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Exploring Green Innovation Practices: Content Analysis of the Fortune Global 500 Companies:

Exploring Green Innovation Practices: Content Analysis of the Fortune Global 500 Companies: Green innovation has been attracting increasing attention due to its contributions to the conservation of resources and environmental protection. However, in the process of exploring green innovation, the allocation of resources and the direction of innovation are often inaccurate, which leads to a low efficiency of green innovation. If we can learn the green innovation practices from successful companies, we can certainly provide reference strategies for those companies that are exploring green innovation. Therefore, taking the Fortune Global 500 companies as the analysis object, this research develops the criteria of green innovation practices and conducts a cluster analysis of these companies by using a content analysis method. Finally, this article summarizes the green innovation practices of the six types of industries and provides corresponding countermeasures and suggestions, which provide a strong reference for relevant companies to carry out green innovation. Keywords green innovation, content analysis, cluster analysis, global top 500 companies Green innovation has also become the focus of academic Introduction research. Studies have indicated that green innovation intro- With the rapid development of the economy, environmental duces the ecological idea into the development process to problems have become increasingly prominent. eliminate or reduce the harm caused to the environment Environmental pollution and degradation have become (Gunasekaran & Spalanzani, 2012). In addition, organiza- global problems. Environmental problems, such as global tions with green innovation ability can use green resources warming, ozone depletion, smog, and water pollution, have and gain the ability to respond to customer needs quickly and largely affected economic development and social progress appropriately so as to gain competitive advantage (Albort- for the next generations. With the increase in the number of Morant et al., 2018). Some researchers pay greater attention people and the consumption of resource-based companies, to the study of the influencing factors of green innovation, coal, oil, natural gas, and other nonrenewable energy sources such as policies and regulations (Stucki et al., 2018), quality are gradually decreasing or even being depleted. The use of management (D. Li et al., 2018), and the impact of green these nonclean energy sources exacerbates the deterioration innovation on the economic and social performances of com- of the environment. Firms that do not increase their environ- panies (El-Kassar & Singh, 2019; Q. H. Li, 2014), as well as mental sensitivity will face the risk of losing their upside specific practices, such as green technology innovation (Liu opportunities in a market shaped by environmental factors et al., 2017), green design of products (Hashemi et al., 2015; (Esty & Winston, 2006). Thus, firms have begun to pay more W. Y. Li et al., 2016), and the disposal of waste (Y. S. Chen attention to the impact of their decision-making and manage- ment behaviors on the environment and to promote green Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, China innovation (Cui, 2017; Safari et al., 2018). Some firms focus Renmin University of China, Beijing, China on the green design of products, some focus on raw materials Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, China and clean energy, and others are interested in the innovation 4 University of Nottingham, UK of production processes. Corresponding Author: However, for most firms, green innovation practices are Li Cui, School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, No. 2 Dagong still in the primary stage of exploration. These companies Road, New District of Liaodong Bay, Panjin 124221, China. urgently require relevant theoretical research as a guide. Email: cuili@dlut.edu.cn Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open et al., 2006). However, due to the different characteristics of following terms still exist: ecological innovation, environment the industry and the firm itself, such as business form and innovation, and sustainable innovation. The former two terms resource situation, it is difficult to apply these research con- and green innovation are synonyms, while the concept of the clusions to provide reference models for green innovation for latter is extended to the social level (Schiederig et al., 2012). firms, especially emerging firms, to follow. If we can grasp Because of the different disciplines, academic opinions, and the green innovation practices of some companies, especially preferences of researchers, there is still some argument about representative firms, the firms exploring green innovation the expression and understanding of the concept of “green channels can obtain useful experience to optimize the utiliza- innovation.” Blättel-Mink (1998) noted that green innovation tion of resources, which has significant practical meaning. introduces ecological ideas into the development of new prod- For this purpose, we have two questions to answer. One is ucts, markets and systems, or even economic strategies. Beise how do we identify the criteria of green innovation practices? and Rennings (2005) proposed that green innovation is a series Two is how do we deeply analyze these practices? In the of applications in newly developed or improved processes existing studies about green innovation practices, the criteria about technologies, practices, systems, and products. The pur- are obtained mainly from the literature (Cui et al., 2019; pose is to avoid or reduce environmental hazards. Kemp and Tseng et al., 2013) and may be somewhat inconsistent