CEO AI orientation, human resources and green innovation: an attention-based view

Purpose With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology permeating various sectors, corporate management has increasingly directed their focus toward AI-driven innovation. Particularly, in response to escalating environmental standards, chief executive officers (CEOs) of manufacturing companies are turning to AI as a strategic tool to address challenges in green innovation. This paper aims to reveal the complex relationship between CEO AI orientation and green innovation through the attention-based view. Furthermore, it seeks to explore strategies to enhance corporate green innovation leveraging CEO AI orientation. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses computer-assisted text analysis to extract data from annual reports of listed Chinese manufacturing companies and assesses them using negative binomial regression. Findings The empirical findings indicate the inverted U-shaped relationship between CEO orientation and green innovation. Initial green innovation performance increases with CEO AI orientation, reaching a peak before declining. Moreover, as CEO AI orientation increases, companies with higher levels of human resource slack are likely to reach the peak of green innovation earlier. Originality/value Firstly, this paper introduces CEO AI orientation as a novel factor within the framework of the attention-based view for understanding green innovation. Secondly, the study investigates both the benefit effect and the cost effect (resource constraints) of CEO AI orientation on green innovation, examining the inverted U-shaped relationship between CEO orientation and green innovation. Thirdly, this paper explores the moderating effect of human resource slack on the relationship between CEO AI orientation and green innovation, setting the boundaries of CEO AI orientation’s impact on green innovation.