Organizational Policies and Environmental Innovation: The Mediating Role of Environmental Partnerships
研究了组织政策通过环境伙伴关系影响环境创新的中介机制，发现人权导向和消费者导向政策通过伙伴关系促进创新，而市场导向政策则无此效果，且该机制在非必需消费品企业中更显著。
ABSTRACT Although cross‐sector collaborations drive innovation, organizational policies as legitimation signals attracting such collaborations remain unexplored. This study examines the mediating role of environmental partnerships between organizational policies and environmental innovation. Using panel data (2014–2024) comprising 3372 firm‐year observations from 454 consumer sector firms across 45 countries, we employ the causal mediation framework with fixed‐effects regression to analyze human rights‐oriented, consumer‐oriented, and market‐oriented policies. Results reveal that environmental partnerships mediate the effects of human rights‐oriented and consumer‐oriented policies but not market‐oriented policies, and that this mediated pathway operates within consumer discretionary but not consumer staples firms. These findings demonstrate that organizational policies function as legitimation signals that attract environmental partners by communicating social responsibility commitments to proximate stakeholders rather than market compliance. We contribute to the environmental innovation literature by integrating legitimacy theory with the institutional approach, revealing that institutional conformity, although necessary, requires stakeholder proximity to effectively mobilize partnership‐mediated innovation.