Green intellectual capital, proactive environmental strategy and Malaysian manufacturing firms’ competitive advantage / Naimah Ahmad Yahya

In the light of corporate sustainability issues, the environmental challenge should be appropriately addressed whilst maintaining firms’ competitive advantage. The paradigm shift towards knowledge-based economy has prompted management focus to achieve competitive advantage by intensifying the green intellectual capital resources and proactive environmental strategy in causally ambiguous, socially complex and rare. However, whether or not and how the green intellectual capital as well as proactive environmental strategy contributes to the firms’ competitive advantage has always been argued. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to investigate whether green intellectual capital and proactive environmental strategy have positive significant relationship with firms’ competitive advantage. Green intellectual capital comprises of green human capital, green innovation capital, green organisational capital and green relational capital while proactive environmental strategies are represented by greening strategy and beyond greening strategy. This study utilised survey research by collecting data from 224 managers in the Malaysian manufacturing sector, where the firms are listed in the FMM directory.