Corporate entrepreneurship is one of the critical strategic approaches in this globally competitive economy. Corporate entrepreneurship is also found to work as a change agent for the community (Martín-Rojas et al., 2020). In recent times organizations are highly motivated to become more entrepreneurial in their practices and approaches (Peschl et al., 2020; Shehata et al., 2020). Creativity and Innovation are mostly dependent on entrepreneurial activities and individual mindsets. Employees with talent are considered to be a source of ideas, intellect, and innovation (Sadat and Nasrat, 2020). The fruition of corporate entrepreneurship is linked with the presence and use of talented individuals who are capable of generating new ideas and going to the process of creativity and innovation (Kabir, 2019). To some researchers corporate entrepreneurship to be a booster for firm profitability and economic development (Mayer and Motoyama, 2020; Si et al., 2020).

The rising concern for environment has evolved the business thinking. Instead of parochially concentrating on entrepreneurial performance, the firms, realizing the importance of environment, have begun to incorporate sustainability in their ideas. The ensuing sustainable corporate entrepreneurship is the embodiment of businesses that value both sustainability and corporate entrepreneurship (Provasnek et al., 2017). The slack at either bleeds the firm differently. The firm, being sustainable but not entrepreneurial, will not be economically feasible. On the other hand, being entrepreneurial but uncaring toward the environment, damages firm's standing with the customers (Provasnek et al., 2017). Against this back drop, the concept of sustainable corporate entrepreneurship can ensure the safe sailing of the firms. Sustainable corporate entrepreneurship is achieved when a firm along with attaining innovation in products, processes and strategies also achieve three sustainability goals of; responsible environmental management, social responsibility and economic performance (Miles et al., 2009). Large organizations need more innovative and creative products and processes to sustain and to get a competitive edge. Large scale manufacturing sector also focuses on developing new products, services, processes, technology, administrative techniques, techniques, practice, and competitive positions (ur Rahman, 2019; Thompson et al., 2020).

The war for talent and management of talent remain major challenges for organizations. Talent familiarity with fourth industrial revolution (4IR) advancement is needed to foster environmental sustainability (Bamel et al., 2020; Farndale et al., 2020; Ogbeibu et al., 2021). Environmental sustainability is a competitive advantage for contemporary organizations and that is why most of the organizations are willing to gain it (Ab Wahab, 2021; Atiku and Fapohunda, 2021). Besides, talent is considered a scarce, strategic asset and a source of competitive advantage (Harsch and Festing, 2020). Stemming from the resource-based view (RBV), skills may be understood as valuable, uncommon, inimitable, and non-substitutable, allowing the implementation of value-creating strategies and success of sustainable competitive advantage (Sparrow and Makram, 2015; Chadwick and Flinchbaugh, 2021).

The realization of employees as a source of competitive edge has given a strategic outlook to HR. Instead of managing day to day staffing through recruitment and training, HR was entrusted to ensure competitive advantage of the firm by attracting, hiring, and retaining the talented individuals. The effort to define talent management is preceded by the definition of talent itself. The talented individuals have mastery of the skills that place them among the top 10% of the employees (Gagné, 2000). Along with their knowledge, skills, and competencies, they have a positive attitude toward their work (Tansley, 2011). In simple words, talent management is the management of talented individuals. But such a simplistic definitions hide more than it reveals. So, a comprehensive definition is required. Initially, talent management was considered to be grooming the talented ones and exiting the ones lacking in talent (Michaels et al., 2001). However, the use of talent management focusing on employees instead of position may not be theoretically sound. So, to improve the theoretical soundness of the definition, another definition focusing on position rather than person has been forwarded. According to this definition talent management is the systematic identification of key positions, development of a talent pool for the identified positions, development of the HR architect to fill these positions and finally ensuring the incumbents continued commitment to the organization (Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Collings et al., 2019). Talent management is found to be related to organizational performance (Ahmad Arif and Uddin, 2016).

At personal level, work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption (Bakker and Leiter, 2010; Schaufeli, 2012). As feelings are contagious therefore employees, finding their colleagues to be imbued with work engagement, catch the bug by interpreting and ascribing the collective meaning to prevailing work behavior (Seibert et al., 2004). So, building upon the personal level work engagement, organizational engagement has been defined as the shared perception of employees regarding their collective physical, cognitive and emotional involvement in their work (Barrick et al., 2015). As a collective resource for the firms, organizational engagement affects organizational performance (Barrick et al., 2015; Schneider et al., 2018).

