The problems of resource shortage, environmental deterioration and ecological imbalance caused by extensive economic development have been increasingly severe. It has become the basic requirement of social sustainable development to change the traditional mode of production with high energy consumption and high pollution and actively promoting low carbon, green and circular economy. It is inevitable for enterprises to obtain economic benefits and enhance competitive advantage. Green innovation introduces ecological ideas into technological innovative activities with the characteristics of systematic complexity and high situational dependence. Under the background of open economy, it is difficult to effectively carry out green innovation only by relying on the accumulation of the organization's own resources. Enterprises need to break through the organizational boundary to obtain the heterogeneous resources necessary for innovation. It can comprehensively improve the innovative ability of enterprises through efficient reconstruction and allocation. By this way, enterprises can realize the high-quality development in the benign interaction with cooperative members. Therefore, it has become an important way by embedding in external cooperation network for enterprises to obtain various innovative resources, enhance self-innovation ability andsuccessfully carry out green innovation. However, at present, scholars mainly focus on the effect of external environmental pressure, ignoring the impact of social cooperation network.
Following the logical chain of “embeddedness-capability-behavior”, this paper integrates the theory of network embeddedness, resource base theory, higher order theory and institutional theory in order to explore the influence of network embeddedness on green innovation of enterprises and to further analyze its internal mechanism. And the mediating role of green dynamic ability and the moderating role of environmental regulation and managers' environmental attention are further investigated. This study uses questionnaire survey to obtain sample data. The research objects are manufacturing enterprises mainly from Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Tianjin, Hebei and other provinces and cities. The confidentiality and research purpose of the questionnaire are attached at the beginning of the questionnaire to ensure the reliability of the data. The survey time is from September to December 2019. Questionnaires with repeated options and more missing values are excluded. It took four months to distribute questionnaires to 939 enterprises, and 498 valid questionnaires are collected with effective rate of 53.03%. This paper uses the method of multiple regression analysis and structural equation model to test the hypotheses.
The results show that structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness play a significant positive role in promoting green innovation. And green dynamic ability plays an intermediary role between structural embeddedness, relational embeddedness and green innovation. Furthermore, environmental regulation and managers' environmental attention positively moderate the relationship between green dynamic ability and green innovation respectively.
The main contributions and conclusions of this paper are as follows. (1) Based on the perspective of social network, this paper expands the analysis boundary of green innovation by constructing theoretical model of network embeddedness on green innovation. In the era of knowledge economy, enterprises should make extensive contact with outside organizations, strive to occupy favorable position of social network, and establish reciprocal cooperating relations with partners. These are helpful for enterprises to obtain high-quality scarce resources, stimulate innovative thinking and carry out green innovation. (2) This paper explores the intermediary effect of green dynamic ability between network embeddedness and green innovation. It complements and perfects the existing research results of network theory. Structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness are important ways and sources to improve the ability of green resources acquisition and integration. They can create opportunities and conditions for enterprises to search, obtain, allocate and reorganize green resources, which is beneficial to adopt new environmental technologies and products. (3) This paper clarifies the boundary of the influence of dynamic ability on green innovation, and it expounds the applicable situation of dynamic ability theory. Situational variables are important factors for enterprises to make strategic behavior choices. When facing strict external environmental policies, enterprises with strong green dynamic ability are more likely to obtain scarce resources and realize technological innovation through optimization and reorganization. In addition, when managers pay more attention to environmental issues, they are more likely to perceive potential market opportunities and obtain relevant information. Therefore, enterprises with strong green dynamic ability are more likely to carry out green innovation.