The role of green innovation and hope in employee retention

Green innovation is increasingly receiving attention in organisational behaviour and strategic management literature. However, understanding employee's preferences for organisations that have adopted innovative environmental practices have received little attention. This study tests a framework that examines the relationship between employees' preferences for innovative green organisations, hope, and intentions to stay. Data were collected from 403 employees in Australia. Results show that employees' preferences for green innovation drive the emotional state of employee hope, which has a positive effect on employees' intentions to stay with the organisation. This study offers implications for academics and managers, advancing the literature on green innovation, recruitment, retention, and organisational behaviour.

The literature refers to "green innovation" as a new or significantly improved process, technique, system or practice designed to avoid or reduce environmental harm and subsequently enhance organisational performance (Burki & Dahlstrom, 2017;Li et al., 2018).For example, integrating green innovation into staff development programmes can improve employees' abilities, such as assisting teams to reduce waste, optimising the use of finite resources, developing eco-friendly products, or engaging in environmentally sustainable projects (Gupta & Barua, 2017;Kay et al., 2018;Khan et al., 2021).By developing these "green abilities," employees are able to align their personal "green" values with their efforts at work (McCarthy & Liu, 2017;Tan et al., 2016).As such, when employees know that their organisations are encouraging them to adopt green initiatives and engage in green practices, they are more likely to demonstrate more commitment towards their organisation, since they can achieve their green goals while also working with an organisation that shares the same values (e.g., Hartmann & Vachon, 2018).This, in turn, provides employees with opportunities to improve their emotional responses towards the organisation and intentions to remain with the organisation (Paillé et al., 2014).
Prior research suggests that employees provide the human capital to deliver green innovation, initiatives, practices, and projects (Bhatia, 2021;Burki & Dahlstrom, 2017;Cheng, 2020).Without their effective contribution, businesses would not be able to formulate, implement, and demonstrate ethical practices related to green Abbreviations: AMOS, Analysis of Moment Structures; AVE, average variance extracted; CFA, confirmatory factor analysis; CFI, comparative fit index; IFI, incremental fit index; RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; SEM, structural equation modelling; SPSS, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences; SRMR, standard root mean square residual.
innovation and proenvironmental objectives (Kunapatarawong & Martínez-Ros, 2016;Li et al., 2018).Employees' preferences for incorporating green initiatives are considered an opportunity for improved organisational performance and employee goal attainment (Zibarras & Coan, 2015).If employees perceive that their organisation is performing well on attaining proenvironmental goals, they are more likely to remain in the organisation (Noor et al., 2018).Further, studies highlight that the environment concerns are an important element of preferring green (Paul et al., 2016).Other studies conduct systematic literature review that calls for research that focuses on higher value of innovation while consuming fewer resources (Dabi c et al., 2022).In short due to lack of convergence in studies and calls for future research to extend the theory and explore avenue for green innovation, our study focuses on green innovation and its impact on employees' emotional and performance outcomes.In addition, the literature on organisational green innovation and employees' preferences for green innovative practices highlights a lack of convergence (Bendell, 2017;Kunapatarawong & Martínez-Ros, 2016;Wang & Juo, 2021).For instance, some studies identify that employees' preferences for environmentally innovative organisations do not necessarily lead to employee retention (Bendell, 2017;Kunapatarawong & Martínez-Ros, 2016).In contrast, other studies (see Hartmann & Vachon, 2018) establish that employees' preferences to work for firms perceived to have leading environmental innovative practices help them build a positive perception of their employer's performance.This positive perception helps them in their goal-attainment process, which ultimately encourages them to remain employed with their organisations.While this contrast is evident, the primary contribution of this current research is to offer a mediating mechanism-employee hopethat 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.
There are two reasons to propose hope as a mediating mechanism between employees' preferences for green innovation and performance outcomes for employees and the organisation.First, focusing only on the economic and financial nature of investments for green innovative practices overlooks the scope of employees' emotional responses.There is a need to offer psychological insight into employees' perceptions of organisational performance and their goalattainment process.Such an approach provides greater insight into employee behavioural intentions relating to employment, recruitment, and retention (e.g., Feldman & Kubota, 2015;Rand, 2017).Second, as a future-oriented construct, hope entails positive feelings about the goals and pathways to attain those goals (Lin et al., 2016).Kretz (2013, p. 926) states, "hope bridges the gulf between the beliefs and actions of today and possibilities for tomorrow."In line with Kretz (2013), we argue that employee hope represents a missing link in encouraging employee participation in green innovation initiatives, which is also a necessity for achieving successful organisational and environmental future outcomes.
In addition, researchers have also drawn attention to the dearth of research on hope in the context of the employee-organisation relationship (e.g., Lin et al., 2016).Studies on employee hope (e.g., Fazal-e- Hasan et al., 2018Hasan et al., , 2020;;Stajkovic, 2006) demonstrate a positive relationship with employees' citizenship behaviours (de Lara, 2008); survival beliefs (Range & Penton, 1994); perceived control (Curry et al., 1997); mental health (Kwon, 2000); creativity, satisfaction, retention, and organisation and employee performance (Luthans & Jensen, 2002).We propose that the latent concern emerging from the literature is the necessity to understand the role of hope in explaining why and how employees' preferences for innovative green practices affect their goal attainment and perceptions of organisational performance.We also address some of the fragility in the literature by establishing how the relationship between employees' preferences for organisational green initiatives and hope may be moderated by their (employee) locus of control.Thus, to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate the role of hope in the context of an organisation's green innovative practices and its impact on employee goal attainment and employees' intentions to stay.Subsequent sections present the conceptual background and hypotheses, methodology, data analysis (results), and discussion.

