Firms are increasingly adopting environmentally friendly products to enhance their sustainability, competitiveness, and growth. Investing in green resources provides this opportunity. Therefore, this study adopts a natural resource orchestration approach that examines green intellectual capital, environmental proactivity, and environmental management accounting to enhance firms’ sustainability.
This research was undertaken in Pakistan’s manufacturing industry, which has a substantial impact on the environment and leads to pollution, waste, and emission of carbon, gas and chemicals. An online survey was conducted to gather data from 322 managers working in this sector. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, with SPSS and AMOS serving as analytical tools.
The findings depict that green intellectual capital and environmental proactivity are positively and significantly associated with environmental management accounting and their impact on sustainability is significant. Further, results show that environmental management accounting positively and significantly mediates the relationship between green intellectual capital, environmental proactivity, and firms’ sustainability.
Managers should focus on both intangible and tangible assets to successfully implement green strategies. By investing more in environmental resources, greater environmental benefits can be achieved.
This study has practical implications for businesses, demonstrating that embracing green practices can positively impact their bottom-line and competitive standing. By incorporating environmentally friendly initiatives and actively promoting “Going Green”, firms can turn these findings into actionable strategies to enhance their practical business operations.
The findings encourage firms to shift their focus from solely corporate goals to “Going Green” to achieve sustainable social, economic, and environmental performance, contributing to a more sustainable future.
This study provides a novel exploration of how green intellectual capital and environmental proactivity drive firms’ sustainability through the natural resource orchestration framework. Unlike previous studies that primarily examine green intellectual capital or environmental proactivity in isolation or within traditional resource-based approaches, this research integrates these constructs within the orchestration perspective to reveal the synergistic mechanisms that enhance firms’ sustainability. It uniquely contributes to the literature by offering a comprehensive model that not only identifies direct relationships but also emphasizes the mediating role of environmental management accounting in emerging markets, which remains an underexplored context.
