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Environmental regulations, innovation and firm performance: a revisit of the Porter hypothesis

  • Ram Ramanathan
    ,
  • Qile He
    ,
  • Andrew Black
    ,
  • Abby Ghobadian
    ,
  • David Gallear
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

This paper examines the relationships between environmental regulations, firms' innovation and private sustainability benefits using nine case studies of UK and Chinese firms. It aims to unravel the mechanisms by which a firm's environmental behaviour in improving its private benefits of sustainability is influenced by its relationship with the government, which primarily enacts regulations to maximise public sustainability benefits in the interests of society as a whole. The paper takes its cue from the Porter hypothesis to make some broad preliminary assumptions to inform the research design. A conceptual framework was developed through inductive case studies using template analysis. The results show that depending on firms' resources and capabilities, those that adopt a more dynamic approach to respond to environmental regulations innovatively and take a proactive approach to manage their environmental performance are generally better able to reap the private benefits of sustainability.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 79-92

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Journal of Cleaner Production (Volume 155, Issue 2)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 23/08/2016
  • Published - 24/08/2016

Publication status

Published - 24/08/2016

ISSN

0959-6526

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/621940
  • Scopus: 84992752510

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