Abstract
No research explored intellectual capital about green innovation or environmental management. This study wanted to fill this research gap, and proposed a novel construct – green intellectual capital – to explore the positive relationship between green intellectual capital and competitive advantages of firms. The empirical results of this study showed that the three types of green intellectual capital – green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital – had positive effects on competitive advantages of firms. Moreover, this study found that green relational capital was the most common among these three types of green intellectual capital, and the three types of green intellectual capital of Medium & Small Enterprises (SMEs) were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. In sum, companies investing many resources and efforts in green intellectual capital could not only meet the trends of strict international environmental regulations and popular environmental consciousness of consumers, but also eventually obtain corporate competitive advantages.
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The author is grateful for the funding of National Science Council in Taiwan for this study, and the project number of this study is NSC 94-2416-H-224-001.
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Dr. Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration in National Yunlin University of Science & Technology in Taiwan. His research focused on management of technology, innovation management, corporate environmental management, and patent analysis.
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Chen, YS. The Positive Effect of Green Intellectual Capital on Competitive Advantages of Firms. J Bus Ethics 77, 271–286 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9349-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9349-1