Political network embeddedness and ecological innovation: Do absorptive capacity and dynamic capability have any influence?

Abstract Ecological innovation is an important conduit to realizing economic and environmental benefits. As such, improving enterprise ecological innovation performance has recently gained prominence. In this vein, the interaction between internal and external driving factors is key to influencing ecological innovation performance. Although existing studies underscore network embedding as one of the important external driving factors, research is lacking on the influence of the interaction mechanism between political network embedding and internal driving factors on enterprise ecological innovation performance. Therefore, by engaging social network theory and social capital theory, this paper proposes a moderated‐mediation model, with absorptive capacity as the mediator and dynamic capability as the moderator for an empirical investigation. Analyzing 302 items of survey data, the current study discusses the influence mechanism of political network embeddedness on enterprise ecological innovation performance. Regression results confirmed no significant correlation between political network embeddedness depth and enterprise ecological innovation performance. However, political network embeddedness breadth and absorptive capacity positively affected enterprise ecological innovation performance. Absorptive capacity partially mediated the relationship between political network embeddedness breadth and enterprise ecological innovation performance. Dynamic capability also moderated the relationship between absorptive capacity and enterprise ecological innovation performance. The study results expanded the internal mechanism of the relationship between political network embeddedness and enterprise ecological innovation performance, corroborating the imperativeness of external political network resources and internal capital such as absorptive capacity and dynamic capability to improve enterprise ecological innovation performance.