Linking Green Transformational Leadership to Organizational Citizenship Behavior for the Environment: The Mediating Role of Green Human Resource Management Practices in Malaysian Manufacturing Firms

This study examines the relationships among green transformational leadership (GTL), organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE), and five green human resource management (GHRM) practices, namely green recruitment and selection (GRS), green training and development (GTD), green rewards and compensation (GRC), green performance management (GPM), and green involvement (GI), in Malaysian manufacturing organizations. Using a quantitative cross-sectional survey of 379 manufacturing organizations, with one managerial-level key informant representing each organization, data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.0. The findings indicate that GTL has significant positive relationships with OCBE and all five GHRM practices. However, the relationships between individual GHRM practices and OCBE differ across practices. GTD, GRC, and GI show significant positive relationships with OCBE, whereas GRS and GPM are not significantly related to OCBE. The mediation analysis further shows significant indirect effects of GTL on OCBE through GTD, GRC, and GI, while the indirect effects through GRS and GPM are not significant. These findings indicate that the five GHRM practices do not function uniformly as indirect pathways between GTL and OCBE. The study therefore emphasizes the differentiated roles of environmental training, rewards and compensation, and employee involvement within the observed model. SET and the AMO framework are used as complementary interpretive lenses rather than directly tested psychological mechanisms. The study contributes practice-specific evidence on the heterogeneous roles of GHRM practices in the Malaysian manufacturing context.