| Affect theory of social exchange and broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions
The basis of our conceptualisation is the Affect Theory of Social Exchange (Lawler, 2001), which explains how employee hope can explain the impact of employees' preference towards green innovation on the employee intentions to stay (with the organisations).
According to the theory, the attainment of implicit or explicit benefits by participating partners of joint social exchange activities determines the nature and intensity of the emotional experience (Lawler, 2001).
For instance, when exchange results are nonbeneficial to employees or organisation, or both, partners experience negative emotions such as sadness, shame, and regret.When exchanges are successful (e.g., employee and the organisation consider green innovation as a priority), employees, as an exchange partner, experience positive emotions and quality of the mutual relationship is strengthened (Raggio & Folse, 2009) which aids in developing intentions to stay with their organisation.
We further employ the support of Fredrickson's (2004) broadenand-build theory to highlight how hope may impact other employee performance outcomes.While the employees' perceptions of green innovation may lead them to experience hope, to attain their personal or social status-seeking goals and build their perceptions of organisational performance, Fredrickson's (2004) broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions, such as hope, may broaden employee's awareness, persuade novel thoughts and emotions, and build psychological and social resources.Building on this theory, we contend that hope as a positive emotion appears to construct employees' enduring psychological (e.g., goal attainment and belief in superior performance) resources.In the light of these theories, we conclude that employee hope is stimulated when employees feel hopeful through their perceptions of green innovation, and this positive emotion of hope affects the cognitive-focused psychological mechanisms, goal attainment, and perceived performance which in turn generates action tendencies to stay within the organisation.
Our perspective in this paper is relevant because it complements the green innovation and green human resource management (HRM) literature by evaluating hope from the viewpoint of employees.This is T A B L E 1 Studies on positive emotion in green management domain achieved by treating employee hope as a cognitive-focused emotional response which links employee preferences for green innovation and green HRM practices to improved environmental performance.This perspective is important because it considers how employees experience positive emotions to improve their organisation's performance outcomes.In doing so, this study positions hope as an integral component of employees' relationships with their organisation in terms of their goal attainment and perceived organisational performance when the organisation takes green innovation and environmental initiatives.

| Positive emotions, hope, and green management
This study positions hope, a cognitive-focused positive emotion, as an integral component of an employee's relationship with their organisation in terms of their goal attainment and perceived organisational performance when an organisation adopts innovative green practices, like food-waste-reduction programmes and environmental initiatives.
Our literature search resulted in 44 studies with the selected key terms.However, we picked up only those studies that have employed positive emotions and hope as constructs rather than just a key term or a phrase.The criterion helped us get 12 relevant studies.Table 1 demonstrates relevant studies that we have reviewed on positive emotions and hope in the green management domain.
While most identified studies employed positive emotions as a summative construct, few studies have focused on hope as a specific positive emotion in the green management domain.For example, most studies considered positive emotions a harmonious environmental, psychological mechanism that links the organizations'/leaders' environmental practices to employee green behaviour.Some studies posit hope as a driver to psychological capital, subjective well-being, and CSR.Only one study postulates hope as an outcome of employee satisfaction.To the best of our knowledge, no study theoretically or empirically integrates employee hope with green innovation and employees' perception of organisational performance.Therefore, this review highlights employee hope as a possible alternative explanation to investigate the role of green innovation in the green management domain.

| Green innovation and employee hope
Green business operations first emerged in management literature during the early 1970s (Leonidou & Leonidou, 2011).Despite the advantages of attaining innovative proenvironmental goals and objectives within organisations, some researchers (e.g., Bhatia & Jakhar, 2021;Lampikoski et al., 2014) found that, in relation to green innovation, evolutionary innovations are rarely enough to transform an organisation into a market leader.Schiederig et al. (2012) further elucidate the concept of organisational green innovation.Their empirical work establishes that three ideals of green, eco/ecological, and environmental innovation are normally used with identical meanings.Chen et al. (2006) assert that the benefits of different types of green innovations within organisations need to be better understood.There is an assortment of benefits associated with green innovation, for example, during the recruitment of employees (Grolleau et al., 2012), increasing employees' on-the-job involvement (Lanfranchi & Pekovic, 2014), helping achieve organisational growth (Dangelico & Pujari, 2010), and improving employees' behaviour towards the organisation (Norton et al., 2014).Moreover, employees' perceptions of their organisation's innovative practices demonstrate higher levels of equitable recognition at work (Lanfranchi & Pekovic, 2014).Furthermore, the extant literature highlights that employees may prefer a green organisation over a nongreen organisation because the organisation's corporate social responsibility is aligned with their goals, ethics, and values (Akremi et al., 2018;Delmas & Pekovic, 2018;Morgeson et al., 2013).Additionally, they may join a green organisation due to the perceived quality of products and services associated with green practices, sustainability and the well-being of communities and humanity (Delmas & Pekovic, 2016;Pekovic, 2015).
Green human capital is the summation of employees' knowledge and skills that help them achieve green organisational goals (Bano et al., 2018).Moreover, organisations that align their strategic objectives with their employees' values often provide a workplace that is likely to inspire hope, with the outcome that it has a positive effect on employees' short-and long-term performance (Combs et al., 2010).
This can be achieved by fostering conditions that nurture employee hope (Rego et al., 2012).For example, employee empowerment has a positive effect on employees' attitudes and acceptance of green innovation (Sharma & Gupta, 2015).In addition, building employee knowledge and awareness is an important factor in enhancing employees' acceptance of green innovation projects (Muafi, 2015).Taking the preceding viewpoints together, a preference for green innovative practices develops hope for employees to attain their professional goals and improve their perceptions of organisational performance.
Moreover, because hope is future-oriented-at both the cognitive and emotional level-hopeful people expect positive outcomes in relation to what is yet to come.Adopting Snyder et al.'s (2002) conceptualisation of hope, an organisation with improved environmental innovative practices and performance develops hope among their employees to achieve their green goals.Hence, a preference for organisational green innovative practices is likely to have a positive impact on employee hope.Therefore, underpinned by the preceding debate, we present our first hypothesis: H1. Employee preference for organisational green innovation has a positive impact on employee hope.

