The Research Of Green Innovation And Competitive Advantage Of Resource-based Enterprises

In the post-crisis era, it is difficult for the world economic recovery since it needsto face climate change, energy shortage and environmental pollution as well as manyother challenges. So, it can be seen that a new round of technology revolution andindustry innovation have been booming throughout the globe, such as “Industry4.0Strategy”, and technology innovation has become a huge engine which is promoting theeconomic and social development of countries around the world. At present, China’seconomy enters the “Three Period Superposition” during which resource-basedenterprises have to face such problems as global climate changes, China’s economictransformation and upgrading, forthcoming resource exhaustion and some other externalenvironment challenges. Their competitive advantages have always been based on someexternal forces, such as industrial structure and market power, the ability and structureof the enterprises can’t satisfy the environmental needs, and many resourse-basedenterprises lack innovation ability and adaptive capacity to environment and can’timplement the combination of strategic flexibility and creativity well to adapt to theenvironment. When China enters the state of “New Normal” with a mild type ofeconomic growth, there will be a secular trend that involves excess capacity ofconventional energy supply and lack of green and low-carbon energy sources, whichwill inevitably lead to a situation where both supply and demand sides on the coalindustry chain fall into the development difficulties and are hard to recover. Especially,when the public are faced with a wide range of haze problems, resource-basedenterprises have received criticisms inevitably because of their infamous environmentalproblems. Green innovation makes it possible to achieve harmony and unity of economy,society, resources and environment and it is also a fundamental way for resource-basedenterprises to create new profit growth areas to realize transformation and upgrading.However, it is found throughout the green innovation practice that there are somesuccessful examples and hard lessons of failure as well. So far some key issues remainunresolved and controversial in the theoretical circle:“how to drive green innovation inresource-based enterprises? Could green innovation bring competitive advantage tothese enterprises? What are the mechanism and path of green innovation?” and existingtheories can’t provide powerful management tool and theoretical guidance for practiceand sustainable development. This thesis makes a systematic theoretical analysis and empirical research onthese core issues, and further clarifies the cause and effect of green innovation ofresource-based enterprises. Firstly, on the basis of research and analysis on literature,the study clearly defines the concepts of “resource-based enterprises”,“greeninnovation” and “green dynamic capabilities” and etc., reasonably divide thedimensions of the variables involved in the thesis, and develops the correspondingmeasurement scales. Secondly, based on the theory of circular economy, the thesisconstructs environmentally friendly and green innovation-oriented technique chain ofcircular economy. In the thesis, green innovation system of resource-based enterprises isregarded as a self-organizing system, including macro (the government), middle(industry chain) and micro (enterprise) levels, and on the basis of self-organizationtheory, this thesis establishes green innovation hybrid drive theoretical model in termsof three aspects of the government, supply chain and enterprise and expounds andproves the expectation hypothesis of influence on green innovation from the drivingforces of the three aspects and the two-way interactions. Thirdly, the thesis integrates avariety of perspectives of resource-based view, dynamic capability view, naturalresource-based view, competitive advantage theory, green innovation theory and etc. Itputs forward the theoretical framework of development relationship among greeninnovation, green dynamic capability and competitive advantage in resource-basedenterprises. Within the framework of “Ambidexterity Theory”, the thesis regards greeninnovation as a dynamic development process from exploitation to explorationfollowing the study logic of “process—capability—advantage”, and comprehensivelyanalyzing the mechanism and path of “green innovation—green dynamiccapabilities—competitive advantage”. Lastly, the thesis collects data by the ways ofsemi-structured interview, literature reading, questionnaire and etc., examines thevalidity and credibility of the scales with the help of the statistical analysis softwareSPSS19.0, studies the logical relationship of variables with the method of multipleregression analysis and verifies the expectation hypothesis. With the help of thesoftware of LISREL8.80, the thesis employs structural equation model to doconfirmatory factor analysis, to test the variable degree of differentiation, to verify theholistic model of green dynamic capabilities intermediary effect and to explain theempirical test results.After the above theoretical analysis and empirical test, the thesis reaches someoriginal conclusions:(1) The green innovation driving of resource-based enterprises is a kind of combined effect. The driving force in the level of enterprises is the “engine” ofhybrid driving of green innovation, while the driving force in the level of thegovernment has the different influences on two kinds of innovation.(2) The drivingforce in the level of supply chains can benefit the implementation of green innovation ofresource-based enterprises, interfering interaction exists between supply chain andgovernment level, while interaction effect is not significant between supply chain andenterprise level, so the loss of supply chains will block the value creation of greeninnovation of resource-based enterprises.(3) Green innovation has the positive effect onthe competitive advantage of resource-based enterprises and it will increasingly enhancethe green transformation and upgrade of enterprises.(4) Green innovation exertsinfluence on the competitive advantage of enterprises by means of the full mediatingeffect of green dynamic capabilities, which is the transmission mechanism andimplementation path of green innovation. According to the above research conclusions,the thesis generalizes some ideas about green innovation management and proposessome corresponding suggestions in the levels of the government and enterprises. Themain contributions and innovations of this thesis are summarized in the following fiveaspects:(1) The thesis constructs green innovation driving force model and proposes thehybrid driving model of green innovation of resource-based enterprises on the basis ofself-organizing theory. In addition the new perspective of model establishment, thethesis integrates the research on green innovation driving force into a systematicframework and then does the empirical test, which expands and improves the theoreticalsystem of green innovation driving force.(2) On the basis of “ambidexterity theory”, the thesis regards green innovation asthe process of exploitation and exploration, finds an effective way to balance mediumand short term and long term strategic goals, which makes the phenomena which seemsto be contradictory integrate and promote with each other. This method is not only anew kind of perspective, but also expands and extends the “ambidexterity theory”, andit is significant theoretically and empirically with further research on the effectiveimplementation of green innovation.(3) The thesis discovers the different effects of the driving force in the governmentlevel on two kinds of green innovations, reveals that the controversy about thatenvironmental regulation influences green innovation is not due to the regulation, butthe differences of green innovation behaviors, the discovery provides a new perspective for explaining the controversy of “Potter Hypothesis”, finds a breakthrough, andcontributes to the development and improvement of the sphere and boundarytheoretically in which the government drives green innovation.(4) The thesis reveals that supply chain management is the weakness of greeninnovation of resource-based enterprises, and the loss of supply chain will become thebarrier of the value creation of green innovation. After rooting enterprises into supplychains, the thesis makes a study on creative driving of green innovation from thedynamic cooperation between enterprises and upstream and downstream enterprises,which opens a window for the different driving mechanisms of green innovation ofresource-based enterprises and is very significant theoretically and practically for theimplementation of green innovation through the build of green supply chain.(5) The thesis employs “green dynamic capabilities” into green innovation andcompetitive advantage as a transmission mechanism, finding a key to the “black box” ofevolution from green innovation to competitive advantage. By the research method, thethesis not only finds the development mechanism and path from green innovation tocompetitive advantage of enterprises, but also extends the research horizon of thesekinds of issues, and shows clearly the direction and path for green transformation andupgrade of resource-based enterprises.