Green Thinking - Green Positions

Abstract

There are different definitions and conceptual approaches to ‘green jobs’ (‘green’ meaning to be related to the environmental pillar of sustainability). It is generally accepted that green jobs are those that contribute in some way to the preservation or restoration of the natural environment. The conceptual diversity also creates many difficulties in measuring them, mainly because they do not constitute a clearly defined sector of the labor market. In this study, the authors first compared conceptual approaches with corporate communication. The research is exploratory in nature, so at this stage, the authors looked at companies where communication with employees is considered to be a key issue (these companies are referred to as 'leading companies'). They were defined as having won for two consecutive years at least one of the awards/recognitions studied. The authors looked for ‘green’ attributes among the ‘leading companies’ in online job advertisements. The novelty of the research lies in the detailed analysis of green jobs and green-collar jobs and the labor market communication of these concepts, which may also answer the question of whether the green attributes of the jobs or the jobs themselves are attractive to prospective employees. The most important finding of the research is that the "green idea" is rarely mentioned in job advertisements of the companies surveyed. In line with the literature, the results show that even leading companies do not use sustainability as a message to attract employees.