Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Intellectual Capital, and Green Innovation on Competitive Advantage: Building Contingency Model

1. Introduction

In new world of business, green consumerism and green management have turned out to be momentous issues. Customers in developed economies in particular, support eco-friendly consumption driving companies to develop environmental concerns and produce eco-friendly products, thus making green management a profitable strategy (Saha, 2017; Solvalier, 2010). Under the institutional based view, companies operating in developed and fast paced developing countries need to conduct environmental protection activities for satisfying international regulations regarding environment protection, green products, and green consumerism (Chen, 2008). In those contexts, green management and social responsibility are universal concepts for all industries and sectors. In information and communications technology (ICT) sector as well, these concerns have gained momentum. IT professionals and developers are now expected to develop the devices that are energy efficient (Pattinson, Oram, & Ross, 2011). In this connection, a new area of Green information technology (GIT) has developed. GIT is about properly using information and communication technologies to address environmental issues and attain business sustainability (Przychodzen, Gómez-Bezares, & Przychodzen, 2018). It involves making green products and devices having optimum energy related performance as well as causing a change in other organizational activities. For instance, for former, the examples would include virtualization and desktop power management. For the later, it could be indicated through smart buildings and virtual conferencing activities (Pattinson et al., 2011). Experts suggest that various stages in the IT life cycle carry particular environmental concerns. Molla, Abareshi, and Cooper (2014) argue that such environmental concerns could be about CO₂ emissions, energy inefficiency, and electronic waste. They added that recycling, reusing, and increasing the lifetime of IT related equipment for lowering electronic waste, decreasing paper consumption, and conserving energy could be considered pro-environmental IT practices. Use of soft data for information dissemination, relying on compact discs instead of paper, powering off the computers in idle mode, and reducing screen brightness are some of green IT practices. Technically, these environmental concerns could be addressed by companies through possession of capable resources, assets, and competences potential enough to deliver value. Scholars claim that in the current era of knowledge economy, intangible assets like intellectual capital has become a source of competitive advantage for the companies (Chang & Chen, 2012; Chen, 2008; Gupta & Raman, 2021). Organizations have learnt that other than reducing costs and creating differentiation in their products, emphasis on the human capital is important to develop and sustain competitive advantage (Preve, 2012).

A substantial volume of empirical research is available on intellectual capital, its determinants, and consequences (Baima, Forliano, Santoro, & Vrontis, 2020; Bisogno, Dumay, Rossi, & Polcini, 2018; Gupta & Raman, 2021). Importantly, in the wake of dominant issues like corporate social responsibility, green management, and green consumerism, novel construct of “green intellectual capital” suggested by Chen (2008) is gaining popularity and attention of researchers. Chang and Chen (2012) suggested that corporate social responsibility and environmental consciousness serve as determinants of green intellectual capital. Technically, an organization possessing an environment conscious culture and having proper policies for addressing corporate social responsibility would build greater green intellectual capital. Similarly, the literature review about consequences of green intellectual capital indicates that it could result in green social capital and green innovation (Delgado-Verde, Amores-Salvado, Martín-deCastro, & Navas-Lopez, 2014). This could ultimately help companies produce strong competitive advantage and high business sustainability (Chen, 2008; Huang & Kung, 2011; Nanath & Pillai, 2017; Omar, Yusoff, & Zaman, 2017; Rezaei, Izadi, Jokar, & Rezaei, 2016; Yahya, Arshad, & Kamaluddin, 2015). These findings provide basis for developing serial mediation model for green intellectual capital.