Turning Intent Into Impact: HR as a Change Agent in Corporate Sustainability

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

Corporate sustainability (CS) initiatives often generate ambitious rhetoric but only modest changes in organizational practice. In this paper, we explain when and how CS efforts become substantive, as opposed to symbolic, by focusing on the role of the human resource (HR) function as a change agent. We begin with a process view that treats CS as a multiphase change journey encompassing sensitizing–unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Integrating this process perspective with the lens of institutional work, we theorize how HR contributes to CS by enacting different combinations of institutional disruption, creation, and maintenance across phases. We then introduce a proactive–defensive HR engagement continuum and develop three pairs of phase-specific roles, namely, institutional broker versus bystander in sensitizing–unfreezing, catalyst versus executor in moving, and framer versus steward in refreezing. These roles explain how HR's stance toward paradoxical tensions and competing institutional logics shapes whether CS direction, implementation, and institutionalization are symbolic or substantive. The framework advances research at the intersection of HRM, sustainability, and institutional theory, offering practical guidance on phase-appropriate HR activities and contributions that can help drive more substantive CS outcomes, and outlining directions for future research on the varied ways HR shapes corporate sustainability trajectories over time.

DOI

10.1016/j.hrmr.2026.101162

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