| The moderating role of employees' locus of control (internal)
Employee locus of control denotes the extent to which employees have confidence in controlling reinforcements at work (Allen et al., 2005).Employees who base their success on their own work and believe they control their professional lives have a higher locus of control (internal).Internal locus of control is different from an external locus of control where employees believe that much of what happens in the organisation is beyond their control (Caliendo et al., 2015: Zhou et al., 2016).We contend that this psychological concept in organisational behaviour focuses on employees' expectations concerning their capabilities to control events, which may affect them and their inclinations to ascribe the reasons behind success or failure to external and internal sources.Employees with an internal locus of control tend to believe in their abilities to control events and ascribe their achievements and failures to themselves (Allen et al., 2005;Zhou et al., 2016).In contrast, employees with an external locus of control tend to possess low expectations regarding their aptitudes for controlling events and ascribe their failures or achievements to external factors, such as other people and fate.The empirical evidence is that employees with an internal locus of control are achievement-oriented, often have intrinsic motivation, and are more creative in devising pathways to attain their goals (Allen et al., 2005;Snyder et al., 2002).
Empirically, the locus of control is a key contingency factor in organisational behaviour research, influencing the relationships between an employee's stress and job satisfaction and satisfaction and turnover (e.g., Li et al., 2014).We employ the support of core self-evaluations (CSE) theory (Judge et al., 1997) to explain how locus of control is a contingency factor for the relationship between employee preference for green innovative practices and employee hope.According to CSE theory, fundamental appraisals that people hold of themselves and their abilities establish a baseline appraisal that colours how they view their environment and experiences.When employees appraise themselves to examine their fit with an organisation, the (dis)confirmation to the belief develops a positive emotion of hope that they will achieve their personal and professional goals.The level of their control over the factors that may help them achieve their goals can impact the levels of hope and other positive attitudes towards the organisation.We contend that an employee's internal locus of control is a key condition for driving their preference for organisational engagement in green innovative practices (i.e., adopting a green innovation posture) towards their emotional state of hope.
Employees with a high internal locus of control are likely to have high self-confidence in their abilities to master their working environments and achieve their desired outcomes (Allen et al., 2005).Hence, by relying on their achievement-oriented characteristics; these groups of employees are more motivated to adopt the green innovation posture and creatively contribute to green innovation processes within the organisation.Consequently, a strong belief in their abilities to achieve success by being involved in green innovative practices would instil hope in them to achieve their career goals.Therefore, we put forward our second hypothesis: H2. Employee locus of control (internal) positively moderates the relationship between employee preference for organisational green innovation and employee hope.
2.5 | Consequences of employee hope

| The relationship between employee hope and goal attainment
A goal is an object which is consciously anticipated to be acquired, owned, displayed (i.e., environmentally friendly products, green brands), or targeted for a positive outcome (Caiado et al., 2018;Zaleski, 1988).Snyder (1994) highlighted the mechanism that can be employed to show how hope influences an employee's goal attainment, arguing that goals, agency-thinking, and pathway-thinking interact with and influence each other throughout the entire goal-pursuit process.For example, choosing a goal (e.g., to develop and implement a green innovative solution) with a high outcome value (i.e., agency) may inspire the generation of more pathways (e.g., meeting environmentalists for policy formulation, lobbying environmental management, and coordinating with the government for extra support) (see Cheavens et al., 2006).In addition, if employees perceive that they are making progress towards a goal, it is more likely to result in a positive effect on their state of hope, which would loop back and fuel the agency-and pathway-thinking process (Snyder, 2005).Hopeful employees are also likely to view impediments as challenges rather than threats and be quick to bounce back from any setbacks (Snyder et al., 2002).
In contrast to low-hope employees, high-hope employees are quicker in establishing their primary, secondary, and alternative goals with a sense of confidence that the pathways to achieve these goals will be effective (Snyder et al., 2002;Ye et al., 2020).Hopeful employees tend to be "flexible thinkers" and are more likely to attain their goals in due course, but employees with no or low hope are unlikely to exhibit flexibility; they could experience discouragement with impediments that they see in their pathways (Snyder et al., 2002).Research suggests that hopeful individuals are more inclined to attain goals pertaining to life meaning (Feldman & Snyder, 2005;Ye et al., 2020), life satisfaction (Cotton Bronk et al., 2009), proactive coping skills (Lopes & Cunha, 2008), and academic and sports performance (Woodman et al., 2009).In the light of these arguments, we hypothesise: H3. Employee hope has a positive impact on employees' goal attainment.