with Pearson (2007) defined green innovation as the production, the actual situation of the companies’ practices of green inno- assimilation, or exploitation of a product, production process, vation. In addition, most of the state-of-the-art knowledge service, or management method that is novel to the organiza- about green innovation comes from an organization’s case tions developing or adopting them. This method runs through study of environmental issues in management and response the whole life cycle of the product and reduces environmental (Mele & Russo-Spena, 2015); a small amount of research risks, pollution, and other negative effects on the utilization of used a one-time survey, but quantitative research with large resources. Halila and Rundquist (2011) indicated that green samples is seriously lacking (Zhang, 2012). Therefore, to innovation is a general term for a series of innovative activities. answer these questions and further enrich the theoretical It helps improve the quality of the ecological environment and research of green innovation, this article takes the top 500 contributes to sustainable development. Through comprehen- global companies as the research objects and their relevant sive comparison of these concepts, different scholars have data of green innovation practices as the sample, uses a con- formed a consensus of ideas on the definition of green innova- tent analysis method to obtain criteria, and then clusters and tion, including the following: (a) the whole life cycle of prod- analyzes the green innovation practices of companies. ucts; (b) innovative objects are products, processes, services The main contributions of this research are as follows: and methods; and (c) the purpose of innovation is to reduce or First, we develop criteria of green innovation practices by eliminate the impact on the environment. combining the literature with content analysis, which The academic research on green innovation is increas- enriches the criteria framework of green innovation. Second, ingly deepening. Studies on how to reduce the negative we conduct cluster analysis for green innovation practices of impact on the environment began in the early 1990s the top 500 global companies. On one hand, large sample (Schiederig et al., 2012). As early as 1997, some scholars research on green innovation is further enriched; on the other noted that the improvement of the environment needs to be hand, the results have a strong reference value for the practi- integrated into all aspects of business. They studied how to tioners of green innovation. The remainder of this study is carry out green innovation from raw materials to reduce organized as follows. “Literature Review” section is the lit- environmental hazards in the clothing industry (Chouinard & erature review. “Research Method” section describes the Brown, 1997). In addition, many scholars have focused on research method. “Application Illustration” section is an the practice of internal and external green supply chains (Zhu application illustration. “Theoretical and Managerial et al., 2013) as well as green innovative technologies such as Implications” section discusses the theoretical and manage- energy-saving technology and sewage treatment technology rial implications. The last part includes the conclusion and (Costantini et al., 2016; Ociepa-Kubicka & Pachura, 2017). limitation of the study. The ideas of these researchers reflect the green innovation characteristics of different companies. They also indicate that there are some differences between different companies Literature Review in selecting a green innovation strategy. However, few stud- This section provides a comprehensive review of the litera- ies explore these different characteristics at present. ture on green innovation practices and content analysis. The characteristics of green innovation in companies are the concentrated reflection of enterprise green innovation strategy. If these characteristics are grasped and summarized, Green Innovation Practices firms in different industries with different characteristics can “Green innovation” is a hot topic that has attracted much atten- refer to the corresponding green ideas to implement green tion in recent years. When scholars describe innovation that is innovation practices; save time, resources, and capital; and helpful in reducing the impact on the natural environment, the improve the efficiency of green innovation. However, Zhang et al. 3 through the research presented in the literature, we find that found that green process innovation has a positive impact on the current research is mostly based on case analysis or small green product innovation. In short, content analysis is an sample surveys. The research contents are mainly focused on effective method to objectively and systematically describe the influential factors of green innovation, the dynamic or analyze the relevant content of research topics. mechanism, and the utility evaluation. There are few studies By reviewing the relevant literature of content analysis, it on green innovation characteristics, and the representation can be seen that this method can analyze the change of atten- and reference value are not strong. Thus, companies have tion by determining the frequency of vocabulary and can difficulty in finding their own position and have to learn and explore the potential association of content by mining the draw experience from current studies. To better reflect the common appearance of keywords to explore features, trends, overall characteristics of green innovation and improve fea- and cognition (Duriau et al., 2007). Therefore, the use of sibility and operability, research on green innovation for content analysis to analyze green firm data and explore green large sample company data is necessary. The data mining innovation practices has strong