The Effect of Absorptive Capacity on Green Customer Capital under an Organizational Unlearning Context

Abstract

Environmental management is becoming increasingly important within organizations and forms an essential part of their strategies. As customers are more concerned with the care of the environment, companies are required to be more aware of their actions. Consequently, companies must ignore their historical mindsets and assumptions to be able to adopt green-oriented practices and processes. Our specific research questions are: (i) How can firms become (more) green-oriented? and (ii) how can knowledge-based organizational capabilities drive this shift into greener companies, which may enhance green customer capital? The research model describes how the complementary roles of absorptive capacity (direct effect) and the fostering of an organizational unlearning context (moderating effect) affects green customer capital within the Spanish automotive component manufacturing sector. Empirical results reveal that to create green customer capital, companies should absorb new knowledge and build a context of organizational unlearning. In today's competitive environment, knowledge rapidly becomes obsolete, so companies need to encourage unlearning to make space for new knowledge that meets environmental needs and keeps pace with changing customer preferences. The research hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS) path-modeling.

Potential and Realized Absorptive Capacity as Complementary Drivers of Green Product and Process Innovation Performance

“…This type of innovation requires new knowledge to be assimilated and transformed within the organization. Thus, absorptive capacity could be seen as playing a key role in inducing a firm's intention to implement green innovation practices [13], because it applies new knowledge for the attainment of products, services or processes that involve significant improvements or novelty with respect to existing ones [74,75]. Plenty of research studies have argued the existence of a direct link between absorptive capacity and green innovation [5,13].…”

Environmental Performance and Green Culture: The Mediating Effect of Green Innovation. An Application to the Automotive Industry

“…Some years ago, companies began taking this approach into account when implementing corporate social responsibility. Companies realized that this paradigm shift would affect market behaviour and, as a result, affect sales, leading to increased profits [3]. This ecologically-focused change allowed for new ideas to interlink, pushing towards sustainability or social consciousness in accordance with the company's values.…”

“…Nonetheless, typically, green codes of practice are only implemented when companies believe they will be of financial benefit and will give them a competitive advantage [2]. Environmental care is growing in importance within enterprises and has become an essential part of company strategy and outlook [3].…”

Erratum: Albort-Morant, G., et al. Potential and Realized Absorptive Capacity as Complementary Drivers of Green Product and Process Innovation Performance. Sustainability 2018, 10, 381

“…The corresponding author wishes to make the following corrections to this paper [1]: It has come to my attention that the paper [1] did not fully reference [2] and [3], two previous publications that I aim to fully attribute now. Sustainability author guidelines make it clear that any form of prior publication should be declared prior to submission.…”

“…Overlaps between papers [1] and [3]: Despite both publications being based in the same database and share one of the constructs (absorptive capacity), the two research models entail substantial differences, given that the rest of the constructs and relationships hypothesized significantly differ. Further, the dependent variable is different in both studies.…”