Abstract
AbstractDespite the burgeoning interests in the environmental strategy, there is a limited understanding of how human resource slack drives sustainable innovation and environmental performance. This paper contributes to filling this gap by examining the effect of human resource slack on sustainable innovation and its impact on environmental performance. Besides, this paper investigates the contingent effects of intangible resource advantage on this relationship. The hypotheses are tested using data from 301 small and medium‐sized enterprises in Ghana. The results suggest that human resource slack positively relates to sustainable innovation and this relationship is moderated by intangible resource advantage. Also, we find that sustainable innovation mediates the relationship between human resource slack and environmental performance. The insights from our paper provide a nuanced understanding of the relationships among human resource lack, sustainable innovation, and environmental performance. Implications for theory and practices are discussed.
Highlights
Over the past decade, considerable research attention has been devoted to how firms manage and improve their environmental performance
We argue that sustainable innovation mediates the relationship between human resource (HR) slack and environmental performance because HR slack may be too distant from the environmental performance
When gender is low, the bootstrapped confidence interval around the indirect effect contained no zero [0.03, 0.29]. This result provides support for Hypothesis 2, which argued that sustainable innovation mediates the relationship between HR slack and environmental performance
Summary
Considerable research attention has been devoted to how firms manage and improve their environmental performance. In contrast, sought to obtain evidence relevant to this question by investigating the potential role of sustainable innovation, which is strongly related to environmental performance (Carrión-Flores & Innes, 2010; Khurshid, Park, & Chan, 2019; Long et al, 2017) This is an important line of inquiry because understanding the mechanism through which firm resources influence environmental performance in emerging markets is a crucial task because SMEs often lack resources to undertake environmental activities (Earnhart, Khanna, & Lyon, 2014). Previous research suggests that excess skilled employees enhance the innovation capability of the organization (Heping, Xunmei, & Runsheng, 2009; Nohria & Gulati, 1996) In this way, the firms are more likely to develop a positive innovation culture towards the natural environment. We argue that when a firm has intangible resource advantages such as intellectual property, specialized knowledge, reputation, and management control systems such resources, it can boost the effect of HR slack on sustainable innovation practices. HR slack is more positively related to sustainable innovation among firms with an intangible resource advantage than among firms lacking a resource advantage
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
