Effect of Green Intellectual Capital Practices on the Competitive Advantage of Companies: Evidence from Polish Companies

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the impact of Green Intellectual Capital practices on the competitive advantages of companies in Poland. The study included 150 Polish producing enterprises located across Poland. The first stage of the analysis was an assessment of the level of impact of GIC practices on the competitiveness of the studied organizations with the use of the 5-point Likert scale. The second stage involved an investigation into the correlation between the rating of the impact of GIC practices and their implementation on the basis of the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the regression function. In the course of this research, it was determined that GIC practices had an impact on the competitiveness of organizations and that the impact varied according to the GIC component. Polish managers hold that the major impact was attributed to Green Organizational Capital. The impact of the component was rated at 2.4 on the adopted 5-point scale. In turn, the impact of Green Human Capital and Green Relational Capital was only 2.1. The identification of the correlation between GIC practices and the competitiveness of organizations provides an opportunity for the managers to better understand how companies can achieve a competitive advantage through investment in green intellectual capital. The research findings may, therefore, generate increased interest in GIC development in companies.