Organizational improvisation and corporate green innovation: A dynamic capability perspective

Abstract The march toward fusing business with sustainability is articulated with the hope of offering solutions to global environmental degradation. Green innovation is often regarded as an effective strategy to induce double externality with positive innovation and environmental spillovers. Despite numerous research works on determinants of green innovation, the key question, however, whether and how organizational improvisation exerts its influence on innovatively being green is still unsolved. On this basis, the current study seeks to demonstrate a connection between organizational improvisation and corporate green innovation. According to the presented theoretical framework, organizational improvisation, which serves as a catalyst for improving learning processes, promotes green innovation. Furthermore, dynamic capabilities mediate this relationship, and top management risk aversion could weaken the successful transformation of substantive innovation and being green. Empirical evidence is found based on a sample of Chinese manufacturing firms with a moderated mediation analysis. These results extend the understanding of the role of improvisation in green achievements towards the fusion of unplanned change and order.