IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijisde/v17y2023i1-2p182-204.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Innovative green employees: the drivers of corporate eco-innovation?

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Schmidt-Keilich
  • Anke Buhl
  • Elisabeth Süßbauer

Abstract

Previous studies have increasingly referred to the green employee as a promising resource for eco-innovation. However, as the concept was only vaguely defined until recently, empirical research is missing. Thus, this paper explores 'innovative green employees' and their potential for eco-innovation, based on interview data from four green German companies of a small to medium size. We find that such employees mainly contribute to corporate eco-innovation by generating and discussing pro-environmental ideas. In our sample, these ideas mainly revolve around fostering eco-friendly consumption at the workplace. Further, our results suggest that innovative green employees contribute to corporate greening by transforming the values and behaviours of colleagues as environmental role-models and opinion leaders. To this end, they draw on their environmental knowledge, professional and private networks, authenticity and credibility as well as on the dialogue culture present in their company.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Schmidt-Keilich & Anke Buhl & Elisabeth Süßbauer, 2023. "Innovative green employees: the drivers of corporate eco-innovation?," International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 17(1/2), pages 182-204.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijisde:v:17:y:2023:i:1/2:p:182-204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=127926
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcos Carchano & Inmaculada Carrasco & Ángela González, 2024. "Eco‐innovation and environmental performance: Insights from Spanish wine companies," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(2), pages 595-623, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijisde:v:17:y:2023:i:1/2:p:182-204. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=33 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.