Purpose: This paper aims to explore in depth how internal and external knowledge-based drivers actually affect the firms’ green innovation performance. Subsequently, this study analyzes the relationships between absorptive capacity (internal knowledge-based driver), relationship learning (external knowledge-based driver) and green innovation performance.Design/methodology/approach: This study relies on a sample of 112 firms belonging to the Spanish automotive components manufacturing sector (ACMS) and uses partial least squares path modeling to test the hypotheses proposed.Findings: The empirical results show that both absorptive capacity and relationship learning exert a significant positive effect on the dependent variable and that relationship learning moderates the link between absorptive capacity and green innovation performance.Research limitations/implications: This paper presents some limitations with respect to the particular sector (i.e. the ACMS) and geographical context (Spain). For this reason, researchers must be thoughtful while generalizing these results to distinct scenarios.Practical implications: Managers should devote more time and resources to reinforce their absorptive capacity as an important strategic tool to generate new knowledge and hence foster green innovation performance in manufacturing industries.Social implications: The paper shows the importance of encouraging decision-makers to cultivate and rely on relationship learning mechanisms with their main stakeholders and to acquire the necessary information and knowledge that might be valuable in the maturity of green innovations.Originality/value: This study proposes that relationship learning plays a moderating role in the relationship between absorptive capacity and green innovation performance.

Purpose: This paper aims at investigating the rather unexplored issue of how green innovators address the knowledge needs emerging when initiating a sustainability path, comparing their knowledge strategies with those of non‐green innovators.Design/methodology/approach: The authors investigate this issue using data from the 2008 Italian Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Focusing on manufacturing firms, they identify the main characteristics and knowledge assets of firms introducing environmental innovations (EIs) as opposed to those of other innovators.Findings: The authors' results suggest that the development of EIs entails a higher recourse to external knowledge, in the form of use of external sources of information, acquiring R&D from external firms and cooperation. Relationships with partners that do not belong to the supply chain – including KIBS, universities, research institutions and competitors – are far more important than for other innovations. On the contrary, differences between the two categories are less marked when it comes to investments in internal knowledge resources. Finally, proactive environmental innovators have very different knowledge strategies than reactive ones, which resemble non‐green innovators.Originality/value: The main contribution of this paper is that it investigates the unexplored issue of how firms assess and develop the knowledge needed to develop EIs. By comparing them with the strategies of non‐green innovators, the analysis performed in the paper allows understanding the peculiarities of such innovations. Furthermore, the authors contribute to the literature by verifying how knowledge management strategies vary according to the differential importance that sustainability has for the firm's innovative strategy.

The complexity of current social and environmental grand challenges generates many conflicts and tensions at the individual, organization and/or systems levels. Paradox theory has emerged as a promising way to approach such a complexity of corporate sustainability going beyond the instrumental business-case perspective and achieving superior sustainability performance. However, the fuzziness in the empirical use of the concept of “paradox” and the absence of a systems perspective limits its potential. In this paper, we perform a systematic review and content analysis of the empirical literature related to paradox and sustainability, offering a useful guide for researchers who intend to adopt the concept of “paradox” empirically. Our analysis provides a comprehensive account of the uses of the construct - which allows the categorization of the literature into three distinct research streams: 1) paradoxical tensions, 2) paradoxical frame/thinking, and 3) paradoxical actions/strategies - and a comprehensive overview of the findings that emerge in each of the three. Further, by adopting a system perspective, we propose a theoretical framework that considers possible interconnections across the identified paradoxical meanings and different levels of analysis (individual, organizational, systems) and discuss key research gaps emerging. Finally, we reflect on the role a clear notion of paradox can have in supporting business ethics scholars in developing a more “immanent” evaluation of corporate sustainability, overcoming the current instrumental view.