The Influence Of Proactive Environmental Strategy On Firm Performance

The fast growth of economic globalization and the continuous improvement of Science and Technology not merely have contributed to the changes in human life,but also have caused many issues like increasingly severe environmental contamination,and resource exploitation.The human ecological environment has been suffering unprecedented damage,and thus the environmental problems have drawn great concerns from the society and enterprises.In particular,some enterprises as key polluters are the main sources of sewage,waste gas,waste smoke,water residue and noise pollution,which exert adverse impact on the ecological environment on which human beings rely for survival.Therefore,resource management and environmental governance need to be improved badly.So,the problem of corporate environmental management has gradually become the focus in academic world.The vast majority of scholars believe that under the condition of resource overexploitation,increasingly serious environmental pollution,the enterprise should take the initiative to reflect on their negative influence on the environment,and solve its own environmental problem by proactively taking responsibility for the environment and trying to better the ways of production means,thus diminishing the damage to the environment eventually.The enterprise should make full use of their own resource and capabilities to incorporate environmental strategies into its overall strategic framework in the process of production,operation and marketing and form a pollution prevention and control strategic system.Hence,a ‘win-win' situation between environmental protection and economic development can be achieved by adopting innovative technologies in environmental protection and clean production processes.There is still no consensus on whether the environmental strategy actively implemented by the enterprise can bring firm performance,and there are three different views.The first holds that corporate environment strategy is negatively related to the firm performance.The implementation of proactive environmental strategy means more investments,which will drastically increase the operating costs and lead to ‘constraint effect' or ‘research and development overflow effect' on enterprise production and operation.The second view argues that corporate environmental strategy and firm performance can achieve a ‘win-win' situation.The implementation of proactive environmental strategy in the enterprise can stimulate its learning ability,bring new ideas,new knowledge and new markets,and help the enterprise to gain a favourable position in the competitive environment and further convert such competitive advantage into good performance.The third view asserts that there is no significant correlation between environmental strategy and firm performance.The resulting effect of the proactive environmental strategy is mainly reflected in establishing a green image,improving and winning its reputation but it cannot affect firm performance directly,especially its profitability.Therefore,although the existing research can help us further understand the mechanism of action that the corporate environmental strategy exerts on firm performance,and provide strong support for exploring the effect that proactive environmental strategy has on firm performance,it still has some limitations: first,the lack of in-depth analysis of how proactive environmental strategy influence firm performance,the lack of research on the means of effect and paths of proactive environmental strategy.Second,what is the conversion mechanism between proactive environmental strategy and firm performance? And the mediating effect between the two is worth discussing.Third,scholars ignore the moderating variables between corporate environmental strategy and firm performance,and fail to consider and analyze the specific conditions for the enterprise to make strategic choices with confidence.In a nutshell,the influence or effective output of proactive environmental strategy on firm performance needs to be further studied.On that account,in search of the framework and mechanism of action more comprehensively,based on the shortage of the existing research and on the concept of Natural Resource View theory,and from the perspective of enterprise resource and capabilities,this research limiting the problem to proactive environmental strategy explores its effects on firm performance mechanism and verify the importance of organizational learning.Centring on whether the implementation of proactive environmental strategy by the enterprise can bring firm performance,this research firstly establish proactive environmental strategy through the research framework that mediating effect of organizational learning on firm performance.On this basis,the research introduces organizational slack,absorptive capability that it has on proactive environmental strategy and organizational learning.Then we introduce the environmental uncertainty and further discuss the contingency effect of it on the organizational learning and firm performance.In the empirical part,after the modification of questionnaire combined with the result of preliminary investigation,the formal investigation is performed.From this point onward,high and new technology industry(manufacturing)in the Northeast China region,North China region,midland and Peal River Delta region is investigated.Including electronic and communication equipment manufacturing,computer and office equipment manufacturing,information chemical manufacturing,are surveyed,invalid questionnaires are eliminated and finally 421 questionnaires are obtained.Also,this research carries on the multiple regression analysis of data.At the same time,in order to ensure the accuracy of survey data results and to avoid the impact of homologous deviation on the research conclusion as much as possible,this research also has used Harman single factor analysis method for testing.The empirical test results show that: first,proactive environmental strategy has a positive impact on firm performance.If enterprises adopt proactive environmental strategy,continuously integrate internal resources and capabilities,obtain external useful information and knowledge,and promote the development of organizational learning,they can gain firm performance.Second,organizational learning play a mediating role between proactive environmental strategy and firm performance.The mediating roles of the three types of organizational learning are all significant and have no remarkable difference.Third,when enterprises own too much organizational slack,the impact of proactive environmental strategy on shared vision and open-mindedness is strengthened.Fourth,higher absorptive capacity can encourage enterprises to better carry out organizational learning activities(Commitment to Learning and Open-Mindedness)in the process of implementing the proactive environmental strategy.Fifth,the environmental uncertainty negatively moderates the relationship between organizational learning and firm performance.To sum up,based on the natural resource based view theory and the theory of organizational learning,this research improves the effect mechanism that proactive environmental strategy on firm performance,structure a ‘strategy-capability-performance' research framework,profoundly analyzes organizational learning and the relationship among variables,compares the different demensions of organizational learning,verifies the mediating effect of organizational learning between proactive environmental strategy and firm performance,and in order for the managers to choose a more effective path provides theoretical guidance to firm performance.At the same time,in order to improve the mechanism of action that proactive environmental strategy has on firm performance,the research introduces organizational slack,absorptive capacity and environmental uncertainty as moderating variables,explores the moderating effects of organizational slack and absorptive capacity on proactive environmental strategy and organizational learning,and the moderating effect of envrironmental uncertainty on organizational learning and firm performance,and provides theoretical based for the future research on proactive environmental strategy and firm performance.