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Abstract:Innovative solutions are often conjured as a key factor for companies to come closer to the goal of ecological sustainability. Furthermore, proactive eco-innovation activities can encompass competitive advantages. Companies are therefore well advised to tap any available source of innovation. However, although employees' innovative capacity has often been described, to date, their manifold potentials for eco-innovation processes have hardly been examined in detail. The overarching research questions guiding this conceptual paper are why and how employee participation in eco-innovation processes can entail environmental and competitive advantages for companies. The authors introduce the concept of employee-driven eco-innovation (EDEI), defined here as ordinary employees' voluntary engagement in innovation activities within an organizational context that, intentionally or not, lead to environmental improvements. This paper complements previous literature on employee-driven innovation (EDI) by applying it to the specific case of eco-innovation. In this context, employees' comprehensive environmental competences resulting from "tacit knowledge", "private consumer experience" and "green identity" are taken into account. In addition, we delineate critical intra-organizational factors for EDEI activities and illustrate green employees' specific requirements in this regard.

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Research on green identity work has so far concentrated on sustainability managers and/or top-management actors. How lower-level green employees cope with identity tensions at work is, as yet, under-researched. The paper uses an identity work perspective and a qualitative empirical study to identify four strategies that lower-level employees use in negotiating and enacting their green identities at work. Contrary to expectations, lower-level green employees engage substantially in job crafting as a form of identity work despite their limited discretion. In addition, the study demonstrates that lower-level green employees make use of identity work strategies that uphold rather than diminish perceived misalignment between their green identities and their job context.

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The change which is necessary in home and long-term institutional elderly care, first of all, concerns the attitudes, values and norms and the acquisition of key competencies in dealing with people who have a gerontopsychiatric disease. Elderly care and attention of people suffering from dementia therefore requires a principal change in thought. The feeling of well-being is the pre-conditioning and starting point of the caring action, not its result. People suffering from dementia need the feeling of trust and security in order to be able to accept measures which seem to be illogical for them. The adjustment is therefore required from outside by shaping an environment, which provides security and orientation, and by building on caring attention relating to the patients' past interests and history. Participants of the conference could gather information about such innovative approaches in professional elderly care for people suffering from dementia in various workshops, gallery walk and a poster session. All presentations showed an approach, which was oriented towards the living environment and in which questions about the quality and continuity of life were considered to be as important as the aspects of the necessary elderly care. It is not a lack of knowledge about a subject and value oriented care for elderly people suffering from gerontopsychiatric diseases, but rather a deficit in putting this knowledge into practice, as the examples clearly showed. Gerontopsychiatric competencies have to be broadly developed and implemented.