With an increasing focus on innovation in marketing and management strategy underpinned by a global awareness of environmental sustainability, organisations are facing much pressure to show improved organisational performance through green innovation. Green innovation is a new or significantly improved process, technique, system, or practice designed to avoid or reduce environmental harm and subsequently enhance organisational performance. Initiating green innovation into staff development programmes can develop “green abilities” which help employees align their personal “green” values with their efforts at work as well as the organisation’s values. This improves employees’ emotional responses towards the organisation and their intention to stay.
However, there is a lack of studies and calls for future research to extend the theory and the impacts of green innovation on employees’ emotional and performance outcomes, not to mention conflicting research outcomes within existing literature. In addition, green innovation practices, focusing on the economic and financial nature of investment, overlook employees’ emotions, hence a lack of psychological insights into their perceptions. Also, hope represents a missing link in encouraging employee participation in green innovation initiatives, which is also required for achieving successful organisational and environmental future outcomes.
The primary contribution of this current research is to offer a mediating mechanism – employee hope – for the research gap and the previous conflicting research outcomes that explains how employees’ preferences for green innovation impact employees’ goal attainment and perceptions of organisational performance, which ultimately lead to employees’ intentions to stay with the organisation. This study is the first to evaluate the role of hope in organisation’s green innovative practices and its impacts on employees’ goal attainment and intention to stay.
Method and sample
Data was obtained from a reputable marketing agency via an online survey in Australia. A random method of assigning the link to participants, resulting in a final sample size of 403. Non-responses were removed, items were randomised, two integrity checks were included, and anchors were varied – strongly disagree/never (1) to strongly agree/always (7). Respondents all had a minimum of 1-year full-time employment experience from different industries and ranged from 18 to 65 years old.
Key findings
- Preference for organisational green innovation (significantly) positively impacts employees’ hope. When employees and the organisation share the same value of green innovation, it creates hope for positive outcomes.
- Employee hope has a significant positive impact on perceived organisational performance. Employees who have hope about the success of green innovation practices are more likely to perform better. Hope is considered a basis for higher level performance.
- Employee hope positively impacts employees to pursue and attain their goals.
- Perceived organisational performance has a positive impact on employees’ intention to stay. When an organisation performs well and employees are part of it, they are less likely to leave.
- Similarly, employees’ goal attainment significantly influences their intention to stay. When employees achieve their goals, they are more likely to remain in the organisation and reduce turnover.
- Employees’ belief of how much control they have over their own lives is an influencing factor of the impact of organisational green innovation on employees’ hope. Different perceived levels of control affect how green innovation impacts hope.
- Control variables, such as age, gender, nationality, industry type, and organisation size, did not show significant effects on the studied relationships.
Recommendations
- It is crucial to manage employees’ emotions because failure to create positive emotions, especially hope, can lead to poor employee performance. Hence, organisations practicing green innovation should adopt systematic procedures to evaluate and monitor employees’ emotions.
- Relevantly, organisations should employ strategies to enhance hope in employees. For example, organisations can provide more support in attaining green innovation-related goals by clarifying goals, developing success pathways, providing motivation, and reframing obstacles as challenges to be overcome.
- Organisations should design effective reward systems that value employees’ high performance and involvement in green innovation practices. This can encourage further innovation and support the organisation’s green goals.
- Organisations should value employees’ personal green interests and goals to increase their engagement and contribution in the organisation’s green innovation practices. This can drive both employees’ growth and organisational success.
- Organisations should participate in green product and innovation certification programs to promote their green innovation practices and spread those practices to others.
- Organisations should adjust their recruitment and HRM policies to recruit those with traits that align with their organisational green innovation values such as sustainability-oriented, goal-oriented, and hopefulness.
Researcher
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.