"Strategic Flexibility, Green Management and Firm Competitiveness in an Emerging Economy"

Abstract

Combining dynamic capability perspective and institutional theory on green management, this study builds and empirically tests a research model which examines how emerging economy firms respond to green management pressures and what they gain from adopting green management practices. Drawing on data from 303 Chinese firms with two key informants, this study finds that firms¡¯ strategic flexibility has positive effect on their adoption of green management practices, and institutional support moderates this relationship by strengthening the positive effect. This study also advances a richer explanation of the link between firms¡¯ adoption of green management practices and their competitiveness by revealing the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy in this link. These findings provide important implications for how emerging economy firms combine their internal strategic flexibility and external institutional support to implement green management strategies, which in turn improves their legitimacy and competitiveness.