Organizational members have a shared perception that members of the organization are engaged in their work (Khan et al., 2021a). Collective organizational engagement is an understudied topic for researchers and can help firms achieve and sustain higher performance (Barrick et al., 2015). To Trabucchi et al. (2020) organizational engagement is fundamental to motivate employees and their involement in innovation (Trabucchi et al., 2020). This positive state of mind brings positive attitudinal, behavioral, and work-related results among the employees (Saks, 2021). As a result, employees are willing to allocate extra time and resources to their organizations (Lee et al., 2018).

Both the current performance of the firm and its future prospects are affected by its employees and their attitude (Long, 1980; Berberoglu, 2018). Firms with employees who are competent and willing can do wonder for their organizations. Talent management, from hiring to facilitating the employees, has the potential to affect green corporate entrepreneurship. Hiring the competent individuals desiring to work for the sustainable performance of the firm, and training them to further improve their competence to pursue green corporate entrepreneurship work to enable the organization to achieve this end. Corporate entrepreneurship is the organizational-led creative effort that emanates from the employees of the organization (Amberg and McGaughey, 2019). The creativity component, in any work, brings the uncertainty causing risk into it. Employees tend to avoid all those enterprises related risk because of the associated negative repercussions (Ratten, 2020). In such a situation, spurring employees to indulge in any risky enterprise is possible when employees feel that they are being actively nurtured and supported (Astrini et al., 2020). The current study purports that talent management practices ensure the employees of the support and equip them with the required resources to pursue corporate entrepreneurship. When an organization is caring, valuing, and supporting its employees, inundated with such respect, the employees in return build a trusting relationship with the organization. (Al Hammadi et al., 2020). The employees feel that such caring and supportive behavior readily indulges them even in a risky enterprise (Al Hammadi et al., 2020). In addition, organizations are applying talent management practices to equip employees with the required resources to accomplish innovation results (Sopiah et al., 2020). Employees, finding the organization to provide them with the required training and extending other exposures to enhance their performance, have the necessary skills and resources to invigorate their efforts to accomplish the goal of corporate entrepreneurship (Othman and Khalil, 2018).

Additionally, talent management is a process that works for the development of employees (Collings et al., 2015). The resulting positive benefits accrued to the employees work as favors extended to them. According to social exchange theory (SET), (Blau, 1964), individuals seek the opportunities to return the favor in the same currency. So, the obliged employees show their proclivity to indulge in activities valued by the organization (Blau, 1964). Enabling the firm to sustainably operate is one of the ways employees can return the favor extended to them by the organization. Due to its conceptual similarity with the above-mentioned constructs, corporate entrepreneurship can be expected to be influenced by talent management practices. In light of the existing theoretical underpinning and empirical evidence, the following hypothesis can be formed. So, in the light of SET, we can have the following hypothesis.

The relation between talent management and organizational engagement can be explained in three ways. First, the idea of talent management gives value to the employees (Murillo and King, 2019). Apart from hiring that is one time process, the other facets of talent management such as development and retention of employees continually work to cater to the needs of the employees (Collings et al., 2019). Furthermore, talent management works for the growth of the employees (Boštjančič and Slana, 2018). Finding themselves being facilitated and groomed, the employees value their work and organization positively and show increased level of absorption in their work in the context of the organization (Deery and Jago, 2015). Second, the process of talent management works as a favor extended to the employees (De Boeck et al., 2018). In return, the favored employees seek opportunities to return the favor. One of the ways to positively reciprocate the favor is to show enhanced organizational engagement (Blau, 1964). Third, talent management works as a resource (Luna-Arocas et al., 2020). Employees who are resourceful have positive energy and they show more engagement both to their work and organization. Though talent management has not yet been related to organizational engagement, supportive HR practices, a facet of talent management, has been found to be related to employee engagement (Juhdi et al., 2013).

Talent management, on part of the organization, is the augmented care for the employees (Claus, 2019). Through talent management practices, firms strive to provide employees with extra care to retain them and provide them with training to enhance their skills and abilities (Cross Walker, 2020). The talent management practices, from the identification of key posts to whole-hearted efforts to retain the employees, strive to facilitate employees by providing them with care, learning opportunities, and resources. Such a caring attitude on the part of an organization is enough to overwhelm the employees (Hamilton and Davison, 2018) and they seek opportunities to return the favor. There are multiple ways for employees to return the favor. Employees can put more effort into their work. Employees can show more commitment toward the organization. In line with the above-mentioned constructs, employees can be highly engaged with the organization. According to social exchange theory, employees served by the organization will attempt to return the favor. One way to return the favor is to increase their organizational engagement (Blau, 1964). Researchers have found that employees have a heightened organizational engagement when firms are supportive to employees (Saks, 2021). Additionally, organizational engagement increases with improved HR practices (Afsar et al., 2020). Talent management is also a type of enhanced human resource. Therefore, the same effect of increased employee engagement can be attributed to talent management practices (Sopiah et al., 2020). Building upon the aforementioned discussion, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Engagement is a state characterized with pleasure and activation (Bakker and Oerlemans, 2011). Collectively, pleasure and activation give energy and drive to employees to pursue organization's objectives (Khan et al., 2021a). Organizational engagement is a positive state in which employees are not only ready to be actively involved in their work, but they also work for the goals of the organization. One of the pursued goals of the organization today is green corporate entrepreneurship (Miles et al., 2009). As mentioned earlier, organizationally engaged employees also engage them with the goals of the organization and actively pursue them, so it is proposed that organizational engagement will have effect on green corporate entrepreneurship.

