Sustainable Human Resource Management under Capitalism: A Marxist Critique of Labour Control, Green Capitalism, and Generation Z Work Ethos

Abstract

Sustainable Human Resource Management (Sustainable HRM) has increasingly been positioned as an organizational approach for integrating environmental responsibility, employee well-being, and long-term organizational sustainability, yet its relationship with the structural dynamics of capitalist labour remains insufficiently examined. This conceptual study critically examines how Sustainable HRM operates within the capital–labour relationship, how sustainability-oriented leadership mediates labour control, and how Generation Z's emerging work ethos can be understood in relation to contemporary capitalist labour conditions. Drawing upon Marxist political economy, labour-process theory, social reproduction theory, and ecological perspectives, the study employs critical conceptual analysis to examine the contradictory relationships among sustainability, accumulation, managerial control, alienation, ecological responsibility, and worker resistance. The analysis demonstrates that Sustainable HRM can generate meaningful environmental and social outcomes while simultaneously reproducing existing labour relations when sustainability responsibilities are translated into individualized behavioural expectations, performance indicators, moral obligations, and digitally mediated forms of control. Sustainability-oriented leadership occupies a mediating position by translating organizational sustainability objectives into workplace expectations while potentially expanding employee participation or managerial surveillance. Generation Z's preferences for financial security, flexibility, meaningful work, sustainability, and work-life balance are interpreted as historically situated responses to contemporary employment insecurity and changing labour conditions rather than merely generational characteristics. The study proposes the Marxist Sustainable Labour Process Framework (MSLPF), comprising accumulation, labour control, alienation, ecological contradiction, and collective resistance, as a framework for advancing critical Sustainable HRM research.