Research On The Impact Mechanism Of Corporate Environmental Ethics On Corporate Competitive Advantage

With the continuous development of industrial economy,the extensive development mode characterized by high pollution,high consumption and high emissions not only promotes the economy,but also causes serious harm to the ecosystem,making the national environmental carrying capacity close to the upper limit.In the face of more and more serious environmental problems,"environmental protection" and "sustainability" have become the focus of national and social discussion.Enterprise is not only a part of market economy,but also a "cell" of national economic development,whose products and processing technology have different effects on the environment.In the past,because of limited recognition,many enterprises believed that environmental management would only bring about the rise of production cost and the decline of performance level,and then lost the advantage in the fierce market competition,forming the thinking inertia of "environmental management-competitive advantage reduction",thus losing the motivation of environmental management in the absence of systematic research and ignoring the positive impact of environmental management brought to enterprises.Under the current severe environmental situation,environmental problems are becoming more and more important for the development of enterprises.China has promulgated many relevant environmental laws and regulations,such as the Renewable Energy Law of the People's Republic of China,the Regulations on the Restriction of the Use of Harmful Substances in Electronic Information Products and the Cleaner Production Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China,to regulate the production and operation of enterprises and reduce the environmental pollution caused by its operation.The original development mode of enterprises at the cost of resources and environment is subject to multiple constraints such as social pressure and market supervision.Therefore,in the face of the production demands and pressures of many stakeholders on environmental protection,changing the development mode and effectively promoting green development and innovation of enterprises have become the development direction of Chinese enterprises,and also the best way to achieve competitive advantage.However,how to effectively transform environmental management concepts,especially enterprise environmental protection culture and morality into enterprise competitive advantage,and how to match enterprise green resources in the process of realizing competitive advantage are both the focus and difficulties for scholars and managers.The research of enterprise environmental ethics in academic circles is based on the research of enterprise ethics.Although some achievements have been made,it still has some limitations.Firstly,the current researches mostly discuss the connotation of theory and concept,but seldom apply enterprise ethics to empirical researches.It explores how to effectively construct enterprise environmental ethics system to enhance competitive advantage,but ignore the forward-looking environmental strategies and green issues.Secondly,the existing researches although have discussed the necessity and importance of enterprises' implementing proactive environmental strategy from the perspective of resources,but the resources emphasized here are mostly financial,human and technological resources,ignoring the implicit resource content of enterprise environmental ethics,such as enterprise environmental values and environmental ethics;Thirdly,the existing research neglects the impact of enterprise environmental ethics on enterprise competition.The boundary conditions of competitive advantage influencing the process do not explain why enterprises with the same environmental ethics system,such as supervision mechanism and ethics,have different advantages.In view of these problems,this study explores enterprise environmental ethics from the perspective of enterprise resources based on natural resource theory,innovation theory and stakeholder theory,analyses the impact process of enterprise environmental ethics on enterprise competitive advantage,verifies the intermediary role of forward-looking environmental strategy and green innovation,and establishes a chain intermediary model.At the same time,the study identifies the boundary regulation of corporate environmental ethics affecting corporate competitive advantage,verifies the regulatory role of stakeholder pressure and redundant resources,and establishes a regulatory intermediary model.The respondents in this study are mainly in the positions of president,CEO,chief human resource director,financial director and environmental protection department director of agricultural and sideline products processing industry,automobile manufacturing industry,pharmaceutical manufacturing industry,transportation equipment manufacturing,electronic equipment manufacturing in Northeast China,Bey ing-Tianj in-Hebei region,Yangtze River Delta region and Pearl River Delta oregion.Through multiple regression analysis,the following conclusions are drawn:Firstly,corporate environmental ethics positively affects the competitive advantage of enterprises;Proactive environmental strategy plays a mediating role between corporate environmental ethics and competitive advantage;green innovation including products and processes plays a mediating role between corporate environmental ethics and competitive advantage.Secondly,the chain mediation effect of environmental ethics-environmental strategy-green behavior-competitive advantage output is validated.Enterprises promote the development of proactive environmental strategy by establishing ethical values on environmental protection,and promote enterprises to implement green innovation practice,thus enabling enterprises to gain competitive advantage.By comparing different chain mediation effects,it is found that the chain mediation effect of product green innovation is stronger than that of process green innovation.Thirdly,stakeholder pressure can positively adjust the relationship strength between enterprise environmental ethics and proactive enviroumental strategy,and the relationship strength between enterprise environmental ethics and enterprise competitive advantage;Unabsorbed slack resources can positively moderate the relationship strength between proactive environmental strategy and process green innovation,and the absorbed slack resources can positively adjust the relationship strength between proactive environmental strategy and green innovation,including product green innovation and process green inovation.In addition,the study validates the mediating effect of stakeholders and slack resources,in which stakeholders can positively regulate the mediating effect of proactive environmental strategy in enterprise environmental ethics and competitive advantage,and the absorbed slack resources can positively regulate the mediating effect of green innovation in enterprise proactive environmental strategy and competitive advantage.To sum up,this study makes up for the deficiencies of the existing research on the relationship between enterprise environmental ethics and enterprise competitive advantage,enriches the research on enterprise ethics,deepens the contents of proactive environmental ethics and green innovation,expands the management paradigm of "resource-behavior-advantage",puts forward the chain mediation model and clarifies the transmission mechanism,and puts forward for enterprises to realize competitive advantage.New ideas and ethical paradigms are also helpful for enterprises to solve the problem of how to effectively transform environmental ethical values into competitive advantages.This study is of great significance in guiding enterprises to assume social responsibility,promoting enterprises to pay more attention to their own environmental ethics,and actively formulating proactive environmental strategies,stimulating the enthusiasm of business managers to develop green innovation,listening to stakeholders' demands and suggestions on the environment,and optimizing the allocation of resources.This study provides theoretical and practical guidance and suggestions for enterprises to achieve sustainable development.