applicability. However, method can obtain potential valuable information from a although content analysis has been widely used in manage- large number of complex data, so it can meet the demand of rial research, few studies use content analysis to explore the large sample data research. practice of green innovation in firms, which leads to the lack of theoretical guidance in the process of seeking green inno- vation practice. To explore the green innovation laws of dif- Content Analysis ferent industry firms and to determine the overall As a commonly used analytical method in the research of characteristics of green innovation practice, this article ana- social sciences, content analysis is a technique of gathering lyzes the specific measures of green innovation adopted by and organizing diverse data, involving coding information Fortune Global 500 companies using the content analysis into various groups or categories based on selected criteria method, summarizes the internal links and the differences (Soldatenko & Backer, 2019). By examining and interpreting between them, and provides valuable and feasible sugges- the particular body of research systematically, content analy- tions for other firms to develop green innovation practices. sis is able to identify its themes, patterns, and limitations and then provide new insights into the essential ideas and further Research Method guide practical actions (Hagen, 2018). Content analysis can be seen as a phase of information processing, which can vari- This section mainly elaborates the procedures of using con- ously use qualitative and quantitative research techniques to tent analysis to study the green innovation practices of com- clearly analyze the text content of relevant topics (Miah panies. First, we obtain the dimensions/themes of green et al., 2017). In general terms, a high-quality content analysis innovation practices from the literature (see Table 1). Second, can provide a replicable methodology for future studies, we collect the related data of the top 500 global companies especially when publications include a wider description of and obtain the criteria according to the dimensions. Then, criteria used to conduct the research (Camprubí & Coromina, cluster analysis is conducted to classify the companies. 2016). In addition, content analysis has great analytical flex- Finally, the analysis of green innovation practices for compa- ibility, and scholars often used it to analyze the essential facts nies in different groups is conducted. The detailed proce- or related trends of some research contents (Duriau et al., dures are as follows. 2007; Liao, 2018). Due to the versatility of content analysis, its application is Step 1: Determine the Dimensions considerably extensive (Camprubí & Coromina, 2016). On of Green Innovation Practices one hand, it can be used to induce or deduce realities (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Moldavska and Welo (2017) selected an The dimensions of green innovation practices are obtained inductive content analysis method to analyze the definitions from the literature. The literature research method is not lim- of sustainable manufacturing published from 1990 to 2016 in ited by time and space. We can summarize and draw lessons a variety of academic journals to identify the current under- from previous research results. Through collecting, sorting, standing of what researchers mean by the concept. On the and reading relevant literature on corporate green innova- other hand, it can use qualitative or quantitative approaches tion, the important dimensions reflecting the research con- to carry out different levels of analysis, such as assessing tent are determined. The details of the dimensions are shown changes or detecting trends and exploring the relationship in Table 1. between variables (Kondracki et al., 2002; Liao, 2018). Soldatenko and Backer (2019) conducted content analysis of Step 2: Extract the Criteria of Green previous studies on cross-cultural tourist motivation com- Innovation Practices parison to reveal gaps in the literature and to indicate future research trends. Xie et al. (2019) adopted the content analy- Based on the dimensions, the corresponding criteria are sis method to capture the data of listed firms in China and obtained from the green innovation data of companies by 4 SAGE Open Table 1. Dimensions and Corresponding References of Green Innovation Practices. Dimensions References Green technology (D1) Nieminen et al. (2007); Liu et al. (2017) Materials (D2) Chouinard and Brown (1997); Y. S. Chen et al. (2006); Hashemi et al. (2015) Energy (D3) Yi (2013); Yuan et al. (2017) Water (D4) Willard (2005) Environmental management system (D5) Winter and Lasch (2016) Cooperation (D6) J. Wang (2010) Waste (D7) Willard (2005); Y. S. Chen et al. (2006) Product (D8) Willard (2005); Hashemi et al. (2015); W. Y. Li et al. (2016) Green finance (D9) Bal et al. (2013) Green office (D10) Gou et al. (2012) Supply chain (D11) Laari et al. (2017); Aziz et al. (2016); Knez et al. (2011); Mina et al. (2014) Green activities (D12) Axon (2016); D. Li et al. (2017) using word frequency statistics. There are three substeps: 2015 to 2017, so we use the latest published reports to obtain research object screening, data acquisition, and data data. For the companies without reports, we use “environ- encoding. ment,” “sustainability,” and “green innovation” as keywords (Chinese website with the corresponding Chinese vocabu- Substep 1: Select the research object. As the global top 500 lary as keywords) to collect materials related to the research companies as research objects come from all over the world, content. there are great differences in language, mode, and other aspects, which is inconvenient when obtaining the research Substep 3: Code data. This study uses NVivo10 software to data. At the same