One of the major purposes of strategies is to ensure the sustainability of a firm (Parente et al., 2020). A firm that can use its resources to meet the customers' current needs and plan for meeting their future needs can survive in the long run (Takata et al., 2020). Because of the uncertain future, firms are concerned about the business ideas that can cater to the customers' rising needs (Atiku and Abiola, 2020). Corporate entrepreneurship is one of the strategies to serve this purpose. Firms have realized that corporate entrepreneurship is employee-driven. Employees with their accumulated knowledge are in a position to indulge in CE (Belousova et al., 2020). Google uses its employees for this purpose. The moot point is why some organizations can use their employees to pursue corporate entrepreneurship while others cannot. One of the possible explanations lies in the organizational engagement of the employees. Firms with engaged employees have positive emotions so they both can reciprocally benefit each other (Pandey et al., 2020). Employee engagement is consist of two mechanism: attention (intellectually available and time given to a role) and concentration (to involve in a role to the best of his/her ability), (Peng et al., 2014). The presence of positive emotions increases the thought-action repertoire of the employees that result in an increased number of ideas and enables employees to vigorously follow their implementation, resulting in an increased number of corporate entrepreneurship activities (Belousova et al., 2020). Currently, there is no study that has explored the relation between organizational engagement and corporate entrepreneurship. In the light of the above discussed reasoning and empirical evidence, the following hypothesis is formed.

Trabucchi et al. argue that in this global competitive environment businesses have to improve productivity and one of the ways to do this is through employees. There is evidence that engaged employees are more, loyal, trusted, hard worker, and they are ready to go the “extra mile” for their organization. Employee engagement is linked with organization performance and employees are more enthusiastic about their jobs (Trabucchi et al., 2020). If the values and norms of an individual are associated with organization, then synergy of organization and employee creates engagement resultantly reciprocal beneficial for employee and organization outcome (Afsar et al., 2020). The social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) explains that in a mutual bond, if an employee finds connected and well-fit with the organization and its values, norms and standards, then the employee finds well-fit with the organization an employment. This validates the importance of developing employee engagement strategies for organizations and organizations be able to develop their sustainable competitive advantage through their talent (Nienaber, 2019).

Despite the well-represented theoretical understanding between talent management and corporate entrepreneurship and talent management and organizational engagement, the role of organizational engagement as a mediator between talent management and corporate entrepreneurship requires further explanation. Research also proves that talent management is positively related to organizational performance (Mohammed, 2016; Bakytgul et al., 2019), employee retention (Pandita and Ray, 2018), and corporate entrepreneurship strategies (Ratten and Ferreira, 2016). Employees' engagement is playing a pivotal role in the development of organizations (Bakytgul et al., 2019). Employees' engagement increases organizational engagement and that ultimately results in increased organizational performance and job satisfaction (Rai and Maheshwari, 2020). Based on the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), employees with talent are supported by organizations and keep them engaged and motivated. In return, the employees are coming up with creative and innovative ideas that can add value to organizations' products or services (Afsar et al., 2020).

Social exchange theory posits that an extended favor brings back a favor (Blau, 1964). Employees working in the organization regard their firm to be a personified entity and a favor extended to them is regarded a benevolence by the firm. The practices of talented management directed toward employees are meant, on one hand, to facilitate the employees (Ambrosius, 2018). On the other hand, the talent management practices groom the employees to improve their skills and knowledge of the work (Luna-Arocas et al., 2020). Employees regard both the aspects of talent management to be favors extended to them, and in return seek opportunities to reciprocate. One of the ways available to employees to reciprocate is to show more engagement in their work. The individual work engagement is the building block of collective organizational engagement. Pleased with the organizational policies toward them, employees begin to demonstrate high level of organizational engagement (Rofcanin et al., 2017). The engaged employees strive to serve their organization in multiple ways. Apart from being efficient in their work (Rofcanin et al., 2017), they search for new ventures ensuring the growth of their firm. Aware of the increased prominence of environmental concern, the employees, seeking to return the favor, indulge in corporate entrepreneurial activities that are environmentally friendly. Building upon the mentioned reasoning, the following hypothesis is formed.