| The relationship between employee hope and perceptions of organisational performance
Congruous with Huselid (1995), we advance the claim that high-hope is the antecedent of a high-performing organisation.This higher performance is the consequence of a bundle of organisational innovative green strategies and human resource practices that enhance performance, such as productivity (MacDuffie, 1995;Yong et al., 2019), with practices having direct input into the organisation's overall performance (Collings et al., 2018).This will positively influence employees' perceptions of management because they are the recipients of management practices and form their own opinions of those practices (Farndale et al., 2011).We further posit that hope is an emotional response, which has a positive role to play when it comes to dealing with employees' stress and turnover (Avey et al., 2009).Thus, if employees' stress levels are reduced, the chances are that organisational performance will be enhanced.The organisation's overall productivity level will also be improved where this is the case.In support of this assertion, elevated levels of motivation directly impact quality, satisfaction, and loyalty (Hays & Hill, 2006), resulting in influencing employees' intentions to stay with the organisation.This is because employees with higher hope are more likely to use feedback in a diagnostic manner to pursue their goals (Petersen, 2015), meaning that they are more motivated to benefit the organisation.
Employee hope, therefore, provides a basis for confidence and positive thoughts that lead to several behavioural outcomes, including increased employee performance (Abbas et al., 2014;Fazal-e-Hasan et al., 2018, 2020).Thus, we argue that employee hope will be a stimulating factor to enhance organisational performance.As Luthans (2002) argues, hope is the most significant predictor of workrelated outcomes.Because employee hope acts as a stimulating factor in improving performance, perceptions of how well the organisation are performing are likely to be improved.Therefore, given the influential role of hope in improving an employee's motivation and performance, we put forward our next hypothesis: H4. Employee hope has a direct positive influence on employees' perceptions of organisational performance.

| Perceived organisational performance and employee goal attainment: Antecedents to employees' intentions to stay
The goal-setting theory evolved from Wurzburg's school of intention, task, and set (Locke & Latham, 1990), and there is an assumption that employees behave in a way that is supportive of organisational goals (Angle & Perry, 1981).The issue of motivating employees has been a long-standing concern for managers, with motivation emerging from within the individual (Parttimaa & Bäckström, 2018).Employee goal attainment is viewed as an integral part of self-evaluation, with selfevaluation considered to be a higher order trait (Judge et al., 2005).
Goals motivate employees because of the benefits they gain from achieving those goals, whereas goal attainment becomes more important when there is environmental uncertainty, particularly when coupled with a lack of organisational resources (Hirst et al., 2009).
Expectancy theory is founded on the belief that it will lead to the improved performance needed to achieve a goal.This is not always the case because expectancy theory suggests goal attainment is linear and, because challenging goals are more difficult to achieve, there is probably a negative effect on individual performance (Locke & Latham, 2002).Thus, to ascertain the best individual performance, the primary function of a goal is that it must be high, and the employee must be of the view that it is attainable.In this regard, the primary goal theory is motivation (Porter & Latham, 2013), and performance is greatest when there is a commitment (Locke & Latham, 2002).Goals affect performance in four key ways: (1) Directive function, (2) energising function, (3) persistence, and (4) arousal discovery (Locke & Latham, 2002).In an organisational setting where goals are more specific (over vague or general goals), there is an expected uplift in performance (Locke & Latham, 1990)-although if goals are too specific, they can be counter-productive (Simons & Chabris, 1999).
The relationship between the employer and employee is voluntary (Cardy & Lengnick-Hall, 2011).Equity theory maintains that the unfair return on employees' efforts concerns individuals, and they compare outcomes against those received by others.Owing to effort and reward, as Angle and Perry (1981) contend, the paradigm is that the employees and the organisation are viewed as being in an exchange.Employee goal attainment is a motivational tool with two distinct dimensions: One is focused on developing the individual, and the other is performance-oriented (Hirst et al., 2009) as employees' goal attainment is likely to be rewarded (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004) and acts as a motivator (Schweitzer et al., 2004).Variations in employee retention can influence organisational culture (Sheridan, 1992)-part of which is the mechanism for attaining employee goals-and we contend that it will lead to a greater inclination to be committed to an employer.Thus, we present our fifth hypothesis: H5. Employees' goal attainment has a direct positive impact on intentions to stay.

