**6. Conclusion**

Recent years have shown a growing scientific interest in the role of HRM in environmental management. A literature review provides evidence that GHRM brings tangible benefits to the company rather than simply adding luster to the brand and reputation. Indeed, it is time for HRM department to embrace the green agenda alongside the scattered initiatives based on environmental protection.

This study reveals that GHRM is still at a primitive stage in Moroccan ISO14001 certified companies. Although the selected companies practice many green initiatives, they have not yet reached the level of detail, sophistication, and progress discussed in the literature. Indeed, although GHRM is a trend in other countries, it is not well known in Morocco. The lack of knowledge of this process could limit its implementation, hence a wide promotion of GHRM is needed to overcome this challenge.

Overall, the implementation of GHRM practices is moderate. The majority of the initiatives undertaken refer to the certification requirements, namely green job design and analysis, green training, and green health and safety management. Two companies are the exception in implementing green empowerment initiatives.

Our research work responds to the call of researchers who have recently recognized the importance of conducting GHRM exploratory qualitative studies [7, 27–35, 41, 42, 47, 49, 52, 56, 65, 66, 70, 71] in the African context [38, 72]. To our knowledge, this is the first research work that studies this concept in Moroccan firms. Consequently, this study contributes to a better understanding of GHRM through HR managers' perceptions from various Moroccan companies. Although the findings cannot be generalized, given its exploratory nature, we believe that this work can be considered as an opener for future research. Taking this further, we look forward to seeing more research on this topic in the near future.

*Green Human Resource Management: An Exploratory Study from Moroccan ISO 14001… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105565*

#### **6.1 Theoretical and managerial implications**

The finding of this study offers several implications for theory and practice. From a theoretical perspective, as GHRM is an emerging research field, there are limited studies in developing countries such as Morocco that offer empirical evidence. Hence, this research contributed to the literature by enhancing the understanding of GHRM in Morocco. Additionally, to the best knowledge of the researchers, prior studies on the subject matter have focused merely on quantitative field studies. Thus, the current study has been one of the limited qualitative studies that aims to highlight the GHRM's perception from the experiences of HR managers and directors. Besides, through qualitative approach, the present paper added originating themes to previous literature, which previous studies have not yet established. Finally, our framework can be a starting point for analyzing GHRM as this paper also highlights future directions from HR managers perspective.

From a practical perspective, our discoveries give HR professionals a more profound comprehension of GHRM, its practices, importance, requirement as well as the main challenges that may hinder this process implementation. Consequently, findings may provide HR managers with a better idea of the solutions and the possible factors that may logically solve the situation of the newness of GHRM. Thus, being able to forecast and predict future events helps HR managers to predict how to achieve the environmental goals and drive a more efficient green change through HRM process.

Besides, this paper contributes to practitioners within the field of HRM with insights to how organizational strategies and practices can be designed and developed to prevent the negative effects on the environment, which may further boost up the willingness of HR managers to build interest in GHRM and endeavor to set up an environmentally policy to enhance the commitment of all company's departments.

#### **6.2 Limitations and future directions**

As is the case with most research, our study has limitations, which are also opportunities for future research. This research is a qualitative exploratory study in four IS014001 companies in Morocco. Although the results provide a deep understanding on GHRM perception by HRM and HRD, the findings cannot be considered representative of the ISO14001 certified companies as a whole. Thus, the study recommends future studies to investigate the same topic in other companies, thus potentially able to provide richer and diverse findings. Further, our sample was specially selected because of the company's environmental concern. Thus, future research could examine whether HRM and HRD in non-green organizations have the same perception of GHRM or do not consider its implementation.

Additionally, this exploratory study was based on gathering information from only seven HR managers and, again, the limited number of participants means that the findings cannot be generalized. Besides, our interviewees didn't know GHRM, thus, the results may have been affected by differences in respondents' understanding of the topic.

In addition to the above limitations along with their related opportunities for future research, other avenues for further research can be proposed. We invite future research to conduct longitudinal studies to track the evolution of environmental performance, environmental awareness, green values, and EMS in organizations that are introducing GHRMP, with the aim of encouraging organizations to devote time, budget, and human resources to GHRM implementation.

Also, many HR managers seem to be doubtful about the importance of GHRM. Thus, future research can also focus on the "why" question of GHRM by emphasizing its importance in creating green businesses. Besides, as most of GHRM literature largely focuses on the consequences of GHRM [38]. It is suggested that future research should also investigate the determinants and what motivate companies to implement GHRM, which may also respond to HR managers question "Why implementing GHRM?".

Additional research studies may also emphasize the impact of green training on attitudes, values, and behaviors, as environmental awareness is considered by some as a posture and not a skill to be acquired.

It is also recommended to focus on the awareness and behavioral change of older workers, we invite future research to focus on this aspect by investigating the impact of awareness raising of Generation X on their behavior, values, identification, and commitment to environmental policy. Moreover, a factor that is worth analyzing is local culture and educational system that are likely to play an important role in implementing GHRM.

Finally, HR professionals not only need to be certain that they have all the necessary competencies for using GHRM, but they must also be able to measure its effectiveness and consequences. Thus, it would be useful to develop a practical guide with clear policies that integrates all the GHRMP with concrete aspects to implement.
