Thesis The relationships among the degree of adopting human resource change leadership role, human resource professionalism, employee voice and employee outcomes in sustainability-oriented enterprises: In mediated role of human resource attribution

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAM THI DIEM THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE DEGREE OF ADOPTING HUMAN RESOURCE CHANGE LEADERSHIP ROLE, HUMAN RESOURCE PROFESSIONALISM, EMPLOYEE VOICE AND EMPLOYEE OUTCOMES IN SUSTAINABILITY-ORIENTED ENTERPRISES: IN MEDIATED ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE ATTRIBUTION DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAM THI DIEM THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE DEGREE OF ADOPTING HUMAN RESOURCE CHANGE LEADERSHIP ROLE, HUMAN RESOURCE PROFESSIONALISM, EMPLOYEE VOICE AND EMPLOYEE OUTCOMES IN SUSTAINABILITY-ORIENTED ENTERPRISES: IN MEDIATED ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE ATTRIBUTION Major : BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Code : 9340101 DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Scientific supervisor: Prof. NGUYEN MINH HA, PhD Ho Chi Minh City, 2024 [i] STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I declare that the dissertation with the title of “The relationships among the degree of adopting HR change leadership role, HR professionalism, employee voice and employee outcomes in sustainability-oriented enterprises: in mediated role of HR attribution” is my own original research work. Except for the references cited in this dissertation, I declare that the whole or any part of this dissertation has not been published or used for the award of a degree elsewhere. No other person’s work/research has been used in this dissertation without proper citation. This dissertation has never been submitted for any degree at any other university or training institution. Ho Chi Minh City, ./ / 2024 PHAM THI DIEM [ii] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation marks a memorable milestone in my academic journey, a milestone that would not have been possible without the guidance, encouragement and support of many wonderful individuals. First of all, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Minh Ha, whose high expertise, insight and hard working have significantly contributed to the completion of this dissertation. His guidances, directions, encouragement, and wholehearted support have motivated me to overcome the most difficult times on this journey. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the members of my dissertation committee for their valuable feedback and specific comments that have helped to enrich the quality of this research. Their constructive comments have inspired me to refine my ideas and explore new perspectives. I would like to express my gratitude to Ho Chi Minh City Open University and the Graduate School for creating a good academic environment that helped me complete this research. Also, I am extremely grateful to the lecturers, especially those who directly taught and guided me. I would like to express my gratitude to the Board of Directors of Hung Hau Holding, the Executive Board of Van Hien University and the Faculty of Economics and Management for providing me with the necessary opportunities and support to complete my studies. A special thanks to my family, especially my father, mother, two daughters, husband and younger brothers; whose love and trust in me has been my greatest strength. Your sacrifice and support have made this achievement possible. To my colleagues and friends, thank for your support and companionship throughout my study journey. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all the individuals who took the time to participate in my survey. Your responses were instrumental in shaping the findings of this study. To all those who have contributed to this journey, thank you for being a part of this accomplishment. This dissertation reflects your support and my efforts in this work. That’s all. Ho Chi Minh City, ./ / 2024 [iii] ABSTRACT The dissertation is developed to explore and confirm the nature, characteristics and function of HR change leadership role and the required HR competencies for this role; as well as the relationships among HR change leadership role, HR professionalism and employee voice. Simultaneously, it investigates the role of HR attribution in the relationships among these factors and employee’s outcomes of organizational commitment and work engagement in sustainable enterprises. Grounded on the resource-based view of firm theory (Barney, 1991), attribution theory (Weiner, 1972), social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and signaling theory (Spence, 1973), the study model with 14 hypothesis is built to test the directly and indirectly relationships among included variables. The dissertation is employed the mix methods of qualitative and quantitative researches. Qualitative research is conducted through in-depth interviews with 05 experts to fully supplement scales’ content value and adjust them consistent with sustainable context in Vietnam. Another is hold to interview 10 employees working in sustainable enterprises to ensure the designed items clarify, simply, specifically and relevantly. Quantitative research was executed with three studies. The firstly preliminary study with 51 experts is designed to test the items-content validity. The secondly preliminary one with 263 employees working in the sustainable enterprises is executed to evaluate scale’s reliability, convergent and discriminant validity. The finally official study with 1,058 employees working in 24 sustainable corporates is designed to test concept, hypothesis, measurement and structural models. The non- probability of purposeful sampling method is used in this study. Cronbach’s Alpha is used