Is there a place for employee-driven pro-environmental innovations? The case of public organizations

Employee-driven pro-environmental innovations improve the performance of public organizations and contribute to social well-being. Nevertheless, the factors that impede the emergence of such innovations remain unclear. To shed light on why some employee-driven innovations succeed while others fail, 33 semi-structured interviews with public sector managers and sustainability advisors were conducted. The analysis of individual, organizational, and public sector-specific factors indicated that pro-environmental innovations encounter fewer obstacles in organizations where environmental concerns are substantially integrated into internal practices. Surprisingly, however, employees with sustainability-related duties are facing more obstacles when attempting to launch pro-environmental innovations than their colleagues from other departments.