Abstract
AbstractThis study explores the impact of supply chain collaboration on eco‐innovations in the context of 220 Chinese manufacturing supplier firms involved in global supply chain networks. It investigates how supplier and customer collaborations help firms to enhance product eco‐innovations, and/or process eco‐innovations, and how the institutional context (i.e., regulatory, market, and community pressures) influences these relationships. The structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze the data captured from medium and large manufacturing enterprises in three major sectors: automotive, electronics, and textiles. The results show that community pressure has a positive effect on supplier collaboration, which further leads to enhanced process eco‐innovation. On the other hand, the findings indicate that while market pressure enhances customer collaboration, this does not reinforce product eco‐innovation. Contrary to our expectation, regulatory pressures do not impact supplier or customer collaboration for innovation. Overall, different institutional factors indicate divergent effects on supply chain collaboration and product/process eco‐innovation. The importance of normative pressures, such as those applied through the local community and interest groups, for eco‐innovations in production processes is further discussed as a typical feature of the institutional environment of Chinese supplier firms.
Highlights
The capability to innovate traditionally is considered a critical factor for the long-term success of firms (Lengnick-Hall, 1992)
The results show that regulatory pressure does not trigger collaboration for the development of eco-innovations, whereas community pressure does have a significant impact on supplier collaboration, which enhances process eco-innovations
We do not find regulatory pressure to trigger supplier and/or customer collaboration for process or product eco-innovation, and we do not find an impact of community pressure on customer collaboration for process or product innovation
Summary
The capability to innovate traditionally is considered a critical factor for the long-term success of firms (Lengnick-Hall, 1992). Due to changes in the regulatory environment, market pressure, and shifts in stakeholders’ expectations – including consumers, buying firms, NGOs, local communities, and the broader society – firms are under increasing scrutiny to improve their sustainability performance and to yield eco-innovations (Horbach, 2008; Zhu, Cordeiro, & Sarkis, 2012a; Ociepa-Kubicka & Pachura, 2017) This is increasingly the case in China as the world’s second largest economy where the environmental degradation associated with rapid economic growth in the past decade has led to increasing pressure from civil society and central government to enhance the environmental performance of firms (Marquis, Zhang & Zhou, 2011; Van Rooij, Stern & Fürst, 2016)
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