Inter-Industry Differences in Organisational Eco-Innovation: A Panel Data Study

Abstract

Building on insights from institutional theory, the resource-based view of the firm, and internationalisation, we seek to explain the variation in the adoption of organisational eco-innovations such as environmental management systems (EMS) across sectors in Spain in the period 2009–2014. Previous studies on eco-innovation report that regulatory pressures, technology-push, market-pull, and firm factors are drivers of this process. However, this literature pays relatively little attention to non-technological forms of eco-innovation, such as EMS. As a result, just how EMS adoption can be encouraged across sectors remains unclear in the innovation literature. Here, we seek to address this problem by combining data from the following sources: the Community Innovation Survey and the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel, the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) survey, the Industry Survey, the Environmental Protection Survey, and the Air Emissions Account. The results of the econometric analysis of panel data reveal that, first, coercive institutional pressures are driving the adoption of EMS reflecting differences across sectors in energy and pollution intensity. Second, the adoption of ISO 9000 – a highly institutionalised system of quality management – increases the adoption of EMS in each industry because of complementarities between the two systems. Third, sectors with a high percentage of internationalised firms operate a higher number of EMS.