to assess the scales’ reliability. EFA with Principal- Axis-Factoring extraction and Promax-rotation method is proceed to assess convergent, discriminant validity of scales. PLS-SEM method is used to analysis composite reliability coefficient, extracted variance, as well as test hypothesis and model. Confirmatory composite analysis (CCA) is conducted to test the convergent, discriminant and nomological validity of variables. [iv] As results, all hypothesis are supported by testing emperical evidence. The findings highlighted that organizational commitment and work engagement not only depend on the adoption of HR change leadership role or HR professionalism or employee voice, but also how employees perceive and interpret the underneath management intent of sustainable HRM practices via the signal of various voice behaviors or HR professionalism or the adoption of HR change leadership role. Besides, employee’s voice behaviors vary according to the adoption of HR change leadership role and HR professionalism. The study contributes to confirm HRM institutional entrepreneurship role of Ren & Jackson (2019) and introduce new set of HR competencies embed in the sustainable context, as well as expansion of RBV theory (Barney, 1991), attribution theory (Weiner, 1985), social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), signaling theory (Spence, 1973). Grounded on the findings, the study recommended the managerial implication to enhance employee’s outcomes, which contribute to overall sustainable performance of sustainable enterprises in Viet Nam. [v] CONTENTS 1.1. Research problems ............................................................................................. 1 1.1.1. Practical context ........................................................................................ 4 1.1.2. Theoretical context .................................................................................... 7 1.2. Research gaps .................................................................................................... 18 1.3. Research objectives and questions .................................................................. 22 1.3.1. Research objectives ................................................................................. 22 1.3.2. Research questions .................................................................................. 23 1.4. Research subjects, participants and scope ..................................................... 23 1.4.1. Research subjects .................................................................................... 23 1.4.2. Research participants ............................................................................... 24 1.4.3. Research scope ........................................................................................ 24 1.5. Research methods ............................................................................................. 25 1.6. Contributions to world literature ................................................................... 25 1.7. Thesis outline .................................................................................................... 27 2.1. Key concepts and definitions ........................................................................... 29 2.1.1. Human resource change leadership role and the adoption of human resource change leadership role .............................................................. 29 2.1.2. Hunam resource professionalism ............................................................ 35 2.1.3. Employee voice ....................................................................................... 42 2.1.4. Human resource attribution (HR attribution) .......................................... 44 2.1.5. Employee outcomes ................................................................................ 47 2.2. Foundational theories related to the research paradigm ............................. 49 [vi] 2.2.1. Resource based view theory .................................................................... 50 2.2.2. Attribution theory .................................................................................... 53 2.2.3. Social exchange theory ............................................................................ 58 2.2.4. Signaling theory ...................................................................................... 63 2.3. Research hypotheses and model ...................................................................... 66 2.3.1. The association of the adoption of human resource change leadership role, human resource professionalism and employee voice ............................ 66 2.3.2. The association of the adoption of human resource change leadership role, human resource professionalism, employee voice and employee outcomes of organizational commitment and work engagement. ........................... 71 2.3.3. The mediating role of human resource attribution in the relationships among the adoption of human resource change leadership role, human resource professionalism, employee voice and employee outcomes. ..... 82 2.3.4. Research model ....................................................................................... 95 3.1. Methodology ...................................................................................................... 96 3.2. Research process ............................................................................................... 97 3.3. Research methods ........................................................................................... 100 3.3.1. Qualitative method ................................................................................ 100 3.3.2. Quantitative method .............................................................................. 101 3.4. Measurement scale development .................................................................. 