Revisiting stakeholder theory as a potential theory of the firm giving rise to expectations about organizing, we analyze when and under what circumstances entrepreneurially oriented firms increase their environmental collaboration with suppliers. Specifically, we investigate the association between entrepreneurial orientation and environmental collaboration with suppliers by accounting for the degree of employees’ work engagement and market environment complexity as stakeholder‐oriented moderators of this relationship. We test our hypotheses using multi‐level analyses on 249 managers nested in 66 multinational companies (MNCs) in Turkey. We find that entrepreneurial orientation positively impacts environmental collaboration with suppliers. A high level of work engagement (as an organizing principle favouring a stakeholder focus) and a low level of market environment complexity (as an organizing principle favouring the customer as an instrumental stakeholder) moderate this linkage. We enrich the debate on entrepreneurial orientation, strategy, and environmental sustainability by providing logic rooted in stakeholder theory of the conditions under which MNCs’ entrepreneurial orientation in emerging markets prioritizes and privileges environmental collaboration with suppliers.
Supply chains are interconnected, globally distributed, and complex systems that significantly impact the environment and human civilization. Achieving environmental sustainability in supply chains is a grand challenge that requires collaboration and innovation among multiple stakeholders. In this study, we combine the natural‐resource‐based view and the stakeholder‐resource‐based view (SRBV) to examine how organizational strategic agility can foster collaborative environmental innovation and enhance environmental sustainability in supply chains. We use data from 758 managers from 185 firms in Turkey, an emerging economy context. We find that organizational strategic agility, enabled by organic organizational structures and regional innovation initiatives, leads to more collaborative environmental innovation with supply partners and higher environmental sustainability performance. Our study contributes to the literature on grand challenges, organizational strategic agility, and innovation management by showing how for‐profit firms can leverage their strategic agility to address the grand challenge of environmental sustainability in supply chains. We also find two interventions to promote this form of environmental innovation: developing organizational strategic agility and organic structures within firms and involvement in regional innovation initiatives to stimulate collaborative innovation for environmental sustainability among supply partners.
1 March 2021 in Journal of International Management
While strategic agility is increasingly acknowledged as a critical source of innovation and product development performance (PDP), little attention has been paid to the microindividual capabilities that translate strategic agility into greater PDP. In this article, we examine the mediating roles of employee resilience and self-efficacy as key dynamic microlevel (individual) capabilities that connect firms’ strategic agility to their PDP in the emerging market of Türkiye. We draw on dynamic capabilities theory, adopt a microfoundations approach, and run a multilevel analysis using data from 758 managers working in 185 firms to test our hypotheses. We draw on the microfoundations of PDP and provide important insights into how individual capabilities enable attaining higher PDP in emerging markets. In particular, the findings suggest that strategic agility is positively associated with PDP. Also, the impact of strategic agility on PDP—both examined at the organizational level—is conveyed through individual-level capabilities of employee resilience and self-efficacy. Our study makes significant theoretical contributions to innovation and product development, operations management, and strategic agility research and draws managerial implications.