How Innovation Shapes Corporate Environmental Strategy: A Systematic Review and Future Research Agenda

In recent decades, escalating environmental risks have fundamentally reshaped the strategic landscape confronting firms. Against the intensifying pressures of the global climate crisis, corporate environmental strategy has evolved from a marginal compliance requirement into a central mechanism for long-term value creation. Innovation is widely regarded as a key driver of this transformation, yet scholarly understanding of its role remains fragmented across disconnected theoretical silos. Addressing this gap, this study systematically reviews 1614 English-language journal articles indexed in the Web of Science from 2000 to 2025, combining bibliometric mapping in Bibliometrix and VOSviewer with qualitative content analysis. To strengthen conceptual interpretation, the study also undertakes an in-depth manual review and coding of 100 highly cited core publications. The analysis identifies three structural shifts in the literature. First, the literature exhibits a three-stage thematic reconfiguration, moving from an early focus on strategy, capabilities, and environmental management to a current core centered on green innovation, ESG, digital transformation, and environmental performance. Second, this review reveals a clear two-track innovation structure, in which conventional innovation is concentrated in five upgrading-oriented categories, whereas green innovation spans a broader and more differentiated set of environmentally embedded categories, indicating a substantive shift from efficiency-centered improvement to strategically integrated environmental transformation. This study contributes by diagnosing why research growth has not translated into equivalent theoretical integration, clarifying the differentiated analytical roles of conventional and green innovation, and establishing a more cumulative basis for future theorizing in corporate environmental strategy research.