102 3.4.1. Scale development process .................................................................... 102 3.4.2. Scale development in sustainable context in Viet Nam ........................ 109 3.5. Common Method Biases ................................................................................ 120 3.6. Survey design, sample and data collection ................................................... 121 3.6.1. Survey design ........................................................................................ 121 3.6.2. Study sample ......................................................................................... 122 3.7. Analysized tools and methods ....................................................................... 127 3.7.1. Analyzed tools ....................................................................................... 127 3.7.2. Data analysized methods ....................................................................... 127 3.8. The measurement scales................................................................................. 133 3.8.1. The result of preliminary research ........................................................ 133 3.8.2. The offical measurement scales ............................................................ 136 [vii] 4.1. Descriptive statistics ....................................................................................... 151 4.1.1 Demographic ......................................................................................... 151 4.1.2 Scale description .................................................................................... 154 4.2. Post statistical analyses for common method variance and scale validity assessment ....................................................................................................... 169 4.2.1. Post statistical analyses for common method variance ......................... 169 4.2.2. Cronbach’s Alpha .................................................................................. 170 4.2.3. Exploratory Factor Analysis .................................................................. 170 4.3. Measurement model validity assessment ..................................................... 171 4.3.1. HR change leadership role (CLR) ......................................................... 171 4.3.2. HR professionalism (HRP) .................................................................... 174 4.3.3. Employee voice (EV) ............................................................................ 178 4.3.4. HR attribution, organizational commitment and work engagement scales ..................................................................................................... 180 4.4. Structural model ............................................................................................. 183 4.4.1. Multi-collinear assessment .................................................................... 183 4.4.2. Determination coefficient (R² value) .................................................... 184 4.4.3. Impact coefficient f² .............................................................................. 184 4.4.4. Blindfolding and predict relevance Q² .................................................. 185 4.4.5. Path coefficients of the structure model & Hypothesis Testing ............ 186 4.4.6. Specific indirect effect, total indirect effects and total effects .............. 189 4.5. Result discussion. ............................................................................................ 192 4.5.1. The research scales ................................................................................ 192 4.5.2. The research hypotheses ........................................................................ 194 5.1. Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 216 5.2. Theoretical contributions ............................................................................... 219 5.3. Managerial implications ................................................................................ 221 5.3.1. For sustainable corporates ..................................................................... 221 5.3.2. For HR department and HR professionals of sustainable enterprises ... 222 5.4. Limitations and future research ................................................................... 231 5.4.1. Limitations ............................................................................................. 231 5.4.2. Future research ...................................................................................... 232 [viii] Appendix 1: Sustainability development and list of surveyed sustainable enterprises. lvi Appendix 2: Previous studies ......................................................................................... lx Appendix 3: Orginal scales adjusted scales based on result of in-depth interview ....... cx Appendix 4: Results of testing scales’ content validity ........................................... clxvii Appendix 5: The questionnairs for the premilarity research ................................... cxcvii Appendix 6: The results of preprimary research ...................................................... ccxxi Appendix 7: The questionnairs for the official research .......................................... ccxlv Appendix 8. The results of official research .......................................................... cclxvii LIST OF CHARTS, PICTURES, FIGURES Figure 2.1. Attribution – Emotion – Behavioral Motivation ......................................... 54 Figure 2.2. Signaling timeline (Connelly et al., 2010) .................................................. 63 Figure 2.3. Research model ........................................................................................... 