Common Good HRM and Employee Well-Being: An Integrative Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

The growing concern with social sustainability, decent work, employee dignity, and the wider societal responsibilities of organizations has encouraged human resource management (HRM) to reconsider the dominant assumption that employees should primarily be managed as resources for organizational performance. Common Good Human Resource Management (CGHRM) represents an emerging response to this concern by positioning human, social, and ecological well-being as legitimate organizational ends rather than merely instruments for economic performance. Despite increasing interest in CGHRM, understanding of its relationship with employee well-being remains fragmented. This study provides an integrative review of open-access peer-reviewed literature published between 2021 and 2025 concerning CGHRM, sustainable HRM, and employee well-being. The review synthesizes direct CGHRM studies with closely related sustainable-HRM research explicitly oriented toward common-good values. Five interconnected mechanisms are identified: resource protection and resilience; meaningful work and thriving; relational support and social well-being; dignity, fairness, and inclusion; and employee voice and participation. The review further demonstrates that employee well-being should be conceptualized as multidimensional, incorporating psychological, social, physical, and eudaimonic dimensions rather than being reduced to job satisfaction or engagement. A multilevel conceptual framework is proposed in which CGHRM practices influence multidimensional employee well-being through resource-based, relational, and meaning-based mechanisms, subject to individual, organizational, institutional, and occupational boundary conditions. The review identifies major limitations in the current literature, including conceptual ambiguity, geographic concentration, cross-sectional designs, limited attention to vulnerable workers, insufficient examination of negative or paradoxical effects, and the absence of validated multidimensional CGHRM measures. A research agenda is developed to advance employee-centered and societally embedded HRM scholarship