| The relationship between perceived organisational performance and intentions to stay
In part, an individual's self-conception and self-esteem stem from the organisation with which they are employed-this reflects the practices that are employed by the organisation (Graves & Sarkis, 2018).
Employees develop their viewpoints based on those practices (Farndale et al., 2011).As Huselid (1995) posited, it is the organisation-level measures of human resource management systems that influence organisational performance, and these can be viewed as a bundle of activities that capture broader, high-level impactful activities (Perry-Smith & Blum, 2000).We contend that one of the reasons for perceived organisational performance is an employee's interpretation of their organisation's performance and, therefore, if employees view themselves as being productive, then overall organisational performance is likely to be improved.As an individual, self-concept and status are attributable to a person's employment (Carmeli et al., 2007); the corollary is that these factors are likely to impact whether the employee remains with their employer.As indicated earlier, an examination of the reasons why employees leave is not novel, with March and Simon (1958) providing much of the psychological theory behind the issue.While this is well understood, there has been a growing call to examine new ways to comprehend employee retention (Lee et al., 2004).Underpinned by a variety of factors grounded in the literature (e.g., Lee et al., 2008;Mitchell et al., 2001), employees leave their organisations because there are better alternatives available elsewhere.As a result, if an organisation is perceived to be performing well, then the likelihood is that employees will remain.In drawing the preceding discussion together, we hypothesise: H6. Perceived organisational performance has a direct positive impact on intentions to stay.
Bringing all the hypotheses together, our conceptual framework (Figure 1) presents employee preference for green innovation as an antecedent to employee hope and its effect on perceived organisation performance and employee goal attainment in determining employees' intentions to stay.Upstream, between employees' preference for organisational green innovations and employee hope, we consider the moderating role of employees' locus of control (external), which is the degree to which an employee perceives success and failure as being contingent upon personal initiatives.The marketing research company adopted a random method to assign the link to their panel member.This study used Cochran's (2007) criteria for determining sample size.Cochran (2007) suggests that a sample size 10 or more times the number of variables in the theoretical framework is reasonably good for any research in social sciences.In line with Cochran (2007) states that for a small population (i.e., less than 10,000), a sample set of 10-30% of that population is suitable.His recommendations for a sample size of a larger group (i.e., over 150,000) are as low as 1%.In the current study, there are 41 items for six different constructs.Thus, a sample size of 400 is appropriate to run a multivariate statistical analysis.Accordingly, we were able to collect data from 403 respondents, and in return, they were given incentives.An online link was provided to the panel members by the marketing research company.With the rise of smartphone technology, participants can be reached at any location at any time, making it more convenient for them (Evans & Mathur, 2018).It is also possible to remove non-response errors in the survey by coding online surveys that do not allow access to the following sections without fully completing all the previous questions.To minimize the common method bias, items were randomized, anchors were varied-strongly disagree/never (1) to strongly agree/always (7), several items were reverse coded, and two integrity check items were included.Additionally, for data analysis purposes, an online survey method allows the data to be stored and analysed without having to input the data into a separate programme, thus reducing the possibility of errors when data is transferred from one format to another, such as from paper to statistical programme (Evans & Mathur, 2018).Respondents needed to be above 18 years old with a minimum of 1-year full-time employment experience.

| RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA COLLECTION
We received 447 responses in which some of them were incomplete.We deleted 44 incomplete responses and end up with the usable sample size of 403 participants.The response rate for this study was 90%.The sample consisted of 49.1% males (n = 198) and At the beginning of the survey, participants were asked to recall the role they were performing in their organisations and their relationship with the organisation.A series of multi-item Likert measures followed this, all on a 7-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7), capturing the conceptual model's constructs: employees' perceptions of the organisation's green innovation, employee hope, employees' locus of control, employee goal attainment, and employees' intentions to stay.Employees' perceptions of organisational performance were also measured using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from extremely bad (1) to excellent (7).To measure our constructs, we did not engage in new scale development and instead modified the item stems from existing, well-established measures from the literature relating to studies that are comprehensively cited.Item-stem modification was performed because the items from which we were drawing were developed for a specific study and, without their modification, the validity of the items would be ques-  and Murayama (2008); four items were used to measure intentions to stay adopted from Rosin and Korabik (1991); and perceived organisational performance was measured with 10 items from Delaney and Huselid (1996).The full list of the modified items is available in Table 2.
Efforts to reduce systematic measurement error (i.e., bias) were incorporated into the survey.Scale items were both positively and negatively worded to minimise acquiescence bias.Post-hoc, a Harman's (1967) one-factor test was conducted.The first factor in the data accounted for less than 30% of the variance, suggesting common method bias is not an issue in the data (Harman, 1967).In order to minimise acquiescence bias, scale items were both positively and negatively worded.Furthermore, items from the same constructs were dispersed randomly throughout the questionnaire, and temporal separation between the measurement of the independent and dependent variables was managed (Podsakoff et al., 2012).Following Mattila and Enz (2002), the techniques employed to minimise acquiescence bias (i.e., wording questions positively and negatively) and Harman's onefactor test provide support for the absence of these general method biases in the findings.In addition, we have performed "markervariable test."The result reconfirmed that the collected data are free from CMB issues.

| DATA ANALYSIS
The data analyses were conducted with structural equation modelling (SEM) using SPSS and AMOS 25 by following a two-step analytical procedure, starting with an evaluation of the measurement model followed by the structural model.The two-step approach ensured conclusions emanating from the structural relationships were drawn from a set of measurement instruments with desirable psychometric properties (Hair et al., 2006).

| Measurement validation-Confirmatory factor analysis
The psychometric properties of the constructs were evaluated by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).The fit indices were acceptable, with χ 2 = 1537.657,df = 764, χ 2 /df = 2.013, (p < .01), Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .940,Standard Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .044,Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = .940,and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .050.Taking the goodness of fit measures together, we can conclude that the model is an adequately suitable fit to the data from the sample.The item loadings (see Table 2) are significant (p < .01), in support of convergent validity (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988).
The values of Inter-Item Consistency (α) and the Composite Reliability scores (see Table 3) of all constructs were above the recommended cut-off of .70,therefore, demonstrating good reliability (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).In addition, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of all constructs is greater than the threshold score of .766 Note: All factor loadings are significant at p < .01.
.50.Both tests ensure the convergent validity of the model constructs.The interfactor correlation matrix (see Table 3) indicates acceptable level of correlations between the constructs, further supporting constructs' discriminant validity.The average variance of each construct was greater than its shared variance with any other construct, suggesting discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
However, the square root of the average variances of employee hope, employees' goal attainment, and employees' locus of control were lower than their shared variance with any other construct.To further evaluate our model, we performed a chi-square difference test suggested by Bagozzi et al. (1991)  HTMT scores of all variables should be less than .90.In Table 3, all HTMT scores are less than the suggested cut-off except employee hope with employee goal attainment.However, chi square test is indicating that employee hope and employee goal attainment are discriminant to each other.

