A Winning Green Profile to Stay Ahead? Companies’ Green Value Chain Profiles Based on Competitive Advantage Attainment

Abstract

The world is entering an era of net zero carbon emissions, and companies are under pressure from their stakeholders to be environmentally friendly or green. While companies must engage in greener operations, they also need to juggle their financial performance. Companies need guides on allocating their limited resources to embed green practices and achieve competitive advantage. Academic studies, thus far, have overlooked this. This study aims to fill the gap by studying companies’ green value chain profiles with different competitive advantage attainments. The 207 companies that responded to the survey are classified into four clusters based on their level of competitive advantage: no competitive advantage (cluster 1), only efficiency advantage (cluster 2), only value advantage (cluster 3), and both efficiency and value advantage (cluster 4). The results of variance analysis showed significant differences in eight out of nine value chain activities across the clusters, except green marketing and sales. Companies with competitive advantages demonstrate greater commitment to green activities, especially those from the value advantage-only and both competitive advantage groups. Between them, they embed green initiatives in different value chain activities. Interestingly, green marketing and sales is the only activity with no significant difference among the four clusters of companies, yet they committed the highest green initiatives to this activity. While this study reaffirms the positive impact of companies’ commitment to green initiatives on achieving competitive advantage, companies need to carefully strategize their level of commitment to green initiatives based on the competitive advantage they pursue.