95 Figure 3.1. Research process ......................................................................................... 99 Figure 3.2. Parallel mediated model ............................................................................133 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. The hypotheses and theories used to explain the relationships .................... 93 Table 3.1: In depth interview description ....................................................................106 Table 3.2. Experts’ opinions and reasons for supplementing more items ...................110 Table 3.3. Results of in-depth interview on generating and refining scales ...............118 Table 3.4. Number of items of achieved content validity ...........................................119 Table 3.5. Sample distribution .....................................................................................123 Table 3.6. The process of data collection ....................................................................126 Table 4.1. Characteristics of research samples ............................................................152 [ix] Table 4.2. Total Variance Explained with a single factor ...........................................170 Table 4.3. Outer loading and the internal consistency reliability of HR changeleadership role ...............................................................................................................................172 Table 4.4. HTMT matrix of the correlations of HR change leadership role ...............172 Table 4.5. HTMT ratio of HR change leadership role ................................................173 Table 4.6. VIF of HR change leadership role ..............................................................173 Table 4.7. Outer weight of HR change leadership role ...............................................174 Table 4.8. Outer loading and the internal consistency reliability of HR Professionalism .....................................................................................................................................175 Table 4.9. HTMT matrix of correlations of HR professionalism ................................176 Table 4.10. HTMT Ratio of HR professionalism ........................................................177 Table 4.11. VIF of HR Professionalism ......................................................................177 Table 4.12. Outer weight of HR professionalism ........................................................178 Table 4.13. Outer loading and the internal consistency reliability of Employee voice .....................................................................................................................................179 Table 4.14. HTMT matrix of correlations of employee voice ....................................179 Table 4.15. HTMT Ratio of employee voice ..............................................................180 Table 4.16. Outer loading and the internal consistency reliability of Employee voice (EVpos and EVneg) .....................................................................................................180 Table 4.17. Outer loading and the internal consistency reliability of HR attribution, organizational commitment and work engagement .....................................................181 Table 4.18. HTMT matrix of correlations of HR attribution, organizational commitment and work engagment ....................................................................................................182 Table 4.19. HTMT Ratio of HR attribution, organizational commitment and work engagement ..................................................................................................................183 Table 4.20. VIF of path models ...................................................................................183 Table 4.21. Determination coefficient of R2 and R2 adjusted .....................................184 Table 4.22. The f2 effect size of exogenous variables .................................................185 Table 4.23. The Q2 value ............................................................................................186 Table 4.24. The results of testing Hypothesis .............................................................188 Table 4.25. The results of specific indirect effect .......................................................189 Table 4.26. The results of VAF of HRAwb and HRApf .............................................191 [x] LIST OF ACRONYMS No Acronyms Name 1 AVE Average variance extracted 2 BCG Boston consulting group 3 VBCSD Business community for sustainable development in Viet Nam 4 CLR Change leadership role 5 OCB-S Citizenship beneficial to the supervisor 6 SET Social exchange theory 7 CMV Common Method Variance 8 CR Composite reliability 9 CCA Confirmatory composite analysis 10 CFA Confirmatory Factor Analysis 11 CR Consistency reliability 12 CSR Corporate's social responsibility 13 CB-SEM Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling 14 DBA Doctor of Business Administration 15 EO Employee outcomes 16 EV Employee voice 17 EL Entrepreneurial leadership 18 EFA Exploratory Factor Analysis 19 GHRM Green human resource management 20 HCHRM High commitment human resource management 21 HPWS High performance work system 22 HR Human resource 23 HRA Human resource attribution 24 HRD Human resource department 25 HRM Human resource management 26 HRP Human resource professionalism 27 ICR Internal consistency reliability 28 LMX Leader-member exchange 29 MBA Master of Business Administration 30 NGO Non-governmental organization 31 OLS Ordinary least squares 32 OCB Organizational citizenship behavior 33 OC Organizational commitment 34 PLS-SEM Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling 35 POS Perceived organizational support 36 R&D Research and Development [xi] No Acronyms Name 37 RBV Resource based view of firm 38 SMEs Small and medium enterprises 39 SHRM Strategic human resource management 40 AMO The ability, motivation and opportunity 41 CSI The Corporate Sustainable Index 42 UK United Kingdom 43 VIF Variance inflation factor 44 VCCI Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry 45 WE Work engagement [1] CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In an attempt to help readers seeing an overall picture of the dissertation, this chapter presents the general information referring to problem statement; research objectives and questions; research subject, observed object and research scope; as well as dissertation’s structure. Besides, it highlights dissertation’s new findings and its contributions in both academic and practical. 