The study collected data from the individuals working in the large manufacturing firms of Pakistan. Initially, 400 potential respondents were approached from the manufacturing industry. The approached individuals were the ones working in the large manufacturing firms of the country. Out of the approached 400 employees, 323 responded and filled the questionnaire. The overall response rate is 81%. The profile of the respondents is given in Table 1. The majority of the respondents were male (79%) while the remaining 21% were female as shown in Table 1. Moreover, Table 1 shows that a small portion of 7% of respondents had 12 years (Intermediate) of qualification, besides this 38% of the respondents had bachelor degree and the remaining 54% were master degree holders. A larger portion of respondents came from line managers (48%), while the portions of middle and top managers were 35 and 15% respectively. Finally, Table 1 shows that the average age of the respondents was 33.37 years and their job experience was 9.47 years.

This study used PLS-SEM to analyze the collected data. PLS-SEM has been widely used in a variety of fields in recent years with non-normal data, small sample sizes and the use of formative indicators being the most prominent reasons for its application (Hair et al., 2019). The popularity of structural equation modeling (SEM) has grown out of the need to test complete theories and concepts (Hair et al., 2014). According to Hair et al., currently covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) is the dominant method for analyzing complex interrelationships between observed variables and latent variables (Hair et al., 2019). Much of SEM's success can be attributed to the method's ability to evaluate the measurement of latent variables, while also testing relationships between latent variables (Sarstedt et al., 2014). Moreover, reliability and validity are the two most important criteria used in PLS-SEM analysis to evaluate the outer model (Hair et al., 2014). Reliability is assessed using composite reliability (CR) while validity is measured through convergent validity average variance extracted (AVE), and discriminant validity using Fornell and Larcker (1981) criterion and indicator's outer loadings.

The constructs used in the study were evaluated for their reliability and validity. Reliability is a measure of consistency, and the measures used were Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability. The minimum acceptable level for both the measures is 0.7 (Holmes-Smith et al., 2006). Validity indicates the ability the measure what it aims to measure. Convergent and discriminant validity were checked at the item as well as at the construct level. Item loading was used for item-level convergent validity, and the minimum value for item loading is 0.7. AVE (Average Variance Extracted) was used for construct level validity, and the minimum acceptable value of AVE is 0.5 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Henseler et al., 2009; Hair et al., 2010). Discriminant validity was also measured at the item and construct level, which is the ability of a construct to stand out from the different measures. For item level discriminant validity, the loadings are required to be more than cross-loadings (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). Whereas, for construct level, both Fornell and Larcker and HTMT criterion are used.

The results contained in Table 2 shows the used constructs to be reliable and valid. The constructs used in the model namely; green corporate entrepreneurship, talent management and organizational engagement were found to be reliable as the Cronbach's Alpha (Alpha) and composite reliability (CR) were more than the minimum acceptable value of 0.7. The lowest value of alpha (0.897) and CR (0.921) were found for organizational engagement as shown in Table 2. Item level and construct level convergent validity were evaluated through the values of item loadings and average variance extracted (AVE). Though some items had loadings of less than the recommended threshold of 0.7, at the construct level AVEs were more than 0.5, the lower bound for the construct to have convergent validity. The lowest value of AVE was found for green corporate entrepreneurship (AVE = 0.503) as given in Table 2. Finally, to evaluate the constructs for the discriminant validity, hetero-trait mono-trait (HTMT) ratios were computed for the constructs used in the study. As shown in Table 3, all the ratios are <0.85, the stricter upper bound for the constructs to be declared different (Henseler et al., 2015).

Testing the structural model is possible when the constructs used in the model are related. To evaluate this requirement, inter-constructs correlations were computed. The results, given in Table 3, demonstrate that the constructs are either moderately or strongly related; thus, paving the way for model testing being described here. The minimum value of correlation is found between organizational engagement and green corporate entrepreneurship (r = 0.679). The model proposed in the study has four hypotheses. The first hypothesis conjectured a relationship between talent management and green corporate entrepreneurship. The results obtained supported the claim (β = 0.669, p = 0.000). The second hypothesis, claiming a relationship between talent management and organizational engagement, was also found to be significant (β = 0.765, p = 0.000). Similarly, the third hypothesis purporting a relationship between organizational engagement and green corporate entrepreneurship turned out to be significant (β = 0.181, p = 0.002). Along with the reported three direction relationship tested, the study also explicated the mediating role of organizational engagement relating talent management with green corporate entrepreneurship. The results, shown in Table 4, provide support to the mediating role of organizational engagement (β = 0.139, p = 0.003).