time, there are also differences in time and encode and analyze the company data. NVivo10 can address the expression of green innovation data published by differ- many types of content, summarize a large number of scat- ent companies. Therefore, it is necessary to select the tered data related to the research topic, and mine hidden research object according to certain rules. To ensure the information so that researchers can quickly capture the infor- smooth development of the research, the selection conditions mation in the data. In addition, the exploration function of are as follows: NVivo10 can help researchers perform correlation analysis and clustering analysis, which are needed in this study. The a. The company has its own website and allows access nodes in different levels encoded by NVivo have subordinate through the researcher’s network environment; relationships. According to the purpose of this study, the b. The content of the company’s official website is pre- company data are imported into software for coding with the sented in Chinese or English; dimensions as the first-level nodes. We adopt the method of c. The company’s official website has separate modules, manual coding and automatic coding to obtain the second- such as “CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility),” “sus- level nodes as the criteria of green innovation practices. The tainable development,” “green,” and “sustainability.” coding process mainly includes open coding and axial coding. Substep 2: Extract data. The main source of data is the com- pany report published on the website, including annual Open coding. Open coding belongs to the stage of mean- reports, sustainable development reports, and social respon- ing formation. In this stage, manual coding is adopted. While sibility reports. The annual report is a comprehensive sum- browsing each company’s information, we select a part of mary reflecting the development of the company. Sustainable the information with practical meaning and use the core key- development reports include the actions of managing and words or phrases in this part as the criteria. The reference improving economic, environmental, and social perfor- points with the same meaning are integrated into the same mances by companies, the results of these actions, and future criterion. At this stage, multiple indicators are allowed to improvements (Zhong & Gan, 2006). The content of social encode the same part of the information. responsibility reports usually involves various aspects of economic responsibility, environmental responsibility, and Axial coding. Axial coding belongs to the stage of con- social responsibility (Xu & Xu, 2011). The green develop- cept formation. The criteria that have been formed are fur- ment strategy we focus on is the important part of the com- ther inducted and generalized. The criteria with the same or pany reports. Due to the different published time of the similar meaning are merged. After all the criteria are deter- reports belonging to different companies, the time range is mined, the remaining company data are encoded in the form Zhang et al. 5 of automatic coding, and the corresponding coding matrix are more likely to take environmental actions initiatively, is formed to facilitate the verification of the automatic cod- such as green innovation, than smaller ones (Darnall et al., ing and improve the accuracy and credibility of the coding. 2010). Larger companies also have greater social influence Because the data cannot be encoded, we create a memo link and can satisfy the stakeholders’ demands for more aggres- for them. sive environmental measures (Etzion, 2007). Second, the top 500 global companies involved in all walks of life in many Step 3: Cluster companies according to the criteria of green inno- countries can reflect the green innovation characteristics of vation practices. After encoding, we use NVivo10 software companies in different industries, so the research results to perform correlation analysis and cluster analysis based on have a more extensive application value. the criteria of green innovation practices. Correlation analy- sis is used to quantify the degree of correlation between vari- Determination of Dimensions and Criteria ables by introducing certain statistical criteria. This helps us to predict and analyze the regularity of the relationships First, we select 12 dimensions from the literature. The details between things or phenomena (Liang et al., 2016). Cluster are as follows. analysis classifies the data samples according to the similar- Clean technology (D1) is a sustainable technology that ity or dissimilarity of the pattern features so that the data in can minimize the use of natural resources in the production the same set are as similar as possible, and the data between process and achieve zero emissions (Nieminen et al., 2007). different groups are different as much as possible (M. Wang, In small and medium companies, the promotion of clean 2008; J. Wang, 2010). Through the cluster analysis, we can technology is highly valued by stakeholders (Liu et al., discover the similarities and differences between the research 2017). Starting with raw materials (D2), exploring how to objects. These similarities and differences can reflect the reduce the impact on the environment from the early stages characteristics of the research objects clearly. In this study, of the product life cycle is also an important aspect of corpo- the Pearson correlation coefficient of NVivo software is used rate green innovation (Y. S. Chen et al., 2006; Chouinard & to analyze the material source. On the basis of correlation Brown, 1997; Hashemi et al., 2015). In addition, the energy analysis, cluster analysis for the companies is completed (D3) problem has also been emphasized by the state and according to the similarity of criteria