| Results from path analysis
Reflecting our hypothesised relationships, we tested the effects of preference for organisational green innovation on employee hope and then the effects of the first mediating variable (i.e., employee hope) on employee goal attainment and perceived organisational performance.We then tested the effect of the second-stage mediating variables (i.e., employee goal attainment and perceived organisational performance) on intention to stay.The adequacy of the structural model shows good model fit, with χ 2 = 1437.047,df = 696, χ 2 / df = 2.065 (p < .01),CFI = .938,IFI = .939,SRMR = .0506,and RMSEA = .051.In summary, the full results for the Path analysis are presented in Figure 2. To begin, our study reveals that organisational green innovation has a significant positive impact on employee hope (β = .580,p < .01),which emerges because there is congruous between the organisation's values related to green innovation and those of the employee that gives them hope.This means that there is the sharing of values between the employee and the organisation, and which are as Porter and Kramer (2011) posit are person to the individual.
Next, given Fredrickson's (2004) broaden-and-build theory, we find that employee hope significantly increases perceived organisational performance (β = .640,p < .01).This finding's importance is reflected in the fact that those employees who are hopeful that if green innovation issue are met, they are likely to perform at a higher level.And Luthans (2002) postulates employee hope is a basis F I G U R E 2 Green innovation model for higher level performance.Our study also shows an important relationship between employee hope and employee goal attainment (β = .952,p < .01).Goal attainment is related to a positive outcome, which is a subconscious outcome, because hope as a future orientated construct is a positive emotion (Fowler et al., 2017).Thus, it is reasonable to assume that if employees are hopefully they are more likely to pursue the attainment of a goal.In complementing Lawler's (2001) Affect Theory of Social Exchange, our next relationship shows that a perceived organisational performance enhances intention to stay (β = .310,p < .01).As a relationship, this can be predicated on the belief that if an organisation is performing well, and an employee is part of that enhanced performance, then they are more likely to remain an employee.As a measure, performance can include nonfinancial measures and these nonfinancial measures, which employees may value more than the financial ones, can encourage employees to stay for a longer period of time.This has the benefit of increasing employees' commitment (Yu et al., 2019) and hence increased organizational performance can lead to reduction in employee turnover.
Acquiring and developing employees is one of the most important goals for an organisation (Sparrow & Makram, 2015).Therefore, if an employee achieves their goals they are less likely to leave which lead to our next hypothesis which shows that employee goal attainment significantly impacts intention to stay (β = .482,p < .01).Because of the way that it can influence, our final discovery is that an employee's locus of control significantly moderates the impact of organisational green innovation on employee hope (β = .249,p < .01).Taken together, our empirical evidence shows that each of the hypothesised relationships are significant (see Table 4).We also examined the effect of following control variables; age, gender, nationality, age, type of industry, and size of organization.The estimates of all control variables were nonsignificant.

| Indirect effects
Bootstrapping procedures in AMOS 24 were used to test the significance of the indirect effects of employee hope, perceived organisational performance, and employee goal attainment (Zhao et al., 2010).A total of 2000 bootstrapping samples were generated from the original dataset (n = 403) by random sampling.According to the results, (1) organisational green innovation exerted a significant indirect effect on perceived organisational performance and employee goal attainment through the indirect effect of employee hope, and (2) employee hope impacted intention to stay through the indirect effect of perceived organisational performance and employees' goal attainment.The indirect effects of three mediators and the associated 95% confidence intervals are displayed in Table 5.
We conducted a slope analysis (see Figure 3) to further confirm the moderating effect of employee locus of control, which shows that it strengthens the positive relationship between employees' preferences for organisational green innovation and employee hope.

| DISCUSSION
Our contribution utilises two key theories, Lawler's (2001) affect theory of social exchange and Fredrickson's (2004) broaden-and-build theory.By using these two theories, dealing with the two key accepts  stay (Mostafa, 2017), which are in-effect exchanges with obligations (Bordia et al., 2017) that have the psychological properties to become a form of contract (Rousseau et al., 2018).In contrast, given the prominence of sustainability and green innovative practices as strategic objectives for organisations, academic scholars have scarcely considered the role of employees' preferences towards green innovative practices and its consequences for employees' career success (Huang & Li, 2017).Lawler's (2001) affect theory of social exchange posits that where there are successful exchanges it can have positive impact.Given the beneficial nature of the exchange, our study illustrates that employees' preferences for organisations' green strategies play a decisive role in provoking positive emotional responses within employees, with the result of boosting their performance and motivating them to continue their employment with their current organisation.For an organisation, there are benefits associated with a reduction in staff turnover including, for example, organisation learning (Chung et al., 2015).
We add to the body of knowledge on employees' levels of emotional responses by demonstrating the benefit of creating and enhancing employees' hope in the context of employees' contribution to organisations' green initiatives.Similar to Bhatia and Jakhar (2021) apropos to developing employees' hope, it is possible to advance the argument that effectively monitoring, encouraging, and rewarding employees' predilection towards green-oriented initiatives can heighten employees' emotional state of hope and can aid employees in realising their personal goals.Nonetheless, to deepen the process T A B L E 5 Bootstrapping's indirect effects and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the meditational model F I G U R E 3 Slope analysis of hope-creation within green-oriented and innovative organisations, our findings uncover the role of a key exigency factor that expedite green employee preferences towards an emotional state of hope.In particular, our findings inform current research with a lens on the importance of employees' internal locus of control, which is an internal factor that influences behaviour (Treviño, 1986;Valentine et al., 2019).This work complements the extant broad-and-build literature by validating the notion that organisations can fully benefit from rewarding and encouraging green-oriented preferences of their employees.But this can only take place if those employees demonstrate a high level of locus of control (internal) as a vital characteristic in strengthening the influence of employees' preferences for green innovation on employees' level of hope.In fact, our findings show that-in the context of organisations with green-oriented innovative deportments-employees who are achievement-oriented and those who attribute their successes and failures to themselves are potentially a better target for an organisation's attempts in creating and enhancing employee hope and pursuing green strategies.
In complementing the theory of broaden-and-build, the final element of our final "Green Innovation" model also confirmed the key factors that connect employee hope with employees' intentions to stay.While past research has tested the direct association between employees' positive and negative emotions with intentions to stay, we provide impetus to the literature by incorporating the role of perceived organisational performance and employee goal attainment as key intermediaries between employee hope and intentions to stay.
Our findings illuminate on the argument that employee hope simultaneously improves employees' perceived organisational performance and goal attainment.More importantly, these results regarding these relationships have been tested in an understudied context: organisational green initiatives and sustainability.The indirect effects of employees' preferences for green innovation impacts employee goal attainment and perceived organisational performance.Further, employee hope has an indirect effect on employees' intentions to stay through goal attainment and perceived organisational performance.
These findings highlight that hopeful employees attain their goals and attribute their goal attainment process to improve organisational performance, which provides a reason to stay in the organisation's employment.In summary, investment in green initiatives and the recruitment and retention of hopeful employees is important for any organisation.

| MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS
This study provides meaningful insights for organisations pursuing green initiatives and sustainability strategies, in particular because of the importance of managing and monitoring their employees' emotions.Failure to adopt systematic procedures that evaluate and sense employees' propensity towards green innovative practices may hinder the creation of positive emotions (such as hope) and experiences for employees.It may result in to unexceptional employee performance (Vijayalakshmi & Bhattacharyya, 2012).Furthermore, productive, rewarding systems have to be designed and operationalised so that they value employees' efforts and involvement in green-oriented initiatives.The reward systems are critical for encouraging employee behaviours that can lead to innovation (Gupta & Shaw, 2014;Kremer et al., 2019).Therefore, the application and purpose of such rewarding systems should be communicated to creative employees who are intensely engaged in innovation development activities within the organisation.
Management's determination to achieve superior green initiative performance is pivotal for employees keen to work for an organisation that adopts and routinises green innovative practices and sustainability-related strategies (Singh et al., 2020).In such organisations, orientation towards green innovative practices should be effectively practised.This is achievable via planning and implementing HRM strategies that aid employees in attaining green-and sustainability-related values, beliefs, and objectives.Concurrent, employees may wish to realise how their activities regarding green initiatives contribute not only to organisation-level strategic goals but also to their well-being (Paillé & Raineri, 2015).Some senior managers may be neglectful in sensing and being acquainted with what an employee is personally trying to achieve in the context of work.If an organisation values and considers their employees' green interests of an employee, they are likely to an aggrandised benefit from employees' expertise in innovation processes (Renwick et al., 2013).
Consequently, employees perceive their possible achievements in green innovation tasks as a key driver of their personal and their organisation's growth, and their druthers for an organisation's green innovative practices instils hope, which will benefit both the organisation and themselves.
At macro-level, we suggest firms to undertake green product and innovation certification programmes (e.g., the US Green Seal, the Canadian Environmental Choice, and the Japan Eco Mark).These programmes, contrary to ISO 14001 which sets out the standards for environmental management systems, are more focused on promoting green innovation practices.Further, for the diffusion of green innovative practices, firms should follow international standards such as ecolabelling and local organic supply chain.We also recommend business firms to formulate environmental defence strategies by integrating applicants are inclined to take responsibility for their actions.These types of personalities are likely to be more compatible with organisations' green innovation values, and these types of applicants often believe that their efforts and decisions drive their behaviours.

| LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
In common with other research contributions, this study is not without its limitations.The cross-sectional design and data collection from frontline employees (single-level) limit the generalisability of this study.Longitudinal and multilevel research designs (frontline employees, managers, and organisation) focusing on different types of hope ("state" and "trait" hope) will offer insights into the process of cultivating hope in employees.Moreover, this research has not examined the temporal effects that may influence employee hope and, consequently, organisational performance.It has also excluded the variables that might be perceived as closely related to hope, such as optimism, expectation, and desire.Future research that has control of these variables may generate different results.A future avenue for green innovation research may be an investigation of personal and organisational performance outcomes, employing multi-level design and objective data.Likewise, future research may also focus on cluster analysis, group moderation or path analysis based on the subgroup of different industries.Also, the impact of risk and appraisals relating to green innovative practices and hope may be tested in certain sectors, such as health, financial investment, and pharmaceutical.Finally, future research may explore the relationship between innovation, hope, and employees' personal and social resources, which have the potential to make a job less risky and enjoyable.Additionally, a future study may provide a more in-depth exploration into the role of employee goals (personal and professional, process, achievement, and mastery) and perceived organisational performance (financial and nonfinancial) in enhancing employees' intentions to stay.Both innovation and hope positively influence various employee behaviours and can be facilitated by good environmental and human resource strategies.
The findings of our research also provide an avenue for future work in this area.

