Abstract
Ecological innovation is an inevitable trend for firms to enhance competitiveness and sustainably operate in the context of green economy. The previous literature has rarely discussed the influence of ambidextrous learning on the eco-innovation performance of startups and ignored the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness from the perspective of microscopic psychology. We have conducted a questionnaire survey on 212 firms established within 4 years in the Pearl River Delta of China, using the structure mode and the PROCESS by Hayes (2013) to analyze the influence of ambidextrous learning, such as exploratory learning and exploitative learning, by startups on eco-innovation performance and verify the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness. The results show that exploratory learning and exploitative learning have a positive and significant influence on eco-innovation performance, indicating that the organizational learning of startups is conducive to improving eco-innovation performance; under the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness, the influence of exploratory learning and exploitative learning on eco-innovation performance may differ. The results also show that in the process of organizing ambidextrous learning, startups should help raise the environmental awareness of top management to improve the eco-innovation performance, thus providing guidance for startups to carry out eco-innovation activities and for local governments to make decisions on green economy.
Highlights
Green economy has become a new economic development mode for countries around the world to cope with global climate change, food safety, health and disease prevention, and economic recession
Sampling targets were the startups defined by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor that were established within 42 months and in the period of establishment or growth
The results show that the three interactions among the top management’s environmental awareness and exploratory learning and exploitative learning have a significant influence on eco-innovation performance (β = 0.23, p < 0.01)
Summary
Green economy has become a new economic development mode for countries around the world to cope with global climate change, food safety, health and disease prevention, and economic recession. Exploratory learning can improve the green innovation performance of startups by allowing startups to acquire new entrepreneurial knowledge from external sources and helping startups to perceive opportunities and enhance their creation abilities, so that startups can more quickly perceive and grasp external opportunities and make better use of the acquired knowledge to reorganize corporate resources and better integrate and create knowledge (Lichtenthaler, 2009) In this process, organizations will better adapt to environment changes through repeated trial and error and correction. This article believes that the environmental awareness of the top management has a moderating effect on the ambidextrous learning (including learning and exploitative learning) of startups and eco-innovation performance and puts forward the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 4a: With a stronger environmental awareness of the top management, the exploratory learning will have a more significant positive influence on ecoinnovation performance.
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