Institutional Pressure and Green Product Success: The Role of Green Transformational Leadership, Green Innovation, and Green Brand Image

Abstract

Rapid economic growth has led to economic activities which have caused extensive environmental damage to the planet. Companies have sought to adapt their business methods to reduce their carbon footprint in order to meet regulations, satisfy consumer preferences and keep up with changing societal expectations. The relationship between institutional pressure and green product performance will be an important issue in corporate green management. This article looked through the lens of green innovation and explored the moderating role of green brand image between green product innovation and new green product success. Utilising the data of 243 managers in Mainland China, structural equation modelling results found that institutional pressure is positively correlated to green transformational leadership, green transformational leadership is positively correlated to green process innovation, green process innovation is positively correlated to green product innovation, green product innovation is positively correlated with new green product success, green brand image moderates the relationship between green product innovation and new green product performance. The research results provide theoretical and practical implications for enterprises to relieve institutional pressure and build specific green competitive advantages.

Mechanism of Enterprise Green Innovation Behavior Considering Coevolution Theory

“…Third organizational orientation. Existing studies prove that transformational leadership, social responsibility, the green atmosphere of the organization, and the environmental competence of the enterprise are factors that influence enterprise green innovation behavior [ 6 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. Overall, enterprise green innovation behavior is always influenced by both the environment it is in and the internal aspects of the organization.…”

Managerial Myopia and Firm Green Innovation: Based on Text Analysis and Machine Learning

“…The environmental and organizational factors that influence green innovation have been widely explored. The main environmental factors that affect firm green innovation include coercive environmental regulations ( Yuan and Xiang, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), incentive policy including tax and credit incentives ( Lanoie et al, 2011 ; Cao and Chen, 2019 ), market pressure from consumers, suppliers and competitors ( Cao and Chen, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2021 ), institutional pressure ( Zhou J. et al, 2021 ), green knowledge sharing among supply chain members ( Song et al, 2020 ), and market demand ( Horbach, 2008 ). The organizational factors that affect green innovation performance are mainly innovation capabilities and resources ( Cuerva et al, 2014 ; Baeshen et al, 2021 ), sustainable human capital ( Baeshen et al, 2021 ), green organizational identity ( Xu et al, 2021 ), state ownership ( Pan et al, 2020 ), and market orientation ( Akhtar et al, 2021 ).…”

How does environmental leadership cause adoption of environmental policy?

“…Institutional theory means that there are many social orders and cooperative expectations that guide and regulate the behavior of individuals, and these mechanisms will generate pressure for all members to have a common pattern or standard of behavior to follow. Social pressure refers to the degree to which public and government pressures force companies to pay attention to environmentalism (Ličen et al, 2016;Lv et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2021). Compared with TMTs with lower social pressures, TMTs with higher social pressures may force TMTs to have higher incentives to influence firms to adopt environmental policies caused by pro-environmental behaviors.…”

“…To gain a greater competitive advantage against other enterprises, contemporary enterprises must not only adopt the environmental policy but also require employees to demonstrate pro-environmental behaviors, which are important sources of sustainable competitive advantage (Wu et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2021). Proenvironmental behavior refers to the extent to which individuals engage in environmental protection-related behaviors to improve environmental sustainability (Jia et al, 2021;Li et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2021).…”