How Employees Implement Green Innovation in Short-Term, Repetitive, and Multitasking Work

Climate crises have induced an urgent need to implement innovation for the environment. While implementation involves multiple actors, little is known about frontline employees and their practices with green innovation implementation. Adopting a temporal lens, this study explores how frontline employees experience and navigate temporal complexities in the implementation process. We collected interview and secondary data from Australian frontline employees. This study contributes to the management and innovation research in three ways: First, it employs a temporal lens to uncover obstacles (e.g. intensified time pressures) that have largely remained implicit and unexplored in prior research. Second, we highlight that frontline employees are critical actors but often overlooked when executing green innovation strategies. Third, we adopt social practice theory to show how time and practices intertwine in shaping green innovation implementation, revealing ethical dilemmas emerging from temporal complexities. This research offers alternative explanations as to why green innovation often hits roadblocks during implementation.