coding. company. The U.S. national and local governments actively promote the use of renewable energy and focus on improving Step 4: Analyze the green innovation practices of compa- energy efficiency (Yi, 2013). Companies should not only pay nies. According to the clustering results of companies, the attention to energy issues but also the saving and recycling of green innovation practices of companies in the same group water resources (D4) (Willard, 2005). To promote green as well as between the groups are analyzed by the compara- development, some companies try to build an environmental tive analysis method. management system (D5) (Winter & Lasch, 2016) and some focus on cooperation (D6) with scientific research institu- tions and suppliers (Irena, 2015). The disposal of waste (D7) Application Illustration (Y. S. Chen et al., 2006; Willard, 2005) and the green design of products (D8) are also challenges for many companies in Data Sources the process of green innovation (Hashemi et al., 2015; W. Y. The “Fortune” global top 500 list is the most famous and Li et al., 2016; Willard, 2005). The development of green authoritative list used to measure the world’s largest compa- finance (D9) has become an important factor for banks and nies, known as the “ultimate list,” and is published by the other financial companies to improve their competitiveness “Fortune” magazine once a year. The list ranking is mainly (Bal et al., 2013). Promotion of a green office (D10) (Gou based on sale revenue. The scale of the company is also con- et al., 2012) and green supply chain (D11) management can sidered. The research objects of this study are the top 500 result in competitive advantages for companies (Aziz et al., global companies published by fortune Chinese websites on 2016; Knez et al., 2011; Laari et al., 2017; Mina et al., 2014). July 20, 2016. These companies come from more than 30 In addition, carrying out various green activities (D12) countries, of which 134 are in the United States, 110 in (Axon, 2016; W. Y. Li et al., 2016) can enhance firms’ green China, and 52 in Japan. Their numbers rank in the top three development level. The dimensions of green innovation on the list. In addition, the companies cover all walks of life, practices of companies are shown in Table 1. of which the real estate industry, finance and insurance Then, according to the selection rules in “Research industry, energy industry, and communication industry are Method” section, we finally obtain 284 available data points the major industries. The reasons for choosing the top 500 from the top 500 global companies, including 202 English global companies are as follows. First, through the selection and 82 Chinese data points for encoding. To ensure consis- criteria of the top 500 global companies, the companies in tency in data formats, all Chinese data are translated into the the list are the strongest companies in the world, with rela- corresponding English data. Then, we randomly select some tively high sales revenue and large scales. Larger companies data from the 284 company data to encode manually based 6 SAGE Open on primary indicators. When 132 company data are encoded, Analysis of Green Innovation Practices the secondary indicators formed by axial encoding have As shown in Table 3, the first group of companies is involved already been well identified by the software and can meet the in the supply of raw materials, sales, transportation, communi- demand of automatic coding afterward. Examples of manual cations, and finance industries, which are most concerned coding are as follows: about cooperation with universities and research institutions, The following data from Apple’s official website are used followed by the establishment of green data centers, combined as an example to introduce the encoding process: with the community and improvement of the mode of trans- port. The second group mainly contains financial companies Partnering with suppliers for clean energy. The electricity we but also includes electronic information technology, infra- use in our supply chain to process raw materials, make parts, and structure, and so on; this group pays more attention to coop- assemble our products is the single biggest source of our carbon footprint. So in 2015, we created a program to help our partners eration with suppliers and the use of clean renewable energy around the world reduce their energy use, power their facilities (Kim & Park, 2018). In addition, the frequency of saving with clean energy, and build high-quality renewable energy paper is also high, showing the companies in this group pro- projects. mote green offices. The companies in the third group are mainly the energy industry. The key criteria are green patents 1. Energy ——— “power their facilities with clean and green innovation projects, indicating that such companies energy,” “build high-quality renewable energy projects.” tend to start with the knowledge level in the process of green — Use clean renewable energy innovation. The fourth group, including Samsung Electronics, 2. Cooperation ——— “partnering with suppliers.” — Yanchang Petroleum, and the two major banks, attaches Cooperate with suppliers importance to environmental protection activities, establishes environmental protection targets, and uses energy-saving tech- First, according to the keywords “energy” and “partnering nologies. In addition, a green credit policy is an important cri- with,” we determine that this paragraph is related to the terion for the banking sector (Chang et al., 2019). Companies “Energy” and “Cooperation” of the dimensions. Then, the in the fifth group are all from China, involving equipment specific content “power their facilities with clean energy” manufacturing, transportation, and power. The concerned cri- and “build high-quality renewable energy projects” about teria are waste