1.1. Research problems Sustainable development becoming general requirements and targets that almost countries and organizations are being toward. Sustainable development is the development to meet current needs without damaging the ability to meet the needs of future generations (Brundtland, 1987). At the corporate level, sustainability as the ‘Triple Bottom Line’, meaning that the traditionally financial bottom line is complemented by a social and an ecological bottom line (Elkington, 1994). Unlike the traditional business model, its performance is only measured through financial activities, sustainable corporate’s performance is simultaneously measured by three pillars of sustainable development including social responsibility, stakeholder interests and accountability (Mel, 2003). A sustainable approach would affect to corporate’ practices, require greater involvement and accountability of boards, as well as business transparency (Cohen et al., 2012b). In other words, sustainability-oriented enterprises are forced to change their former operating ways, including changing of vision, mission, strategies, objectives, organizational structure, functions, tasks, regulations, processes, management methods, as well as change the perceptions, roles, duties and habits of people in the organization. This transformation is a process of institutional work changed, established and institutionalized (Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017). Importantly, the organizational change actually happen when and only if the individuals within it believe, think, and behave differently (DuBois & Dubois, 2012). Successful change will persist over the long term only when employees alter their on- the-job behaviors in appropriate ways (Meyer et al., 2007). Working towards sustainability would create corporates’ competitive advantages (Stahl et al., 2019). However, competitive advantage can only be achieved Chapter 1: Introduction [2] if the members of the human capital pool individually and collectively choose to engage in behavior that benefits the firm (March & Simon, 1958). Employees considered as a stakeholder who can influence organizational strategy through offering their convictions and capacity to help shaping organizational capacity (Ehnert, 2009). Employee behavior identify individuals as cognitive and emotional beings who possess free willing enabling them to make decisions regarding the behaviors in which they will engage (Wright et al., 2001). Wright et al. also stressed that employees could exhibit discretionary behaviors that may have either positive or negative consequences to their organization within prescribed roles and tasks. Indeed, perceptions of the opportunity for employee voice would effect to their organizational commitment in organizations undergoing significant change (Elaine et al., 2011). When employee feel psychological safety, they exhibit their voice behavior, in turn promote their work engagement (Yuanqin, 2020). Besides, employee’s HR attribution play an importantly mediated role, which positively or negatively affect to their commitment and satisfaction (Nishii et al., 2008). When employees attribute positive meanings to HR practices, they are more committed to them; thereby, it enhance more favorable outcomes relating to HR efforts (Özçelik & Uyargil, 2022). HR attribution processes is highly influenced by their social environment at work, particularly their line manager and coworker (Susanne et al., 2019). When sustainability is valued and promoted by the organization and line managers, employees are more likely to internalize and higher commit to adopt sustainable behaviors (Pellegrini et al., 2018) or on vice versa. Previous researches also found employee’s organizational commitment be a predictor of organizational performance (Steyrer et al., 2008) and their work engagement result in improving business unit performance also (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002), because employees with such behavior and attitude will devote more effort to their job. However, if a firm have poor design of work or mismanagement of people, it may not adequately deploy valuable human capital that it may have access to achieve strategic impact (Wright et al., 2001). Therefore, clearly understanding the role of employee voice mechanism and HR attribution within sustainable enterprises are essential, because Chapter 1: Introduction [3] it helps sustainable enterprises designing organizational conditions, which facilitate organizational change, in turn to achieve and maintain sustainable goals. In an attempt to solve these challenges, scholars noted HRM systems, strategies and policies as a potential means towards the realization of organizations’ sustainable objectives (Stahl et al., 2019). Well-designed HRM practices will elicit employee ability, motivation and opportunities that contribute to organizations’ sustainability (Ren & Jackson, 2019). For example, HRM practices are identified as high performance work practices will affect to the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) of