1. Introduction
The evolution, development, and practices of modern industries have left an indelible mark on the environment: this is considered a major global concern [
1]. Several researchers (e.g., Chuang and Huang [
2]) have indicated that environmental awareness has intensified, and, thus, companies are under considerable pressures to follow international treaties and accords, some of which are the Montreal Protocol (1987), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1992), European Union environmental directive (WEEE, ROHS, and EuP) (2003), and the Kyoto Protocol (2005) [
2]. The specifications of international environmental treaties and regulations have increasingly become crucial and stringent, thus considerably affecting the business environment [
3,
4,
5,
6]. Today, in terms of commercial growth, being attentive toward environmental protection concerns and avoiding behavior that harms the society, economy, and environment [
7] are essential. It means that we should focus on commercial development and concern the environmental protection at the same time. For reducing such pressures, the concept of environmental protection and management has infiltrated corporate management [
1,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12]. Because of increasing usage of green products (GPs) [
2,
13,
14,
15] and benefits of green management, several companies have started becoming attentive toward green product development (GPD) and production [
1,
10,
15,
16,
17]. Therefore, GPs have a substantial effect on the sustainability goals of companies [
18]. GPD manifestation is generally associated with the progress of GPs, green services, green processes, and green practices and is considered an original, innovative, and useful business indicator [
19]. When companies develop, design, and produce GPs, integrating green management into GPD is essential [
16,
20]. Zhou et al. [
21] proposed that when leaders and employees are matching in the field of management psychology can improve green product development performance (GPDP). It does not help GPDP unless it is further internalized into an organizational climate.
According to Erkut [
22], the process of innovating concepts aims to create market segments and benefits through technological knowledge and corresponding marketing knowledge. The behavioral tendencies and decision-making processes are generated by cognitive patterns, which are the starting points of new knowledge generation [
23]. Therefore, when the company achieves pattern recognition [
23] through previous experiences and knowledge, it establishes a corporate green identity and green common vision and then interacts with market knowledge. It gains entrepreneurial advantages and generates market benefits.
Erkut and Kaya [
24] indicated that innovativeness of corporate social responsibility activities for spreading awareness depends on the establishment of a firm and the type of corporate culture and character it implements. Such innovativeness requires knowledge on current and potential employees to create and maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, companies must integrate the corporate and employees to use innovative knowledge for gaining competitive advantage. Based on the aforementioned observation, this study explored the green shared vision (GSV) of the company, green organization identity, and green organization citizenship behavior oriented by employees. Employee behavior is crucial among several elements contributing to the success of GPD. However, this behavior may not be cultivated by formal reward or performance assessment systems [
25]; therefore, the behavior of staff members in the company is frequently considered a primary factor for the success of green organization development [
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30]. Voluntary actions by the staff members of the company to improve the green management–related measures are essential, which is termed green organizational citizenship behavior, and this behavior is not formally included in organizational system rewards [
25,
31,
32]. Therefore, green organizational citizenship behavior is an approach through which a company achieves environmental management or plans GPD and production.
Corporate GPD has received considerable attention because people are gradually learning about environmental preservation concerns [
16,
33]. The increasing consumer environmental awareness is responded to by developing environment-friendly products and services, which is crucial for successful businesses [
20,
34,
35]. Although studies have broadly discussed concerns regarding GPDP, the research examining the effect of green organizational identity (GOI) and GSV on GPDP has been insufficient. However, GOI and green common vision are not mind acts upon mind, thus contributing to GPDP [
21]. Therefore, the current study aimed to bridge this research different by proposing a research framework with four new constructs, namely the GOI, green common vision, organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE), and GPDP. Because GPD is becoming more significant for companies in this environmentalist period, a research framework comprising primary factors—such as the GOI, green common vision, and OCBE—to improve the GPDP of companies. Chen [
10,
19] introduced the concept of the GOI, bot no study has investigated the impact of the GOI on OCBE. However, according to Maxfield [
36], employees rely on previous cognition, knowledge, ideas, social participation, coordination, and interaction and mutual learning, which is endogenous because of organizational knowledge. The promotion of unique entrepreneurship and innovative practices and company resources help gain the competitive advantage of enterprises. Social participation and employee cognition are considered primary factors. For alleviating the research differences, a whole context–organizational action–outcome structure was developed. By examining the positive relation of the GOI on green innovation performance and discussing the influence of environmental commitment and environmental organizational legitimacy.
In this study, numerous research steps were followed. A literature survey on the GOI, green common vision, OCBE, and GPDP was conducted. Furthermore, the results were obtained from an empirical test to validate the relations among these curial variables. In particular, five hypotheses based on the study framework were proposed and tested. Finally, conclusions were derived, and the findings, implications, and future research were discussed in brief.
5. Conclusions and Implications
The study had some research restrictions. First, the unexpected result indicates that the relations among the GOI, GSV, and GPDP were mediated by the OCBE. Therefore, the mediation role of OCBE needs to be verified by collecting related research in the future. Second, the samples were all selected from Taiwanese manufacturing companies. However, differences were observed in terms of national conditions, cultures, industries, and economic structures. Third, most companies were unlisted, which may have different norms than listed companies. Finally, this study explored the performance of GPD from the perspective of the internal environment of the organization and excluded external environmental factors.
