Green, Green, It’s Green: A Triad Model of Technology, Culture, and Innovation for Corporate Sustainability

Abstract

In the global trend of sustainable development and tightening legal environment, enterprises need to integrate their various resources to promote green innovation and organizational performances. This study conceptualizes green information system (IS) infrastructure as the hardware resource and green culture as the software resource. Based on the resource-alignment perspective, it examines their direct effects on green innovation effectiveness as well as indirect effects through the mediation of IS-culture fit, innovation-IS fit and innovation-culture fit. Survey observations were collected from over 300 organizations in China, the largest emerging economy under tremendous ecological and developmental pressures. The results suggest that green IS infrastructure and green culture has positive direct impacts on green innovation effectiveness. Meanwhile, innovation-IS fit, innovation-culture fit and IS-culture fit serve as positive, negative and non-significant mediators, respectively. In addition, a multi-group analysis reveals that organization size moderates the mediating rather than direct relationships, and small/medium and large enterprises face their own pros and cons in green innovation. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Firm Size and the Business Model for Sustainable Innovation

“…One of the indicators that fits the argument of Yang et al [38] is that of the project. The project is a temporary organization that uses company resources to implement changes inside or outside the company.…”

“…Yang et al [38] argue that innovation is a multidimensional construct, which requires changes in products, processes, and organizational nature. Therefore, any study of innovation should take into account inputs, outputs, intermediate outputs, and mediators.…”

“…Some reasons for this include the high cost, the difficulty of implementation, and the incompatibility between the rigidity of the systems and the flexibility of the SMEs. Technological sophistication for storing information-which is more common in large enterprises-allows data to be collected and transmitted to the consumer [37,38].…”

Customer Trust through Green Corporate Image, Green Marketing Staretgy and Social Responsibility: A Case Study

“…It enables them to have a competitive advantage and sustainable growth. Yang (2017) states that infrastructure information systems and green culture have a direct positive impact on the effectiveness of green innovation. The adoption of a green business strategy leads to a position of competitive advantage (Leonidou et al, 2017).…”

Environmental Sustainability as a Source of Product Innovation: The Role of Governance Mechanisms in Manufacturing Firms

“…A few exceptions include the studies of Wu [28] and Yang et al [29], that recommended the establishment of green supply chain integration and green culture, respectively, as drivers of effective green innovation. These early studies initiated the theoretical investigations of how to leverage ES for innovation, but are associated with several limitations to serve as 'hands-on' guidelines.…”