Translating environmental corporate social responsibility into environmental performance and competitive advantage: a moderated mediation model

Organizations are extending their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices to environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) to cope with environmental challenges. Yet, the process of translating ECSR into positive organizational outcomes is underdeveloped in the literature. The literature often ignored key boundary conditions, leaving the underlying mechanism underdeveloped. This research makes up for the deficiency by investigating the impact of ECSR on environmental performance and competitive advantage through the mediation of green product innovation and by examining important boundary conditions in a moderated mediation model. We collected data from 151 manufacturing companies using judgmental and snowball sampling to ensure that the target organizations perform certain ECSR activities and analyzed it using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that ECSR leads to competitive advantage (CA) and environmental performance (EP) through green product innovation, and this indirect path is moderated by organizational agility. The findings add substantial value to the literature by documenting the impact of ECSR on CA and EP with moderated mediation paths. The study also offers implications for policymakers and managers to amplify the impact of ECSR on favorable organizational outcomes.