line manager to manage voice and the employees’ AMO to engage in voice behavior, in turn encourage both employer and employee interesting in forms of voice (Mowbray, et al., 2021). In addition, employee’s organizational commitment is directly or indirectly promoted by green HRM via green human capital (Shoaib et al., 2021); or directly by green HR practices in rewards and recognition (Lawande et al., 2024). Also, their work engagement is enhanced by sustainable HRM practices via employee’s resilience (Lu et al., 2023) or by green HRM via perceived organizational support for the environment (Karatepe et al., 2022). Other studies also proved sustainable performance directly affected by green HRM practices (Mousa & Othman, 2019; Zaid et al.,2018); indirectly by green HRM practices via green innovation green, employee behavior and organizational culture (Shahzad et al., 2023) or via the green supply chain management practices (Zaid et al.,2018). Although such, almost these studies mainly focus on exploring how HR practices promote employee outcomes and sustainable performance by analyzing data from service or manufacturing organizations that is being toward sustainable development. Therefore, it need a study to address this grap, which investigate employee’s outcomes of organizational commitment and work engagement in sustainable enterprises after the process of re-institulization. In addition, human resource (HR) professionals are architectures who design organizational agility, flexibility as well as responsiveness to external changes (Ulrich et. al, 2012). As a HRM institutional entrepreneur, they strive to embed sustainability values in organizations through leveraging resources such as skills, knowledge and social capital as well as the organization’s HRM system in order to Chapter 1: Introduction [4] change organizational norms, rules, routines and values (Ren & Jackson, 2019). But changing an individual’s core beliefs and values is not an easy task (Hellervik, Hazucha, & Schneider, 1992), it goes well beyond providing a cognitive rationale (DuBois & Dubois, 2012). Thus, HR professionals are required to possess in-depth knowledge, proficient skills and wealthy social capital in order to enact their change leadership roles that contribute to change employee’s perception and promote employee voice because of achieving sustainable excellence also requires careful listening to diverse voices (Cramer & Karabell, 2010). A signal of their competence would strengthen affective commitment via employee’s trust in the organization (Klimchak, et al., 2020). Thus identifying HR professionalism in their change leading role is vital to help sustainable enterprises possess HR professionals, who have capable of designing organizational agility and flexibility as well as working with various stakeholders, in turn to facilitate organizational change and achieve sustainable goals. With above discussions, the enriched understanding on employee outcome of organizational commitment and work engagement; HR change leadership role; and how employees attribute meanings to the sustainable HR practices that are adopted in sustainable enterprises in Viet Nam via signals from the adoption of HR change leadership role, HR professionalism and employee voice have important implications in both practice and literature. The findings help sustainable organizations designing the desired HRM systems, developing HR professionals with the right mix of skills and enhancing employee voice diversity as well as positive HR attribution within organization, in order to promote positive employee outcomes, which are human capital resources that contribute to and sustain organizations’ sustainability. Concretely, the topic “The relationships among the degree of adopting HR change leadership role, HR professionalism, employee voice and employee outcomes in sustainability-oriented enterprises: in mediated role of HR attribution” address research problems come from practice and literature as follows: 1.1.1. Practical context Nowadays, sustainability should be an indispensable part in developing corporate strategy. A strong environmental, social, governance proposition add Chapter 1: Introduction [5] would value in five essential ways, referring to top-line growth; cost reduction; regulatory and legal intervention reduction; employee productive improvement; investment and asset optimization (Henisz et al., 2022). In response, 92% of companies are making social responsibility as an important building block of their business, and rely on employee engagement to make these goals actionable (Top Employers Institute, 2020). While, in Viet Nam, only 2,000 of 700,000 enterprises (more than 2%) are members of the business community for sustainable development in Vietnam (Vu Duc Dam, 2020). Although Vietnamese enterprises believe that sustainable development is beneficial, the large-scale ones have so far focused mainly on risk management, rather than considering an action plan that effectively manages sustainable issues and adds value; as well as not yet integrated environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability in long-term strategic discussions (Hoang Hung, 2019). A report of VBCSD-VCCI (2020) “Impact of Corporates Sustainable Index (CSI) on the corporate’s governance, the period of 2016-2018” noted that Vietnamese enterprises proactively allocate the resources and staff for the activities of preparing the sustainable report. It seems that sustainable enterprises have not yet organized functional unit or human resource in order to lead sustainable activities both inside and outside the organization, nor prioritized to allocate the other necessary resources to implement sustainable goals. Therefore, it is essential to identify the role of HR professionals by an empirical research that specify their authority and responsibility