Can CEO environmental awareness promote new product development performance? Empirical research on Chinese manufacturing firms

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in the role of chief executive officers' (CEOs') environmental awareness in enhancing performance, its impact on new product development (NPD) performance, as well as the underlying mechanisms and contextual bounds of the impact, remains unexplored. Based on upper echelons theory, we suggest that CEO environmental awareness promotes NPD performance through corporate environmental practice. We further theorize that the role of CEO environmental awareness is contingent on environmental institutional pressure. To validate the model, we collected survey data from 534 senior executives of 178 manufacturing firms in China. The main results show that corporate environmental practice completely mediates the relationship between CEO environmental awareness and NPD performance. The relationship is positively moderated by environmental normative pressure, whereas environmental regulatory pressure negatively moderates this process. Theoretical and practical implications of how to leverage CEO environmental awareness and environmental institutional pressure to boost NPD performance are discussed.

Digital capability and green innovation: The perspective of green supply chain collaboration and top management's environmental awareness

“…This research demonstrates the moderating effect of TMEA on the impact of DC on GIP, enriching the upper echelons' literature on boundary conditions. Previously, more research concentrated on the direct impact of TMEA as an antecedent variable on green innovation [ 24 , 128 ]. However, few studies have examined the role of TMEA as a moderating variable in the relationship between digitalization and green innovation [ 129 ].…”

“…Green innovation is a crucial tactic to achieve sustainable development [ 21 ]. It is influenced not only by external elements including institutional pressure [ 22 ] and external environmental regulation [ 23 ] but also by internal stakeholders such as managers' environmental awareness [ 24 ]. Top management's environmental awareness (TMEA) describes the mental state of environmental preservation that senior managers have developed through thought processes.…”

Can the Top Management Team’s Environmental Attention Promote Corporate Green Innovation?

“…Secondly, heightened environmental attention by the TMT facilitates the identification of business opportunities and new stimulating factors for GI (Munawar et al, 2022;Andersén, 2022;Momayez et al, 2023;Tang et al, 2024) [4,11,34,35]. Managers' varying attention allocations lead to diverse understandings of environmental signals within complex organizations.…”

“…Fifthly, technological innovation and industrial upgrading. The environmental concerns of top management teams can promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading, providing more opportunities for green innovation for companies (Polas et al, 2021;Momayez et al, 2023;Tang et al, 2024) [27,34,35]. Driven by environmental pressures and market demands, companies may increase their research and investment in green technologies and innovations to meet market demands and enhance competitiveness.…”