Ecological community logics, identifiable business ownership, and green innovation as a company response

Abstract

We investigate which companies are more inclined to respond with green innovation to ecological community logics. We propose that the noneconomic utility of doing so - in the form of personal reputation gains for business owners - is greater when owner identifiability is higher, and that owner identifiability therefore intensifies the effect of normative ecological community pressures on firm-level green innovation. Our hypotheses are tested on a sample of over 2800 German firms using instrumental variable regression analyses and we find empirical support for our ideas. This study advances the institutional sustainability literature by explaining how community- and firm-level attributes interact to account for heterogeneity in firms' green innovation activities.