Does leadership and management support facilitate green knowledge acquisition and green innovation: a moderated mediation approach

Given the critical role of green innovation (GI) in the manufacturing sector, this study builds a moderated mediation model to evaluate the influence of leadership and management support on GI, the mediating function of green knowledge acquisition, and the moderating role of green absorptive ability.

The study employed a quantitative research approach with hierarchical regression analysis to assess the proposed relationships among the constructs on a sample of 371 executives from 117 large-sized manufacturing firms in Pakistan.

The research findings demonstrate that leadership and management support significantly affects both radical and incremental GI, with incremental green innovation being more positively affected than radical green innovation. Green knowledge acquisition partially mediates between leadership and management support, radical and incremental green innovation. Green knowledge acquisition moderates the association between leadership and management support and green knowledge acquisition and the link between leadership and management support and incremental GI. The findings also demonstrate that green knowledge acquisition's mediating effect on leadership and management support, and GI is more pronounced when green absorptive capacity is high.

This research is based on cross-sectional data gathered from manufacturing companies. Future studies should consider this differentiation between the enterprises since there are various sectors within the general manufacturing sector whose environmental effect is more or less polluting. This research focused exclusively on two aspects of GI (radical and incremental GI). It is feasible that additional GI constituents (i.e., product, process, and management GI) can significantly boost businesses' competitive advantage. This study recommends additional study into the potential moderating impacts of technological and market turbulence to better understand the relationship between these concepts since it is evident that internal and external factors influence GI.

The study provides useful insights and an innovative way for manufacturing firms and authorities to prevent environmental deterioration and achieve sustainable green innovation through leadership and management support and green intangible resources.

This research concentrating on green environmental concerns and using RBV theory attempts to fill research gaps and sheds light on how leadership and management support promote both radical and incremental green innovation via the mediating and moderating roles of green knowledge acquisition and green absorptive capacity.