IT impact on talent management and operational environmental sustainability

We examine the impact of information technology (IT) on talent management and operational environmental sustainability and propose a model in which IT infrastructure capability enables the firm's operational environmental sustainability through talent management. We test the proposed model using the structural equation modeling technique with an innovative secondary data set collected for a sample of 63 large Spanish firms. We find that a firm's proficiency in leveraging IT infrastructure improves the management of talent, which in turn enables execution of a more environmentally sustainable operations strategy to increase firm performance. This paper has three key contributions. First, as the first study of talent management in the context of IT and environmental sustainability, it provides a better understanding of the concept of talent management. We explain theoretically and test empirically how IT infrastructure capability influences operational environmental sustainability through talent management. Second, since we find that IT infrastructure capability increases firm performance through talent management and operational environmental sustainability, our research also improves knowledge of how IT infrastructure capability influences firm performance. Finally, this study advances theoretical conceptualization of operational capabilities, and the relationships between IT infrastructure capability and dynamic and operational capabilities.