How do enterprises achieve sustainable success in green manufacturing era? The impact of organizational environmental identity on green competitive advantage in China

PurposeDrawing on the "Resource- Capability - Competitive advantage" framework within Natural Resource-Based View, this study is purposed to address problems of manufacturing companies "turning into the green" issues, providing references for manufacturing companies to achieve green competitive advantage via internal motivation and identity perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThis study collected survey data from 112 Chinese manufacturing listed enterprises from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and obtained 418 questionnaires. Following an empirical design, hierarchical regression analysis and Bootstrapping analysis were applied to examine these hypotheses.FindingsResults show that green innovation behaviors positively mediate the positive relationship between organizational environmental identity and green competitive advantage. Furthermore, slack resource not only positively moderates the interaction effect between organizational environmental identity and green product innovation behaviors, but also moderates the mediation role of green product innovation behavior in the main effect.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to the data samples and dynamic evolution between variables. More longitudinal designs and diverse enterprise fields will be considered in future.Practical implicationsThe findings provide guidance for manufacturing enterprises to gain green competitive advantage in green manufacturing era from identity value origins. Moreover, the results provide practical suggestions for manufacturing enterprises to enhance green innovation behaviors and integrate useful but slack resources.Social implicationsThe findings provide implications for manufacturing industry to increase both the awareness of organizational environmental identity and green innovation behaviors, all of which helps promote the corporate environmental responsibility.Originality/valueThe study breaks the limitation of the existing literature which focuses on the influence of external push factors (e.g. environmental regulation), and bring new visions in constructing green competitive advantage in green manufacturing era, not only extending the identity theory and upper echelon theory, but also enriching the current studies on green management. Also, these findings provide deeper and new insights into risks and uncertain features of green manufacturing era, analyzing how polluted manufacturing enterprises obtain green competitive advantages through the mediating role of green innovation behaviors and the moderating role of slack resource.