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Digital Transformation and Green Innovation of Chinese Firms: The Moderating Role of Regulatory Pressure and International Opportunities

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  • Jinqiu He

    (School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Huiwen Su

    (Renmin Business School, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

The digitalization of business processes has increasingly challenged conventional wisdom in corporate green innovation. This empirical paper studies the timely but theoretically underexplored relationship between digital transformation and green innovation in a developing country context. Given that firms’ digital transformation shifts organizational structures toward decentralization, we employ a digital perspective to analyze organizational coordination, control, and learning mechanisms and propose that digital transformation positively affects corporate green innovation. Moreover, drawing on structural contingency theory, we demonstrate that such effects can be strengthened by external contingencies, specifically regulatory pressure and international opportunities. Using a dataset of Chinese listed firms, we find empirical support for our hypotheses. Our study is one of the first to examine how firms can leverage organizational digital transformation to enhance their green innovation performance and thus provides new insights into the drivers of sustainable practices for firms in developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Jinqiu He & Huiwen Su, 2022. "Digital Transformation and Green Innovation of Chinese Firms: The Moderating Role of Regulatory Pressure and International Opportunities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-21, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13321-:d:943433
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