This study investigates the role of state ownership in green innovation from the institutional complexity viewpoint. We posit that state ownership can be characterised by two seemingly competing logics: institutional logic, which emphasises that firms with state ownership can acquire resources to promote innovation; and efficiency logic, which states that firms with state ownership have low resource utilisation effectiveness. On the basis of the integration of both views, we suggest a U‐shaped curvilinear relationship between state ownership and green innovation. Data from Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2015 confirm our hypothesis. Moreover, we also find two macro‐level contingencies that moderate this relationship: regional innovation readiness and industrial competition. The U‐shaped relationship between state ownership and green innovation is more pronounced when regional innovation readiness and industrial competition are higher. This study advances previous research on environmental innovation by arguing that state ownership is characterised by institutional complexity rather than being a monolithic construct.
This paper investigates how analyst categorisation hierarchies (CH) affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) conformity. We argue that firms that are labelled as either high rank or low rank by analysts have higher institutional immunity, while firms that are categorised as middle rank have lower immunity. These heterogeneous institutional immunities will affect the levels of CSR conformity differently. Our results, which originate from a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2016, suggest that CH exhibit an inverted‐U‐shaped relationship with CSR conformity. High‐ranked and low‐ranked firms are most likely to be CSR nonconformist, while middle‐ranked firms tend to conduct CSR like the majority of their industry peers. Moreover, we also investigate the environmental boundary conditions of this curvilinear relationship. This relationship is moderated by environmental munificence (positively) and dynamism (negatively). Our findings fill the theoretical gap by proposing an institutional‐based explanation for the CSR conformity heterogeneity which is rarely discussed and extending the boundary conditions for the categorisation‐CSR conformity relationship.
This study investigated how firms respond to conflicting demands within the state.Using Chinese listed firms data, we found that firms linked with central government relate positively to environmental innovation, while firms located in provinces with gross domestic product (GDP) priority exhibited a negative influence on environmental innovation. Beyond the independent roles of central and local government expectations, we found that central and local government demands work interdependently to negatively affect firms' environmental innovation, such that firms located in GDP priority regions lower the positive impact of the central government on environmental innovation. The present study added to the existing literature by unpacking government roles into two competing sets of expectations, independently and interdependently.
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