The Impact of Green Human Resource Management Practices on Sustainable Performance with Emphasis on Green Supply Chain Management Practices and Green Innovation (Case Study: Food Industry Companies in Karaj)

Introduction:
With the increasing global focus on sustainability and the role of manufacturing companies in environmental pollution, organizations have been compelled to integrate green initiatives into their operations to achieve sustainability, thus ensuring human welfare and health. In recent decades, sustainability has become a key and essential issue in organizational management. Organizations face numerous environmental challenges and social pressures, forcing them to reconsider their management practices. In this context, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) and Green Innovation have been introduced as two main approaches to achieving sustainability goals. GHRM includes a set of activities and policies aimed at reducing environmental impacts and increasing the efficiency of human resources through green and sustainable processes. On the other hand, Green Innovation refers to processes, products, and services that utilize new technologies and methods to reduce resource consumption and environmental pollution. However, doubts still exist regarding the actual impact of these two approaches on organizational performance. Some studies have shown that GHRM and Green Innovation can help improve organizational performance, while others have reached different conclusions. These doubts have arisen due to the complexities and challenges associated with implementing these approaches, such as high costs, the need for extensive organizational changes, and employee resistance to change. Additionally, one important aspect that has received less attention is the role of the green supply chain in this context. The green supply chain, as a comprehensive and integrated approach, can coordinate all activities related to supply, production, and distribution towards sustainability. However, few studies have examined the interplay between GHRM, Green Innovation, and the green supply chain, and the mutual impact of these three approaches on sustainable performance has not been explored. Previous research has not simultaneously considered these three green approaches in conjunction with the three dimensions of sustainability. Given the lack of investigation into the combined impact of green approaches on sustainability, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of GHRM on sustainable performance with an emphasis on green supply chain management and green innovation in food industry companies in Karaj.

Materials and Methods:
This research is applied in terms of purpose, qualitative in terms of variables, cross-sectional in terms of time, and ex post facto (causal and correlational) in terms of design and research tools. The data collection method is a survey. The statistical population of this study includes managers and experts knowledgeable in the field of supply chain management and human resource management in food industry companies in Karaj. The sampling method is convenient sampling, and the questionnaire was distributed among employees, experts, and managers of food companies with work experience of over 3 years. In this study, based on the report from the Industry and Mining Organization, there are 153 food industry companies in Karaj, and the minimum sample size based on the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method was reported to be 40 people. Finally, the research was analyzed with 132 collected questionnaires. To analyze and examine the data and test the relationships between variables, SPSS software and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique using PLS software were employed.

Findings:
The results from the hypothesis analysis indicate that Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) does not have a significant direct impact on sustainable performance, nor does Green Innovation (GI) as a mediator create a significant effect. However, the impact of GHRM on sustainable performance becomes significant when mediated by Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM). If both GSCM and GI are considered as mediators simultaneously, no significant impact is observed. Additionally, the findings show that the hypothesis suggesting a significant impact of GSCM on sustainable performance through the mediation of GI is not supported. Moreover, while GHRM has a significant impact on GI, the results indicate that GSCM as a mediator enhances this effect. In summary, all hypotheses are significant except for the hypothesis concerning the impact of GI on sustainable performance and those hypotheses that considered these two variables together.

Discussion and Conclusion:
The findings of this research indicate that GHRM and green innovation alone may have negative impacts on sustainable organizational performance, and green innovation as a mediator between GHRM and sustainable performance will not be effective. The research findings on the lack of a significant impact of GHRM on sustainable performance may be due to the misalignment of HR strategies towards sustainability, ineffective and limited actions in this area, lack of effective evaluations to improve weaknesses, resistance to change, and the need to green other approaches and the insufficiency of greening human resource management alone. Additionally, the ineffectiveness of green innovation as an independent variable on sustainable performance and as a mediator may be due to insufficient attention to the two dimensions of green product innovation and green process innovation. Green innovation also includes other aspects such as management and market, which may enable sustainability in various dimensions if these two aspects are considered, which were not examined in this research.
However, green supply chain management can play a key role in the success of implementing green policies in an organization and reduce the negative impacts of GHRM.
Overall, the green supply chain can mitigate the negative impacts of GHRM on sustainable performance and even turn them into positive impacts. This highlights the importance of integration and coordination among all elements of the supply chain to achieve organizational sustainability goals. Therefore, organizational managers should be aware that merely focusing on greening HR without considering green supply chain management may not lead to desired outcomes. Instead, creating an integrated and green supply chain that encompasses all aspects of sustainability can help improve sustainable performance. The results also showed that the presence of green innovation along with the green supply chain as a mediator eliminates significance, indicating that green innovation limited to only product and process dimensions creates weaknesses in the organization.In conclusion, this research suggests that organizations should adopt a comprehensive and coordinated approach in green supply chain management instead of focusing solely on GHRM policies or green innovations to achieve better results in sustainability.