*2.1. The Impact of Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility on Green Innovation Performance*

For the sake of improving green innovation performance, a number of internal and external stakeholders are often engaged in green innovation [35]. In this study, green innovation performance can be described as performance related to innovations that a firm implements in association with green products and processes, embracing technologies that are concerned with reducing energy consumption, protecting the environment, reusing waste, eliminating pollution, green product research and development, and firm environmental management [36,37]. Since green innovation performance can effectively improve the competitive advantage of firms and cater to the needs of constructing an environmentfriendly society, the focus of academic and practical attention is how to enhance green innovation performance in the complex and uncertain world [10].

Environmental corporate social responsibility contributes to the enhancement of green innovation performance. Environmental corporate social responsibility represents a firm's voluntary actions to incorporate environmental concerns into its operational activities, thereby enhancing the association with the firm's interested parties [38]. The construct concentrates on some elements that can help to address the economic and environmental effects surrounding the firm [39]. Indeed, environmental corporate social responsibility shows the environmentally friendly behavior of a firm in society and can bring about a good reputation and social admissibility [40].

From the perspective of external stakeholders, customers are becoming more concerned about the environmental effects of their purchases [41]. To satisfy customer demands, firms should strengthen R&D investments to develop green products and ensure that manufacturing processes and product quality meet customers' expectations. Meanwhile, environmental corporate social responsibility can be seen as a signal of a firm's non-opportunistic behavior and long-term green development [42], which can lessen informational asymmetry between shareholders [43]. This may, in turn, provide vital resource supports to green innovation. Moreover, environmental corporate social responsibility actions can be identified by external stakeholders, such as green suppliers, which encourage the firm to construct deeper relationships with them, thereby expanding the firm's green innovation search scope [44]; in turn, external knowledge can be integrated into the firm's internal knowledge pool and improve its green innovation performance [7]. From the perspective of internal stakeholders, as stated above, environmentally responsible firms have a good reputation among stakeholders. Employees who feel that they work for firms with a reputation for innovatively integrating green and novel ideas of energy saving, pollution prevention, and waste reuse into product manufacturing can feel pride in their work, and in turn may take the initiative to get involved in green innovation activities [28], thereby facilitating firms' green innovation performance. Thus, the study develops Hypothesis 1:

**Hypothesis 1.** *Environmental corporate social responsibility is positively related to green innovation performance.*

#### *2.2. The Mediating Role of Shared Vision Capability*

Shared vision capability can be described as a common understanding and identification among a firm's members concerning the firm's vision, mission, and core values; it indicates the developmental direction for the firm in the future [27,45]. It is seen as the basis of firm strategic management because it shows firm members' common aims, overall directions, and practices. Moreover, shared vision capability can help firms improve their learning capabilities and maintain a competitive advantage [46].

Social identity theory holds that the collective values and practices in association with those of a comparable group and the prestige of the group can be vital factors to enhance the tendency to identify with groups [24]. For the sake of developing shared vision capability, members of the firm need to have a collective understanding of the vision, mission, and core values of the firm [47]. On the one hand, environmentally responsible firms are devoted to integrating environmental concerns into a firm's values, operations, and commercial activities, which makes them different from comparable firms. This can help employees remain true to themselves and identify with the firm's visions. On the other hand, environmental corporate social responsibility serves the greater interests of society. Thus, environmentally responsible firms usually have good reputations. When employees feel oneness with prestige firms, they tend to feel pride and gradually discover the meaningfulness of their work [48]. The view that the firm is devoted to improving the environment, preventing pollution, and saving energy can enhance employees' identification with the firm's vision, mission, and core values [49]. Therefore, environmental corporate social responsibility is positively associated with shared vision capability.

Due to the increasing significance of shared vision capability, having an explicit understanding of these shared vision capabilities can also affect a firm's green innovation performance. Shared vision capability often links diverse departments and individual staff to a firm, as it produces a shared understanding of the firm's aims and suitable behaviors to realize them and encourages staff to move towards a shared vision. The empirical

study of O'Reilly and Tushman [50] indicated that a clear shared vision can improve a firm's innovation capability. As stated in social identity theory, employees' identification with an organization can strengthen their support for it. Meanwhile, identifying with an organization influences the outcomes conventionally related to group cooperation and intragroup cohesion [24]. Yang and Huang [51] also proposed that a shared vision can provide an image of a desired future state to employees, which can encourage employees to devote their efforts to the firm's aims such that the firm has better performance in innovation.

When employees of a firm identify with its environmentally responsible vision, mission, and core values, they may take the initiative to develop more environmental knowledge and integrate it, and thereby the knowledge pool can be enriched. The process of knowledge searching, and integration can obviously improve firms' green innovation performance. Moreover, there may be a number of difficulties in introducing and applying green and novel ideas into the manufacturing processes, and employees' strong identification with the common vision will make employees cooperate actively with others and discover opportunities by means of exchanging resources and combination across units to overcome risks and challenges from green innovation. Therefore, green innovation performance can be improved. Thus, Hypothesis 2 is proposed:

**Hypothesis 2.** *Shared vision capability mediates the environmental corporate social responsibility– green innovation performance relationship.*
