensures strategic implementation of HR practices and policies in EIs, as shown in Figure 7. However, unlike corporate, EIs are less inclined toward sustainability, green work culture, and strategic implementation. Most EIs do not contribute to implementing GHRM strategically on their premises, typically due to a lack of top management cooperation. This is the biggest challenge in front of most EIs as any educational authorities do not fund these institutes in this regard. Undoubtedly, they are already involved in philanthropic protection of the environment and ethical policies for their faculty and social services.

Hence, top management in these institutions shows little reluctance in ensuring sustainability and enacting environment-protecting practices on their premises. The absence of cooperation is the biggest challenge these institutes face, leading to further paucity on the part of personality and directed leadership in academia. Primarily directors, principals, and other administrative authorities are expected to do what their management is interested in. Most of the EIs consider the contribution toward GHRM as not a part of academia but rather the superfluous assignment of policymakers of their states. State agencies, considering considerations described above, develop some curricula, which mainly is not properly considered part of final grading. So, the students become resistant to their practical implementation and therefore, these institutes are deprived mostly of vision in this regard. This challenge further aggravates the conduit more on the strategic aspects due to a gap in the operative communication at various levels of their management. Henceforth, less cooperation from top management, leadership, and guidance at various levels do not spawn any crucial university-institutional level understanding on this severe note. This is why most organizations lack any suitable GHRM model and any clarity and rationale about the strategic implementation of the same. Finally, such EIs suffer from poor GHRM supportive infrastructure in their campuses, poor environmentally friendly practices, no strategy for preserving the knowledge capital, and any commitment or adaptation among employees toward GHRM.

4.3.2. Challenges in the Adoption of GHRM Policy in EIs

HRM policies are ideally designed reference notes available to the administrators to manage their staff and keep the working process in order, as shown in Figure 8.

The shifting from traditional to GHRM helps the sustainability of knowledge capital, the welfare of the staff, and the organization’s growth. However, regarding the implementation of GHRM and the expectation of the top management from their employees to abide by the fixed mechanism, there must be well-written policies in this regard. When these EIs abide by these policies, it helps them perform their assignments well and makes them more disciplined. In the absence of a respective policy framework, the EIs cannot explain to their employees the expected work and conduct and fail to ensure a secure working environment for them. The study has also shown that most EIs do not have any benchmark and robust policy for fixing accountability for non-implementation of GHRM in their institute. Then, various stakeholders do not bother about the essence of its implementation in their EIs. This creates a communication gap among various levels of management, and a chain is broken due to the non-cooperation. Hence, the protection of the environment, sensitization toward waste management, and handling grievances of employees with green ingenuities do not make much sense among most stakeholders. All of this led to low or lack of engagement and involvement of the employees toward sustainability and green initiatives. It has also been observed that even many EIs do not recognize their employees for the green initiatives undertaken. Such recognition is possible only when some accounting model exists for acknowledging and evaluating the overall social cost and benefit of an adoption and shift to GHRM. An exhaustive GHRM model decides the ultimate cost and benefit of adopting, recruiting, and selecting green employees.

4.3.3. Challenges in the Adoption of GHRM Procedure in EIs

GHRM procedures mainly help EIs lower overall costs by preserving their knowledge capital (refer to Figure 9). The GHRM procedures offer huge potential to grow excellently, offer conducive opportunities, and generate an adequate friendly and substantial working environment. The successful implementation of GHRM in any EI requires a solidly designed procedure for gauging vital involvement from all stakeholders, including students and faculty (course curriculum), staff (HR and operating procedure), departments (cooperation and coordination), the organization itself (MIS and MDSS), and others (green credentials), and implementation of GHRM in any academia requires a detailed procedure in this regard.

It requires a detailed suitable course curriculum, standard operating procedure, affordable ERP solutions, extensive MIS and MDSS, and centralized warehousing of the green credentials of the employees. The lack of these leads to comprehensive training and development of such employees. The lack of GHRM procedures also leads to inter and intradepartmental cooperation among employees. Non-cooperation results in no procedure for filling the gap generated. Finally, there is no adequate procedure for transformation from traditional to GHRM.

4.3.4. Challenges in the Adoption of GHRM Rules and Regulations in EIs

GHRM rules and regulations complement the GHRM strategies, GHRM policies, and GHRM practices (refer to Figure 10). These are the essential guidelines governing all aspects of HRM comprising hiring, training and development, employment contracts, compensation and reward, working environment, and all other employment-related policies and practices to manage their people. The set of pre-designed and tested rules and regulations ensures the successful implementation of GHRM in any EI. However, the study has shown that in most EIs, deviation from GHRM is not a punishable offence. Hereafter, nobody caters to developing a rule book explaining what is expected from others and their accountability. This is why most of the EIs are not contributing toward environmentally friendly policies such as the adoption of reducing, refusing, and recycling policy, absence of any solid green audit practices, transparency in the institutions, and adherence of stakeholders in laying down rules related to GHRM. Following the green initiative is not entirely voluntary in these institutions, leading to lesser involvement. These EIs also lack initiatives due to insufficient support from government and regulatory bodies.

