The Effect of Absorptive Capacity on Green Customer Capital under an Organizational Unlearning Context

Silvia Martelo-Landroguez, Gema Albort-Morant, Antonio L. Leal-Rodríguez and Belén Ribeiro-Soriano
Additional contact information
Silvia Martelo-Landroguez: Departamento de Administración de Empresas y Marketing, Universidad de Sevilla, Av. Ramón y Cajal, 1, 41018 Seville, Spain
Gema Albort-Morant: Departamento de Administración de Empresas y Marketing, Universidad de Sevilla, Av. Ramón y Cajal, 1, 41018 Seville, Spain
Antonio L. Leal-Rodríguez: Departamento de Administración de Empresas y Marketing, Universidad de Sevilla, Av. Ramón y Cajal, 1, 41018 Seville, Spain
Belén Ribeiro-Soriano: Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North-Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Environmental management is becoming increasingly important within organizations and forms an essential part of their strategies. As customers are more concerned with the care of the environment, companies are required to be more aware of their actions. Consequently, companies must ignore their historical mindsets and assumptions to be able to adopt green-oriented practices and processes. Our specific research questions are: (i) How can firms become (more) green-oriented? and (ii) how can knowledge-based organizational capabilities drive this shift into greener companies, which may enhance green customer capital? The research model describes how the complementary roles of absorptive capacity (direct effect) and the fostering of an organizational unlearning context (moderating effect) affects green customer capital within the Spanish automotive component manufacturing sector. Empirical results reveal that to create green customer capital, companies should absorb new knowledge and build a context of organizational unlearning. In today’s competitive environment, knowledge rapidly becomes obsolete, so companies need to encourage unlearning to make space for new knowledge that meets environmental needs and keeps pace with changing customer preferences. The research hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS) path-modeling.

Keywords: absorptive capacity; green customer capital; organizational unlearning context; partial least squares (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/265/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/1/265/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:1:p:265-:d:127905

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().