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Research Summary: Departing from the extant literature, which assumes that firms pursue strong environmental performance as a differentiation strategy, we analyze the general relationship between firms’ competitive strategy and their response to heightened market competition. We find that, using a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms between 2000 and 2005, intensified market competition has an overall negative impact on firms’ environmental performance. The negative impact is exacerbated in firms adopting a cost‐leadership strategy, but is attenuated in those adopting a differentiation strategy. The results emphasize the importance of including an examination of the particular competitive strategies chosen by firms in seeking to understand the impact of intensified market competition. Managerial Summary: Advocates of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have long argued for the differentiation role of CSR. However, managers may be misguided if the assumed benefits of differentiation critically depend on certain presumptions. In the Chinese context and focusing on the environmental dimension of CSR, our study finds a negative relationship between market competition and corporate environmental performance. It suggests that firms, to a large extent, cannot escape competition via environmental differentiation. Managers should therefore be cautious about the value of strategic investment in CSR as a viable competitive device.

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Supplier development for sustainability is a critical element of sustainable supply chain management and requires extensive multi-stakeholder collaboration. This article establishes a conceptual four-stage framework to analyse the collaborative mechanisms of supplier development practices, and presents an exploratory, qualitative analysis to identify the major contributors of sustainable supplier development practices, such as NGOs, industrial associations, consulting firms etc. Based on semi-structured interviews about 63 organizations from different regions and industries, this article identifies three types of contributor: drivers, facilitators and inspectors. Instead of traditional stakeholder engagement processes, these contributors actively collaborate with buying firms and suppliers to design, implement and evaluate sustainable supplier development programs. The article then provides a matrix to describe the supply chain coverage and supplier performance of supplier development practices, given the absence or positive involvement of facilitators and inspectors. We conclude our study by suggesting future research directions as well as discussing managerial implications.

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Manufacturing innovation is of strategic importance to China in its effort to reshape future technology. This study explores the impact of government subsidies on the research and development (R&D) intensity of China's new energy vehicle (NEV) enterprises. The dynamic relationship between government subsidies and R&D intensity is tested with a panel regression model and a threshold regression model. We find that government subsidies have a significantly positive impact on R&D intensity when considering the sample group as a whole, but market profit does not contribute to R&D intensity. As for the sub-sample, government subsidies have a significantly positive impact on R&D intensity in assembly enterprises but are insignificant in supporting enterprises. Two threshold values are also identified with the logarithm of government subsidy. We find that government subsidies have a significant crowding in effect on the R&D intensity of NEV enterprises. With the increasing of government subsidy, the crowding in effect weakens gradually. The policy implication is that the structure of government subsidies should be optimized. More demand-oriented policy instruments should be adopted to cultivate the market. The government subsidies should be reduced gradually until full withdrawal.