5. Discussion, Comparative Analysis with Existing Publications and Implications

This study offers valid insights related to challenges faced by modern EIs in implementing GHRM practices on their premises. There is no doubt that much literature in the recent past has talked about the implementation of GHRM. However, most of the studies have inclined toward the corporate sector only, and there exists a huge gap in understanding why most EIs are not voluntarily adopting GHRM Practices. The present study also contributes to the existing literature on challenges these EIs in terms of GHRM strategical aspects, sustainable practices, GHRM policies, rules and regulations, which remained unexplored earlier by the modern academicians, researchers, and policymakers. The present study has filled this gap and came up with essential findings. Valid for all the EIs containing schools, colleges, universities, and other higher institutions.

The results of this study are in parallel terms with those [1,32] for alerting the poor supportive role of top management in implementing GHRM at their campuses [32,53] for understanding the role of universities in ensuring green practices at affiliated colleges level in terms of a strategically lapse in GHRM adoption. The institutes fail to fix the responsibility for successful implementation [7,49] and no benchmarking [32]. The authors have advised strict compliance with the GHRM policy aspect on the part of top management. On the procedural aspect, the study directs university introduction course curricula to sensitize the EIs [32,33]. These EIs hardly go beyond the syllabi decided by the universities and become binding on their part. However, adopting standard operating procedures is discretionary but helpful in fixing responsibility [4]. Green practices are the need of the present time for all institutions, whether educational or not. Deviation from such practices must be punishable [1,54]. So, the present findings are attuned to most of the studies available in this regard.

Implications of the Study

The study has suggested practical models for building the major dependence and driving power of the challenges faced by EIs in the implementation of GHRM. The four models describe the power of GHRM practices in overcoming all major and minor challenges. GHRM strategies and policies have the potential to attract better students in their institutes, quality faculty, staff with an innovative mindset, and better response from society and policymakers. Pro-environmentally friendly rules and regulations make the system self-driven and create a more sustainable work culture. Overall, EIs feel self-driven, offer quality CSR, and become more profitable in the long run. The study has suggested that policymakers must explore sustainable and pro-environmentally friendly organizational culture in EIs as the basic familiarity regarding environment protection starts from here only. The sensitivity regarding the generation of green human resources will add to other already existing noble activities carried out mainly by EIs. Once the implications of the policies and strategy of this study are implemented in letter and spirit by any EI, the institute will have a definite edge over its rivals and contribute to society in real terms.

6. Conclusions

Environmental and sustainability issues are becoming the prima facie responsibility of EIs worldwide. These EIs are the primary leader in initiating environmental protection activities during the formation years of future leaders of the society. The present study has aimed to identify the major and minor challenges in adopting GHRM practices in EIs. Hence, the in-depth literature survey identified eleven practices in terms of ‘strategy’, ten on ‘policies’, nine on ‘procedures’ and eight on ‘rules’ and regulations. Then, with the help of the ISM technique, these practices were ranked as major and minor challenges. Later AHP technique was adopted to re-rank these challenges. Finally, a Spearman rank correlation technique was adopted to build a statistical association between the rankings obtained with both techniques, and significance was tested at a 5% significance level. As a result, there is a highly statistically significant correlation in rankings obtained on ‘strategy’ having R of 0.91, the ‘policy’ of R 0.73, the ‘procedure’ of R 0.895, and ‘rules and regulations’ of R 0.73 aspect with ISM and AHP. After justifying the ranking of these challenges, they were modelled with ISM diagraphs.

On the strategy aspect, the study has identified that the ‘lack of vision’ and ‘top management cooperation’ among these EIs to ensure sustainable GHRM practices are major challenges. In contrast, with ‘no strategy for preserving knowledge capital’, the absence of a suitable GHRM Model is a minor strategic challenge. In the case of the ‘policy’ aspect, the study has identified that the ‘lack of benchmarking’ and ‘failure in fixing accountability’ for implementation of GHRM among these EIs are major challenges, whereas the ‘lack of accounting model of social cost’ and ‘benefit analysis for academia’ and ‘lack of organization recognition’ for green employees are the minor policy challenges. The third crucial GHRM practice is green HR procedures in EIs. The study has identified that the ‘lack of suitable course curriculums’ in universities sensitizing GHRM practices and no ‘centralized warehousing of employees’ credentials for green initiatives among these EIs are major challenges, whereas the lack of transformation from traditional to GHRM practices is among the minor procedure challenges. The study has also identified challenges in GHRM rules and regulation aspects.

The study has innovativeness and originality in this direction with the novelty of ideas introduced in terms of GHRM in the case of EIs, which was earlier ignored in the literature. Hence, the investigation has also attempted to add to the existing literature by underlining the lesser role of universities in contributing toward GHRM practices on their premises and affiliated institutes. However, the institutes and their leadership will go ahead if universities themselves set examples at their end by adopting GHRM strategies and policies, issuing mandates for necessary compliance, and guiding the students through compulsory course curriculums. Furthermore, the study has highlighted the mushrooming concept of GHRM as an essential element of sustainable management practices in EIs. Finally, the study has also propounded the role of policymakers, agencies, varsities, and stakeholders in its implementation and offers clear hints regarding environment protection and sustainability.

The findings of the present studies can be further extended in cross-sectional and cross-cultural studies. Lastly, like any study, the current investigation has a specific limitation: the study has been conducted in a particular region and is based upon the views of the selected experts, which may be biased. However, this limitation can be further sorted out by extending its scope to other areas and cross-verifying the results by incorporating more reviews.