Courtesy : Frontier in psychology

Green innovation

Resource limitations and environmental concerns have made sustainable operations of assets and environmental pollution one of the major global issues. The economy’s overall development may not go “hand in hand” with the reduction of pollution and sustainable management of resources (Wang and Song, 2014). Building a sense of balance among high resource consumption and development of economy relics is a constant challenge that forces organizations to run-through eco-friendly professional deeds having high economic worth (Chan et al., 2012). Many organizations are forced to adopt activities that generate and increase economic value (Porter and Kramer, 2019).

The excessive use of non-renewable resources prompted by speedy economic development has hurt the atmosphere and elevated various environmental worries (Atlin and Gibson, 2017). To preserve energy and lessen emissions of carbon, numerous countries have established agencies and regulations for environmental sustainability and its protections; examples comprise limitations on “chlorofluorocarbons, the sustainable development announcements of the Johannesburg world summit,” and limits on the usage of few hazardous materials “electrical and electronic equipment requirements, the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive” (Weng et al., 2015, p. 4998). Such impositions of rule and regulations have drawn the attention of environmental supervisors (Zhu and Sarkis, 2004; Claver et al., 2007); they also have the same outcome in varying the management and competition practices between the organizations (Feng and Chen, 2018). To adhere to the new eco-friendly regulations, to have a positive branding image (Chen, 2008a; Hillestad et al., 2010), to improve their firms’ performance and to have a competitive advantage (Claver et al., 2007; Rusinko, 2007), organizations have had to accept eco-friendly practices (Afridi et al., 2020).

Numerous investigations examined factors altering green innovations (GI) practices, such as environmental regulations, ethics, legal systems, and supply chain (Feng and Chen, 2018; Gao et al., 2018; El-Kassar and Singh, 2019; Seman et al., 2019). Studies have also examined an increase in awareness, the general public, and stakeholder pressure linked to green environmental issues (Foo, 2018). Moreover, literature provides evidence of optimized pressure from society, customers, and government bodies to practice GI. However, the literature lacks findings on the relationship of stakeholders’ pressure [competitor’s pressure, government pressure, and employee conduct (EC)] about GI practices. The manufacturing sector faces higher stakeholder pressure due to possibly the highest waste-producing sector (Chen, 2008b; Chang, 2011). The single industry was studied for GI practices (Cordano et al., 2010; Lin and Ho, 2011). This study fills the gap in investigating these constructs in the manufacturing and service industries to enrich existing GI practices and stakeholder pressure literature. Moreover, stakeholder pressure (customer) was examined for GI in third party logistic firms (Chu et al., 2019), as well as in express companies (Zhang et al., 2020), and in manufacturing firms (Song et al., 2020). Those three studies were conducted in China’s context, which highlights the issue of conducting and focusing on the stakeholder pressure in the manufacturing and service industries of Pakistan being a developing economy in the initial stages of GI practices adoption (Shahzad M. et al., 2020).

“Go-green” is an initiative mainly employed by firms to deal with eco-friendly problems. Approaches to attain green abilities and emerging eco-friendly practices have focused on attention and discussion in the management sciences’ discipline over the years (Ullah, 2017). To ease the acceptance of GI, firms must consider the significant factors and precursors in their business entities (Arfi et al., 2018). These comprise apprehensions of consumers (Zhu et al., 2017), preferences of professionals and owners (Huang et al., 2009), competency of suppliers and partners (Chiou et al., 2011), government regulating authorities and their regulations (Kammerer, 2009), and the environmental, technological, and organizational factors of GI practices (Lin and Ho, 2011). Green technologies consist of GI practices (e.g., green product, process, managerial, and marketing innovation) and the execution of green human resource management practices (e.g., green training and development, administrative support and culture, recruitment and selection, compensation, and benefits). GI is a significant strategic enabler to acquire justifiable development, as it practices energy-saving, environment-protecting, waste-recycling, and pollution-preventing methods (Albort-Morant et al., 2018). Furthermore, GI can be divided into green product, green marketing, green processes, and green management that are intended for eco-friendly environment, decreasing consumption of energy and increasing efficient use of the resource, control over pollution emission, and waste recycling, improving the performance of the organization and providing the pollution-free environment to society at large scale (Seman et al., 2019).

Previous studies have witnessed some proofs of the impacts of numerous drivers such as corporate environmental ethics (El-Kassar and Singh, 2019), environmental regulations (Feng and Chen, 2018), the legal system (Gao et al., 2018), and green supply chain management practices (Seman et al., 2019) on GI practices. To date, some systematic and comprehensive investigations of the precursors and factors of GI have been performed. Foo (2018) proposed that the increase in awareness and pressure from the stakeholders and the general public have necessitated organizations to be more transparent in facing and handling green environmental issues of their supply base execution. Hence, it is critical to focus on stakeholders’ views in an organization on establishing and sustaining GI abilities and practices. Then executives of organizations are involved in examining the essential factors necessary for creating GI practices. Are there pressures from established institutions’ regulations and competitor’s critical factors of GI? How should firms have dealt with the concerns of both internal and external stakeholders?

Furthermore, previous studies have concentrated on the manufacturing sector as it is one of the most critical waste producers that upset the balance of an environment. With rising trepidations on global pollution, this industry is facing increasing pressures from customers, society, and governing agencies to save energy, resources, protect the eco-friendly environment and maintain its sustainability (Chen, 2008b; Chang, 2011) or on a single industry (e.g., Cordano et al., 2010; Lin and Ho, 2011). It would be beneficial to offer an all-purpose model to investigate issues about GI for both the service and manufacturing firms. Therefore, in this study, we borrowed help from the “stakeholder theory” (Freeman, 2010) to aid in our investigation methodology. This theory has been utilized to get a comprehensive view of a particular organization to examine stakeholders’ influence (participants) on GI practices. To answer the stakeholders’ pressure, organizations should focus on an overall strategic plan that involves and satisfies both internal and external stakeholder groups (Bryson, 2018).