An exploration of research clusters of sustainable human resource management

Abstract

Sustainable human resource management has gained significant attention and importance over the past years. The present paper aims to review the sustainable HRM literature by identifying the existing research clusters relating to the field and analyzing the common themes per cluster to organize the intellectual base on the topic and identify possible research gaps. There has been a consistent increase in research publications since 2017. The cluster analysis conducted in the present study presented the current state of research per type of sustainable HRM, with over 60% of studies relating to green HRM. General sustainable HRM follows this with 27% and socially responsible HRM – with 11%. In addition, the review sample extracted from the Scopus database showed how sustainable HRM involved CSR, sustainable development, environmental management, and supply chain management.Moreover, it showed how it could be linked with other disciplines, different contextual variables, and possibilities for cross-disciplinary studies. Furthermore, the results show that much research has concentrated on the green HRM cluster, followed by general sustainable and socially responsible HRM clusters. This paper provided an opportunity to see in a comprehensive way what research is being done per cluster and find the possible research gaps in the current body of literature.