Linking stakeholder and competitive pressure to Industry 4.0 and performance: Mediating effect of environmental commitment and green process innovation

Abstract

In the recent few years, with an increase in focus on sustainability, firms have been actively pursuing different strategies to contribute towards sustainability. Industry 4.0 (I4) technologies can help organizations to achieve superior environmental as well as economic performance. Through the lens of stakeholder theory (ST) and Schumpeterian view of competition (SCV), this paper examines whether stakeholder and competitive pressures towards sustainability stimulate organizations to implement I4 technologies and commensurate performance outcomes. The study further tests the mediating role of environmental commitment and green process innovation (GPI) on these relationships. The proposed hypotheses are examined using the survey data from 173 manufacturing firms in India by partial least squares (PLS) approach.Findings show that environmental commitment mediates the effect of stakeholder and competitive pressures on I4 technologies. Further, results also show that GPI mediates between I4 technologies and performance. The findings provide insights for managers on how they can best respond to stakeholder and competitive pressures on sustainability and contribute towards sustainable development.

The role of green human resource management in the translation of greening pressures into environmental protection practices

“…The burgeoning literature on stakeholders and corporate environmental sustainability suggests that when stakeholders are strongly pro‐environmental, it is in a firm's best interest to go beyond external regulation and voluntarily allocate resources toward fully implementing corporate practices that promote environmental protection—for example, eco‐design, recycling, or environmental policies (González‐Benito & González‐Benito, 2006, de Sousa Jabbour et al, 2020; Bhatia & Kumar, 2022; Singh et al, 2022).…”

Interplay in management practices, innovation, business environment, degree of competition and environmental policies: a comparative study

“…The collected data were analyzed using PLS-SEM to find results. The PLS-SEM approach is used to test the conjectures, no normally distributed data, preferred when a study focuses on the development of theory, and in exploratory study (Bhatia and Kumar, 2022). PLS-SEM validates the relationship in systematic way, deals with a complex model in a single click, and preferable in formative models (Rehman et al, 2017;Rehman and Al-Ghazali, 2022;Rehman and Zeb, 2022).…”

Green innovation in emerging economies: The role of managerial ties and market learning

“…Green innovation involves both green product innovation and green process innovation (e.g., Bhatia & Kumar, 2022; Guo et al, 2020; Shu et al, 2016, 2020). On the one hand, green product innovation entails “the production of a new product or service that inflicts no negative impact on the environment or less than the current or competing product” (Tang et al, 2018, p.40).…”