Abstract
Under the background of increasingly severe environmental problems, green innovation has become a key way to realize coordinated development of economy and environment. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the antecedent factors of green innovation. Based on the upper-echelon theory, this study explores the influence of the academic background of top management teams (TMT) on firm's green innovation outcomes and firm performance in Chinese listed companies. This study also discusses three boundary conditions for TMT's academic experience to promote firm's green innovation. The results show that TMT's academic experience promotes green innovation output. Moreover, TMT's academic experience do not have a uniform effect: strict environmental regulation strengthens the relationship between TMT's academic experience and green innovation output, while political connection and innovation input negatively moderate this relationship. Furthermore, green innovation output does not result in better economic benefits for enterprises with top executives who have academic experience, and this condition is observed more in state-owned enterprises. This study reveals the motivation of green innovation and provides a useful reference for enterprises to implement green innovation strategy more effectively.
Highlights
Increasing global warming and environmental degradation have led to serious concerns about sustainability [1]
The study finds that green innovation inhibits the promotion effect of top management teams (TMT)’s academic experience on firm performance, and this negative effect is more significant in state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
The results show that innovation input weakens the positive role of TMT's role of TMT’s academic experience in promoting firms’ green innovation output, academic in promoting firms' green innovation output, which are consistent whichexperience are consistent with the theoretical expectations
Summary
Increasing global warming and environmental degradation have led to serious concerns about sustainability [1]. Green innovation refers to new technologies, processes, or products produced that help reduce environmental pollution and achieve sustainable development [3]. It makes enterprises comply with environmental regulations [4], and creates a win–win situation [5]. Several studies have discussed various antecedent factors of green innovation, such as policies [7], institution [8], and public pressure [9] Most of these studies are based on corporate external factors, while not many have explored corporate internal factors [2].
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