| Conclusion
Prior research suggests that employees provide the human capital to deliver green innovation, initiatives, practices, and projects.Without their effective contribution, businesses would not be able to formulate, implement, and demonstrate ethical practices related to green innovation and proenvironmental objectives.Accordingly, this research aims at examining how (through which mechanisms and conditions) employee preferences for organisational green innovation influence their intentions to remain with their organisation.The current research achieved its aims by using the Affect Theory of Social Exchange (Lawler, 2001) and Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions (Fredrickson, 2004) in the context of green management practices.We proposed and test a conceptual model to better understand the impact of green innovation on green management practices and performance outcome by analysing the collected data from 403 employees.We employed CFA to validate the measures and path analysis to estimate mediation and moderation of our conceptual model.The contribution of this research to the literature is threefold: (1) We demonstrate the role of employees' preferences towards organisational green innovative practices and the consequences on employees' success; (2) incorporating prior research on the green concept and the role of employee hope, we uncover a key contingency factor that drives employees' preferences towards an emotional state of hope; and (3) we test and validate a conceptual model of employee hope, identifying the key factors that link employee hope with employees' intentions to stay.These results offer a series of useful theoretical and managerial implications in relation to firms' financial, time, and energy investment in employees' perception of green innovation and emotion of hope to achieve employees' goal attainment perception of organizational performance and intentions to stay.
Panel data were obtained from a reputable marketing research agency via an online survey in Australia.This study uses Australia as a context for the research.Since the turn of the century, there has been a growing demand for innovation in green technologies, products, services, and skills, driving rapid expansion in green markets within the country (Australian Department of Innovation, Industry,Science and   Research, 2011;Burki & Dahlstrom, 2017;Jiang et al., 2018).Whether through private or government-led initiatives, Australia continues to show commitment to encouraging green innovation, for example, the Australian Government established a A$1 billion fund to invest in companies that develop low-emissions technology in order to achieve a carbon emissions net zero by 2050(Jose & Packham, 2021).In June 2020 Beyond Zero Emissions, an Australian energy and climate change think-tank, recommended a "million job plan" to replace the 835,000 jobs that were lost due to Covid-19 by accelerating private and public investment in renewable energy, clean buildings, clean transport and manufacturing.Private companies' commitment and invest in different types of green innovation in Australia continues to grow.For example, WePower using public blockchain technology as a way to simplifying the renewable energy procurement process, Cape Byron Distillery using biodegradable Bagasse paper stock to label their bottles and Hub Australia-offering carbon-neutral memberships.Due to this investment in private and government-led initiatives in green innovation, Australia is deemed an appropriate context for the study.
tionable.Employees' perceptions of organisational innovation were measured with nine items fromChen et al. (2015); employee hope was measured with nine items fromSnyder et al. (1996); locus of control was measured with three items fromCleveland et al. (2012); employee goal attainment was measured with six items from Elliot friendly practices, my organisation can make a difference in helping the environment.
to examine the discriminant validity of moderately high correlations between employee hope and employees' goal attainment, and employees' perceptions of organisational green innovation and employees' locus of control.The chi-square difference test returned nonsignificant values between employee hope and employees' goal attainment (Δχ 2 = 252.598/90-250.053/89= 2.545, df = 1; p > .05),and employees' perceptions of organisational green innovation and employees' locus of control (Δχ 2 = 130.673/65-129.898/64= .775,df = 1; p > .05).In addition to two discriminant validity tests, we also conducted heterotraitmonotrait (HTMT) analysis.According to Henseler et al. (2015), the of our work, we are able to provide a more nuanced insight into green innovation, hope, and employee behaviours.This is important because as it stands, these two theories have not been used in unison to provide a new sight within the innovation literature.Green innovation provides a structure for how an organisation can operate in ecofriendly manner, and some of the underlying narrative that emerges within; for example,Suchek et al.'s (2021) systematic review of the circular economy literature provides some similarity in the sense that the discussion is centred on the reuse of resources.The findings of this current research are aligned with the body of knowledge that asserts that positive emotions influence performance outcomes both at the individual and organisational level (e.g.,Cheng, 2020;Lin et al., 2016).Notwithstanding, our research calls into question previous studies which portray green innovation as a mechanical process based on automation and digital advancement (see, e.g.,Bendell, 2017;Cuerva et al., 2014;Kunapatarawong & Martínez-Ros, 2016) and which have largely fallen short because they have not considered employees' emotional responses and their goal attainment ambitions in relation to green innovation.Adding to the broaden-and-build theory our study provides compelling evidence, similar to Rego et al. (2012), that employee hope, as a psychological mechanism, has a positive impact on perceived organisational performance.Employees' goal attainment and intentions to stay with an organisation have noteworthy connotations by virtue of providing an astute perspective to the extant literature on HRM, organisational behaviour, and green innovation.Prior research on the antecedents of employee turnover has scrutinised the influence of employees' negative and positive emotions in galvanising their intentions to leave or environmental regulations and employee training to improve their emotional quotient.These proactive green innovation strategies should be employed right from the recruitment stage to appraisal stage.At micro-level, our study motivates firms to employ strategies to enhance hope in their employees by strengthening expectations that the firm or immediate supervisor may help them attain their environment and sustainability related goals.Hope-enhancing strategies may also involve enlisting employees in tasks that are designed to (a) conceptualise reasonable environment-and sustainability-related goals more clearly, (b) produce pathways to attainment, (c) summon the energy to maintain pursuit, and (d) reframe obstacles as challenges to be overcome.While the outcomes of this research highlight the importance of creating positive emotions (such as hope) in employees, this study direct us to suggesting that green-oriented innovative organisations need to reconsider and review their recruitment and HRM policies carefully.Senior managers need to confirm that effective procedures are being applied to examine and appraise applicants' characteristics, such as being achievement-oriented, hopeful, and responsible.In other words, organisations need to acknowledge the breadth to which Mean, standard deviation, Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability, average variance extracted, and HTMT analysis Note: (N = 403) All values are significant at p < .01.