This research was conducted to understand the previously unexplored relationship between the GOI and OCBE, which is particularly pertinent in this environmentally aware era. In this study, a research framework was proposed that focused on the effect of GOI and GSV on GPDP through the OCBE. This study empirically exhibited a positive correlation of GOI and GSV and on OCBE and GPDP. The findings were as follows: (1) Positive effects for GOI and GSV between OCBE and GPDP and (2) Positive effects of OCBE for GPDP. The results further indicate that the relations among the GOI, GSV, and GPDP were partially mediated by the OCBE; the results point that the OCBE acts as mediator between GOI, GSV and GPDP. After further examining the collecting data, we found (3) the relationship between GOI and GPDP is completely mediated by OCBE and (4) the relationship between GSV and GPDP is partially mediated by OCBE. When an organization substantially increases the inclination of its staff members toward identifying with its green organization and GSV, the company can stimulate OCBE, thereby facilitating successful GPDP. In addition, OCBE mediates GOI and GPDP in organizations and the relationship between GSV and GPDP. Therefore, organizations must strive to cultivate GOI and GSV for encouraging OCBE and stimulate GPDP.
The proposed study makes four academic contributions to the literature.
First, consistent with previous research that highlights the relation between the GOI and GSV for green creativity or green innovation [
14,
54]. The study contributes to this knowledge by incorporating additional variables, such as OCBE and GPDP as a mediator and response variable, respectively.
Second, a gap was observed in the previous research, which in a limited way revealed that the GOI and GSV have significant effect on green creativity. Studies did not account for GPDP. Thus, to address this gap, this study indicated that organization identity and GSV have significant effects on GPDP.
The third contribution is that this study indicates that green organizational citizenship behavior plays a crucial intermediary role between the GOI and GPDP and between GSV and GPDP. This observation highlights the catalytic role of OCBE of staff members on developing GPs.
The fourth and final contribution of this study indicates that the GOI and GSV have significantly different effects on the development of GPs. Therefore, organizations must strengthen the GOI and GSV to model the organizational citizenship behavior of staff members for the environment and to improve GPD.
The findings of this study suggest four practices for GPD.
First, GOI and GSV are crucial for OCBE and GPDP. If a company wants to enhance OCBE and GPDP, setting objectives, measures, and strategies for cultivating the GOI and GSV among the staff members is essential. Similarly, as organizations intend to profit from GPs, they must actively invest in formulating green policies, strengthening the GOI of staff members, and establishing an organization culture of GSV. For instance, the company must actively allocate budgeted resources or related policies, create an environment-friendly culture, encourage employee OCBE for enhancing GPDP of the organization, and create and maintain a competitive position in the market. Organizations can design relevant strategies and redesign their work processes by using several means, such as energy conservation and resource recovery [
89], thus leveraging the GOI and GSV culture to transform the market and increase competitiveness. The deployment of these strategies in a novel form of environmental governance can fuel sustainable development, and combining this governance with the GOI and GSV culture can further facilitate effective GPD.
Second, because of the centrality of GOI and GSV practice includes adopting concrete methods to foster the GOI and green vision for reinforcing and promoting the citizenship behavior of staff members for the environment. Examples of implementing green and environment-friendly strategies include saving energy and reducing carbon emissions, reusing resources, and offering green creativity training courses designed according to the green culture of the organizations.
Third, since OCBE catalyzes GOI and green vision for successful GPD, OCBE must be highlighted. Thus, the organization can enact various management measures, such as a declaration on green environment and development of the organization, a green environment and development blueprint of the organization, and an incentive scheme to increase OCBE among staff members.
The fourth and final recommendation is that enterprises must actively bolster the GOI and GSV among staff members, train and educate them on OCBE in a corporate environment, and promote the successful development of GPs.
This study proposes eight directions for future research. First, the result of the research points that OCBE plays a mediation role between GOI, GSV, and GPDP. Therefore, the mediation role of OCBE needs to be verified by collecting related research in the future. Second, the model of this study is a discussion of the development performance of GPs. It considers the internal environment of the organization: the green common vision and green organization identification as prevariables. However, other possible influencing factors can be observed, and future researchers may explore the variables that are affected by the external environment of the organization or the related literature. Third, multiple analyses can be conducted to explore the benefits of the proposed research framework. Fourth, cross-country Chinese studies can be conducted, and the differences in their effects can then be explored. Fifth, future research may employ metrics to measure human resources, leadership style, and other psychological factors, which are not included in this study. Sixth, future research can further incorporate organizational characteristics or negative variables (e.g., overpackaging and greenwash) into the difference analyses, which was not included in the study. Seventh, the correlations of demographic variables include gender, marital status, and working experience on staff members in the organization can be further explored. Finally, future work can be conducted using model validation experiments.