Green, green, it's green: A triad model of technology, culture, and innovation for corporate sustainability

Abstract

In the global trend of sustainable development and tightening legal environment, enterprises need to integrate their various resources to promote green innovation and organizational performances. This study conceptualizes green information system (IS) infrastructure as the hardware resource and green culture as the software resource. Based on the resource-alignment perspective, it examines their direct effects on green innovation effectiveness as well as indirect effects through the mediation of IS-culture fit, innovation-IS fit and innovation-culture fit. Survey observations were collected from over 300 organizations in China, the largest emerging economy under tremendous ecological and developmental pressures. The results suggest that green IS infrastructure and green culture has positive direct impacts on green innovation effectiveness. Meanwhile, innovation-IS fit, innovation-culture fit and IS-culture fit serve as positive, negative and non-significant mediators, respectively. In addition, a multi-group analysis reveals that organization size moderates the mediating rather than direct relationships, and small/medium and large enterprises face their own pros and cons in green innovation. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.