Sources of resources, alliance green management, and alliance performance in an emerging economy

Abstract

The question of how to improve green management (GM) is very important for the sustainable development of the world. While this topic has been extensively investigated at the single firm level in the developed countries, it was insufficiently examined in the context of interfirm alliances, especially in developing countries like China. The current study examines how different sources of resources (internal resource accumulation and external resource acquisition) affect the level of alliance green management (AGM). In addition, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) that represents the willingness of firms to adopt new practices has moderating effects on the above relationships. Moreover, the effect of AGM on alliance performance is also examined. We collected multisource data from 164 alliance firms in Chinese manufacturing industry. The results generally support the proposed hypotheses. This study contributes to both GM and alliance research by identifying the internal and external resource factors that influence firms from emerging economies to practice GM in their alliance operations.