in helping the organization to perform the sustainability goals. At HRM functional level, being a sustainable business is important to attract talent, because new graduates seek out employers with strong environmental and social credentials (WEF, 2022). A survey of IBM Institute for Business Value (2021) with more than 14,000 adults from 9 countries (Canada, China, Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, United States amd United Kingdom) revealed that 71% potential employees prioritize job offers from socially responsible companies and 69% of responders chosen environmentally sustainable ones. Also, 49% of employees accept a lower salary to work for an socially responsible organization and a ratio of 48% of those for an environmentally sustainable organization. The respondents of 46% (per 10,000 employees) agreed that top talents only want to work Chapter 1: Introduction [6] at companies implementing sustainable business practices (Hewlett-Packard Development Company - HP, 2019). Indeed, the poor sustainability practices do not only affect to recruitment but also to employee’s retention, advocacy, performance and general satisfaction. The ratio of 40% of respondents would look for new jobs, if company did not prioritize or engage in sustainability practices as results of a survey on 10,000 HP employees working over 10 markets in 2019. Furthermore, 44% of millennial office workers would leave and share a bad review to warn others, if their company had poor sustainability practices. Importantly, office workers are more productive, loyal and stronger advocates; feel happier, safer and more cared for when perceiving that their workplace is highly involving in sustainability. Similarly, perception of corporate social responsibility (CSR) would enhance employee engagement in tourism firms in Quang Ninh province (Tran et al., 2018). Also, organizational commitment would be promoted by well performing internal CSR via employee trust in retail companies in the south of Viet Nam (Van et al., 2022). Therefore, it need a empirical study to investigate on how are employee’s outcomes of organizational commitment and work engagement in sustainable enterprises in Viet Nam after the process of re-institulization. In response, HRM is designed playing a key role in developing the corporate sustainability programs and chief people officer are considered as whom has powerful and influential, whom sits on the board in future (PWC, 2017). However, the limited, piecemeal and anecdotal leadership on sustainable activities; the ambiguities on HRM role; or a lack and weakness of HR competences are mainly barriers to establish HR professionals’ duties in this new context, wherein their role are unlike as before. These involve in poor understanding of the core business model; inability to form an effective value-added HR strategy; poor working relationships with members of the senior leadership team; a marked lack of emotional intelligence, political factors; and an inability to create best HR practices (Longenecker et al., 2020). In addition, there are a misalignment between leaders and employee on evaluating the progress towards sustainability performance (Ellyn et al., 2022). While leadership teams are broadly convinced that they are on track to operate more sustainably, employee tend to disagree; or executives rate the sustainability performance of their organizations Chapter 1: Introduction [7] higher than their employees do. These suggested that the voices of employees were not being heard and employee perception about sustainable activities implemented are not high. These consensus gaps are leading to an erosion of trust that can be felt across the entire enterprise and prevent efforts to shape sustainable organizations that deliver value and impact (Ellyn et al., 2022). Therefore, it is important to explore the factors that affect to employee voices and HR attributions in order to narrow the gaps of inconsistency and increase employee trust in the organization. 1.1.2. Theoretical context Firstly, HR change leadership role is under-researched to clarify its nature, scope and actions to promote sustainability; and more importantly, it has not yet confirmed by empiriment. Scholars argued HRM function plays an important role to promote organizational changes and sustainability goals. It supports to sustainability agendas in all areas include diversity; equity and inclusion; community engagement; work–life balance; employee long-term growth and development; performance management; business ethics and ethical culture; and sustainability-awareness increase (Jang & Ardichvili, 2020). Besides, HR change leadership role have changed according to the context and HRM philosophy, starting from innovator (Legge, 1978), change marker (Storey, 1992), change agent (Ulrich, 1997), to institutional entrepreneurship role (Ren & Jackson, 2019) referring to HR change leadership role in sustainable context. In institutional entrepreneurship role, HR professionals are assigned to embed sustainability values in organizations through identifying opportunities, creating a new vision, leveraging resources, re-institulizing and controlling change (Ren & Jackson, 2019). However, it is lack of a control dimension to prevent harmful effects to society and environment that Stahl et al. (2019) suggested on the multidimensional framework of sustainable HRM. In addition, almost current studies employed the qualitative method to explain the HR role in sustainable context (i.e. De Stefano et al., 2017; Ehnert et al., 2020; Ren & Jackson, 2019) or the quantitative method via analyzing secondary data (i.e. published reports). Thus needing to be complemented by studies using other methods, suitable for collecting primary data such as observations, interviews with key informants, etc. (Jang & Ardichvili, 2020). Chapter 1: Introduction