Strategic orientations and responsible innovation in SMEs: The moderating effects of environmental turbulence

Abstract

The turbulent business environment makes small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) more vulnerable, and their sustainable development faces severe challenges. Responsible innovation, as a new management paradigm that balances profit growth and social value, plays an important role in promoting enterprise's risk resistance and sustainable development. However, there are still few existing research on how to stimulate enterprises to implement responsible innovation. Based on the dynamic capability theory (DCT) and contingency theory, this study explores how strategic orientations affect responsible innovation under various degrees of environmental turbulence. Hierarchical regression was used to test the conceptual model based on data collected from 194 Chinese SMEs. The results indicate that strategic orientations (digital and environmental orientations) positively affect responsible innovation, and environmental orientation plays a stronger role in promoting responsible innovation than digital orientation. Market and technological turbulences play positive moderating roles in the relationship between digital orientation and responsible innovation, while negatively moderating the relationship between environmental orientation and responsible innovation. These findings are helpful to enrich the literature on strategic orientation and responsible innovation and provide practical implications for guiding SMEs to implement responsible innovation.

Climate change and the European banking sector: the effect of green technology adaptation and human capital

“…This study acknowledges that climate change induces GTA practices in three different areas: (1) banking (Zhu et al, 2022;Domarack a et al, 2023), (2) EI (Zhang et al, 2023) and ( 3) HR (Jang et al, 2023). Therefore, following the approach of Birindelli et al (2022), our empirical model incorporates the moderating effect of climate change on the link between GTA and banking sector performance while controlling for bank and country specific controls.…”

The impact of corporate digital strategic orientation on innovation output

“…Digital strategic orientation refers to a company's propensity to undertake digital transformation, which reflects its willingness to use digital resources to create value. Several studies have demonstrated that digitalization is critical to innovation and growth in uncertain environments [ 17 ]. Therefore, we believe that digital strategic orientation helps improve innovation output performance as a principle that guides corporate behavior.…”

Antecedents to Firm Performance and the Moderating Role of Environment Turbulence

“…In the present era, industries operate in a highly unpredictable environment, which many researchers named environment turbulence. Environment turbulence directly and indirectly affects firm performance (Zhang et al, 2023). Researchers have categorized environmental turbulence into three sub-dimensions: marketing, technology, and competitive intensity (Ojha et al, 2021).…”

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