ESG-driven innovation strategy and firm performance

This paper investigates the impact of aligning an innovation strategy with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices on innovation and non-innovation performance variables. Drawing on principles from Stakeholder Theory and Social Network Theory of Innovation, the research hypothesizes th...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Cabaleiro-Cerviño, G. (Goretti)|||/items/440e682f-6948-462c-a672-871b26467ce9, Mendi, P. (Pedro)|||/items/83ca8185-defa-401e-a066-55b7d4bcdf1c
Format: article
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Navarra
Repository:Dadun. Depósito Académico Digital de la Universidad de Navarra
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:dadun.unav.edu:10171/69387
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10171/69387
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:ESG
Innovation performance
Stakeholder theory
Social network theory of innovation
Open innovation
Competitive advantage
Survival rate
Exporting
Labor productivity
Description
Summary:This paper investigates the impact of aligning an innovation strategy with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices on innovation and non-innovation performance variables. Drawing on principles from Stakeholder Theory and Social Network Theory of Innovation, the research hypothesizes that ESG-driven firms will outperform firms that are not ESG-driven in terms of future innovation outcomes, labor productivity, exporting and survival rates. Using the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) database, a panel of Spanish companies, the study compares the performance of two groups of innovative firms: firms that declare that at least one of the ESG goals are relevant for their innovation activities (ESG-driven companies) and matched firms that regard all three ESG goals as not important (non-ESG companies). Our findings reveal that ESG-driven companies exhibit a better future innovation performance and that, in terms of labor productivity, exporting, and survival their performance is never inferior than that of innovative firms that are not ESG-driven