Green Entrepreneurial Orientation:The Driving Factors And Its Impact On Firm Performance

With the rapid development of society,human economic activities have caused varying degrees of environmental pollution and ecological damage in the world.How to deal with the complex contradiction between economic development and environmental protection is a common challenge for the international community.In order to reduce pollution and prevent environmental degradation,the Chinese government has also made a responsible commitment to strive to achieve the goals of “carbon peak” by 2030 and“carbon neutrality” by 2060.Under the background of vigorously advocating green economy and promoting sustainable development,the government has become more and more strict in the supervision of environmental protection,and has continuously issued policies to regulate the production and operation of enterprises.In the face of the increasingly severe deterioration of the living environment,the public’s environmental awareness is also improving,and they also put forward higher expectations for the environmental performance of enterprises.Facing the increasing requirements of environmental protection,enterprises need to formulate appropriate environmental strategies to reduce waste and protect the environment.Green entrepreneurship orientation is considered as an important strategy to guide the practice of environmental protection,which reflects the commitment of enterprises to actively participate in environmental protection.Green entrepreneurship orientation improves the competitiveness of enterprises by reducing the negative impact on the environment,and meets the current and future environmental needs and economic goals.It can be seen that green entrepreneurship orientation is crucial to the sustainable development of environment and economy.In recent years,the academic circles have paid more attention to and discussed green entrepreneurship,but the existing studies still lack systematic and comprehensive understanding of green entrepreneurship orientation.First,as a new research topic,green entrepreneurial orientation has not yet formed a generally recognized method for defining and measuring the concept of green entrepreneurial orientation.Second,in terms of the research on the driving factors of green entrepreneurial orientation,the existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of a single or a few factors on green entrepreneurial orientation from a single theoretical perspective.However,green entrepreneurship orientation is a complex process influenced by many factors.It is difficult to explain the differences in the degree of green entrepreneurial orientation among different enterprises by using traditional regression methods to study the net effects of independent variables and dependent variables.There is a lack of research on the factors that affect the green entrepreneurial orientation from an overall perspective,and how the factors interact with each other,and what is the complex relationship between multiple antecedents and the green entrepreneurial orientation.Third,the existing research on the impact of green entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance shows inconsistent results.Some studies believe that green entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on firm performance.Some studies also believe that there is no correlation between green entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance,while others believe that there is a negative correlation between green entrepreneurial orientation and corporate performance.It can be seen that the relationship between green entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance needs further study,and the intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions between the two need to be further explored.Based on this,this paper will clarify the concept of green entrepreneurship orientation on the basis of previous studies,and study the driving mechanism of green entrepreneurship orientation and the impact of green entrepreneurship orientation on firm performance,in order to answer the following questions:(1)in the external institutional environment and internal managers’ environmental cognitive factors,what is the mechanism that affects the implementation of green entrepreneurship orientation in enterprises? How do they interact?(2)How does green entrepreneurial orientation affect firm performance? How and under what conditions does green entrepreneurial orientation affect financial performance and environmental performance?In order to further explore the above issues,this paper takes the manufacturing industry as the research object and carries out two sub studies,including “Research on the driving mechanism of green entrepreneurship orientation”(sub study 1)and“Research on the impact of green entrepreneurship orientation on firm performance”(sub study 2).Sub study 1 analyzed 356 sample cases through fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fs QCA)based on institutional theory and upper echelons theory.Among them,the external institutional environment is divided into coercive pressure,incentive pressure,normative pressure,mimetic pressure,and the internal managers’ environmental cognition is divided into environmental benefit cognition and environmental risk cognition.From the perspective of configuration,this paper explores the causal complexity mechanism that affects the green entrepreneurial orientation,and explores how different configuration paths affect the green entrepreneurial orientation.The results show that: First,the reason why enterprises choose green entrepreneurship orientation is the result of the joint action of many factors,and the path leading enterprises to choose green entrepreneurship orientation is not the only one.Second,high green entrepreneurial orientation has four different configuration paths,which can be summarized into three types,namely regulatory pressure driven,moral responsibility driven and internal profit driven.Third,there is asymmetry between the configuration paths of high green entrepreneurial orientation and non high green entrepreneurial orientation.The existence of incentive pressure has nothing to do with non high green entrepreneurial orientation.The lack of environmental benefit cognition is related to the non high green entrepreneurial orientation.Sub study 2 is based on natural resource-based view,dynamic capability theory and contingency theory,387 sample data were tested by regression analysis.From the perspective of resources and capabilities,green knowledge sharing and green dynamic capabilities are introduced as the mediating mechanism in the path of “green entrepreneurship orientation – firm performance”,and the moderaring role of environmental dynamics is tested.The results show that: first,green entrepreneurial orientation has a significant positive impact on firm performance.The stronger the green entrepreneurial orientation,the more likely the enterprise is to improve its financial performance and environmental performance.Second,as an important source of organizational resources,green knowledge sharing and its dimensions play a partial mediating role in the mechanism of green entrepreneurship orientation positively affecting firm performance and its dimensions.Further research shows that for manufacturing enterprises,the partial mediating role of customer knowledge sharing in green entrepreneurship orientation positively affecting financial performance is not significant.Third,as an important organizational capability,green dynamic capability plays a partial mediating role in the mechanism of green entrepreneurial orientation positively affecting firm performance and its dimensions.Fourth,research indicates that there is a transmission path of “green entrepreneurial orientation-green knowledge sharing-green dynamic capability-firm performance”.Fifth,environmental dynamics,as a contingency factor,plays an important moderating role.Environmental dynamism positively moderates the relationship between green entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance and its dimensions,between green dynamic capability and firm performance and its dimensions,between green knowledge sharing and its dimensions and environmental performance.However,the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on green knowledge sharing and its dimensions and financial performance is not significant.On the basis of clarifying the connotation and dimensions of green entrepreneurship orientation,on the one hand,based on institutional theory and upper echelons theory,this paper explores the antecedents of green entrepreneurship orientation from the two aspects of macro institutional environment and micro institutional environment,as well as the multiple linkage between different driving factors to analyze and path configuration of promoting and restraining green entrepreneurship orientation.Our study enriches the theoretical achievements of green entrepreneurship orientation and expands institutional theory.On the other hand,based on the natural resource-based view,dynamic capability theory and contingency theory,this paper constructs a theoretical framework between green entrepreneurship orientation and firm performance,explores and verifies the mediating role of green knowledge sharing and green dynamic capability,as well as the moderating role of environmental dynamics.Opening the “black box” of how enterprises transform green entrepreneurship orientation into firm performance will help deepen the scientific understanding of green entrepreneurship orientation and expand green entrepreneurship management theory.In summary,this paper has a certain reference value for driving enterprises to choose green entrepreneurial orientation,improving firm performance,promoting sustainable economic and social development.