Shaping sustainable development: External environmental pressure, exploratory green learning, and radical green innovation

Abstract Although external environmental pressure has been recognized as an important driver of green innovation, the literature ignores its effect on radical green innovation. Combining theories of organizational learning and transformational leadership, this study explores the relationships among external environmental pressure, exploratory green learning, and radical green innovation, and analyzes the moderating role of green transformational leadership. Considering the political and economic factors in social network, this study focuses on the pressures of environmental regulatory and green market. Data are collected from 282 manufacturing firms in China's strategic emerging industries, hierarchical regression analysis and boostrapping are used to test hypotheses. The results reveal that environmental regulatory pressure and green market pressure have positive effects on exploratory green learning, and exploratory green learning has positive effects on radical green innovation. Exploratory green learning plays a full mediating role in the relationship between environmental regulatory pressure and radical green innovation, and partially mediates the relationship between green market pressure and radical green innovation. Moreover, green transformational leadership has a nonlinear moderating effect on the relationship between exploratory green learning and radical green innovation. This study opens avenues for understanding the relationship between external environmental pressure and raidcal green innovation, which enriches the literature on green innovation and offers practical implications for government and firms.