He Suchao, Zhao Wanyi, Li Jinfeng, Liu Junting, Wei Yating
The Business School, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, 730070, China.
Heliyon. 2023 Jul 6;9(7):e17993. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17993. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Considering rapid climate change and its effects, an increasing number of enterprises are paying more attention to environmental protection behavior in order to realize their green innovation activities. However, environmental leadership is critical for delivering green innovation in business and industry. As such, can environmental leadership promote the green innovation performance of enterprises? If so, what is the influence mechanism? In the previous research on environmental leadership, the impact of environmental leadership on the green innovation performance of enterprises had not yet been effectively explored. Therefore, drawing on a resource-based view, this study explored the mechanism through which environmental leadership influences a firm's green innovation performance. In this study, with the help of the mature scale at home and abroad, variables were measured, and the relationship between variables was verified by multiple regression analysis using samples collected from 224 heavy-polluting enterprises in western China at multiple time points. It was found that (1) environmental leadership has significant positive effects on green product innovation performance and green process innovation performance; (2) proactive environmental strategies partly mediate the relationships between environmental leadership and green product, as well as green process innovation performance; and (3) a firm's organizational structure positively moderates the relationship between environmental leadership and proactive environmental strategies. Therefore, the results of our study provide theoretical and practical contributions for research on environmental leadership and proactive environmental strategies.
考虑到快速的气候变化及其影响，越来越多的企业更加关注环境保护行为，以实现其绿色创新活动。然而，环境领导力对于在商业和工业中实现绿色创新至关重要。因此，环境领导力能否促进企业的绿色创新绩效？如果可以，其影响机制是什么？在以往关于环境领导力的研究中，尚未有效探究环境领导力对企业绿色创新绩效的影响。因此，本研究基于资源基础观，探讨了环境领导力影响企业绿色创新绩效的机制。在本研究中，借助国内外成熟的量表对变量进行测量，并使用从中国西部224家重污染企业在多个时间点收集的样本，通过多元回归分析验证变量之间的关系。研究发现：（1）环境领导力对绿色产品创新绩效和绿色流程创新绩效具有显著的正向影响；（2）积极的环境战略在一定程度上中介了环境领导力与绿色产品以及绿色流程创新绩效之间的关系；（3）企业的组织结构正向调节环境领导力与积极环境战略之间的关系。因此，本研究结果为环境领导力和积极环境战略的研究提供了理论和实践贡献。
