Going Abroad and Going Green: The Effects of Top Management Teams’ Overseas Experience on Green Innovation in the Digital Era

Abstract

Green innovation has become one of the most important approaches to achieving sustainable development in modern business. Top management team (TMT)’s overseas experience, as one type of unique resources, constitutes the cognitive basis of the team and thus influences firms’ strategic decision-making. Based on the upper echelon theory, this study aims to investigate the effect of TMT’s overseas experiences on green innovation performances. By utilizing a panel dataset of Chinese listed firms, this study shows that TMTs’ overseas experience indeed promotes firms’ green innovation performance and that both firms’ digital transformation and regions’ digital economy development positively moderate the relationship between TMTs’ overseas experience and green innovation. These findings not only help managers better organize the TMT and green innovation strategy but also draw policymakers’ attention to the importance of the digital economy and sustainable development.

A systematic framework to improve the digital green innovation performance of photovoltaic materials for building energy system

“…Guo et al (2018) have studied green products and processes, and the results show that GI in processes and products is conducive to improving the development level of green technology in enterprises [51]. Meng et al (2022) pointed out that human capital is a key factor in corporate GI, and the senior management team with overseas experience is an effective driving force to promote corporate GI performance [52]. From the perspective of external environment, Rumanti et al (2017) based on the case study method, pointed out that the level of knowledge sharing under the open background will effectively promote the efficiency of GI [53].…”

The impact of degree of internationalization of MNEs on green innovation performance: The moderating role of absorptive capacity and global dynamic management capability

“…Having a global mindset is a prerequisite for maintaining and enhancing international competitive advantage (Adner & Helfat, 2003). Managers with a global managerial cognition can better transfer, integrate and assimilate knowledge and information from multiple overseas markets, this allows MNEs to better grasp and promote the implementation of green innovation activities (Meng et al, 2022). Based on the above, this paper put forward the following hypothesis:H3 Global dynamic managerial capacity positively moderates the relationship between internationalization breadth and green innovation performance.…”

Financialization, Heterogeneous Environmental Regulation, and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from China

“…In addition, research on the factors influencing corporate green innovation from the executive characteristics and cognitive perspectives focuses on examining the impact of differences in characteristics and cognitive differences of executive teams and core members on corporate green innovation. Specifically, studies under the executive characteristics perspective have examined the impact of executive team experience, management power, and CEO political connection on green innovation [37][38][39]. Besides, a few studies have also explored the impact of executive cognitive differences on corporate green innovation [40].…”