Green intellectual capital, innovation capabilities and sustainable performance of hotels in Malaysia / Rabiaal Adawiyah Shazali

Green concepts have been widely accepted and supported universally, particularly in today’s highly environmentally conscious era. Since the world was hit by the deadly COVID-19 virus, which spread rapidly through the unhygienic environment, the worsening of global warming and destruction of the environment that negatively impacts human health and well-being led to the loss of biodiversity and depletion of the ozone layer. The act of going green or protecting the environment is starting to become popular among players of several industries. One of these is tourism which no longer is a conservative industry that not only merely provides tourism activities, but now is also associated with sustainable concepts. Currently, hotels in Malaysia that apply green concepts in their operation are limited. Nevertheless, this green concept is significant to the hotel industry. Past studies mostly explored the Green Intellectual Capital (GIC) in the manufacturing industry and SMEs. The GIC concept derived from the current study is relevant to the services industry particularly to the hotels. GIC is the implementation of environmental knowledge awareness vis-à-vis the intellectual capital (IC). As widely known, IC is crucial in a firm since by efficiently utilizing it will improve the firm’s performance. Human Capital (HC), Structural Capital (SC), and Relational Capital (RC) are the three components of intellectual capital. HC is the knowledge and skills owned by the employees. SC is the supportive infrastructure, strategies and know-how that belongs to the organisation. RC is the relationship between the firm and their stakeholders. Not many researchers have investigated on GIC, hence limited GIC measurement is available. Implementing green concepts can draw in customers through the distinctive use of innovative green solutions, crucial for sustaining and enhancing overall performance. The aim of this study is to explore the indicators of GIC as well as the innovation capabilities of the hotels in Malaysia, to examine the relationship between GIC and sustainable performance, and also to examine the moderating effects of innovation capabilities on the relationship between GIC and sustainable performance of hotels. The significance of this study is to develop a green intellectual capital model in order to improve the hotels’ sustainable performance.