disposal, energy conservation reform, new “Energy” is encoded as the corresponding criterion “Use energy, and energy conservation technology development. lean renewable energy,” and “Partnering with suppliers” These companies pay more attention to the energy problem. In about “Cooperation” is encoded as the corresponding sec- the sixth group, the financial industry predominates; this group ondary criterion “Cooperate with suppliers.” In the same also includes automotive manufacturing and energy. The most way, a total of 43 criteria are obtained that meet the needs of concerned criteria of green innovation practices are the the research and have a hierarchical relationship with the improvement of energy efficiency, use of clean and renewable dimensions; see Table 2. energy, and the formulation of environmental protection strat- egies. The seventh group’s companies include communica- tions, finance, energy, and retail industries. The criteria of Company Clustering these companies are green information and communication In this section, we use the “explore” function of NVivo10 technology, green data centers, engaging with communities, software to conduct Pearson correlation analysis of various and improvement of water use efficiency. The eighth group companies in accordance with coding similarity and then involves financial insurance, electric power, energy and chem- select the 209 companies with strong correlation (correlation ical industries, medicine and the media, and so on. This group coefficient ≥.6; J. Wang et al., 2014) to perform cluster anal- focuses on the use of clean and renewable energy, protection ysis based on the criteria in Table 2. Because the number of of nature and species diversity, environmental protection strat- clusters is generally less than the square root of the sample egies, and engagement with communities. The ninth group is number (Vesanto & Alhoniemi, 2000), we take the integer involved in many industries, but the main one is the energy part of 209 as the number of clusters. The companies are industry. The main criteria are to reduce water pollution and classified into 14 groups. See Table 3 for details. waste, improve water use efficiency, and dispose of waste In Table 3, the first column is the 14 groups that were (Shao et al., 2017). The tenth group is mainly the insurance classified; the second column includes the names of each industry and also includes energy, electricity, mining, and company in different groups; the third column contains the automobile machinery manufacturing industries. The com- criteria of the green innovation practices corresponding to mon criteria of such companies are waste recycling and the the companies in each group. Here, only the criteria with protection of natural and biological diversity. The eleventh the highest frequency are listed as the representative group is mainly engaged in steel automobile manufacturing criteria. and the construction industry. This group pays more attention Zhang et al. 7 Table 2. The Dimensions and Criteria of Green Innovation Practices. Dimensions Criteria Green technology (D1) Clean production technology (C1) Resource saving technology (C2) Waste recycling technology (C3) Green information and communication technology (C4) Energy-saving technology (C5) Materials (D2) Develop and use clean materials (C6) Chemical control (C7) Reduce material use (C8) Energy (D3) Improve energy efficiency (C9) Use clean renewable energy (C10) Search for new energy (C11) Energy-saving reform (C12) Water (D4) Reduce water waste (C13) Reduce water pollution (C14) Improve water use efficiency (C15) Environmental management system (D5) Environmental strategy (C16) Environmental goals (C17) Green patents (C18) Monitoring and evaluation system (C19) Environmental regulation (C20) Provide training courses (C21) Green data center (C22) Cooperation (D6) Cooperate with suppliers (C23) Participate in green organization (C24) Cooperate with peers (C25) Cooperate with universities and research institutions (C26) Waste (D7) Waste recycling (C27) Waste disposal (C28) Product (D8) Product recovery (C29) Green design of products (C30) Green finance (D9) Green financial bonds (C31) Green-credit policy (C32) Green office (D10) Save paper (C33) Telecommuting (C34) Facilitate green transformation (C35) Supply chain (D11) Control producing area (C36) Green sales chain (C37) Green warehouse (C38) Transportation improvement (C39) Green activities (D12) Engage with communities (C40) Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Green innovation programs (C42) Environmental activities (C43) to green technology, including clean production technology, are divided into several types, including energy, finance, medi- energy-saving and emission-reduction technologies, and low- cine, food, information technology, and manufacturing. The carbon technologies (Masso & Vahter, 2008). There are criteria in this group are to reduce water pollution and waste, numerous green innovation projects in such companies. The improve water use efficiency, use clean renewable energy, companies in the twelfth group are in different types of indus- reduce the use of raw materials, and protect nature and biodi- tries. The criteria include training courses, the use of cleaning versity. The fourteenth group is mainly petrochemical and materials, chemical control, and green product design. There machinery manufacturing, focusing on green product design, are a large number of companies in the thirteenth group. They the control of chemicals, and green innovation projects. 8 SAGE Open Table 3. Company Clustering and Corresponding Criteria of Green Innovation Practices. Group Companies Criteria 1 Continental AG; Lowes; Morgan Stanley; Noble Group; Sysco; United Cooperate with universities and research Technologies Corporation; Vodafone Group institutions (C26) Green data center (C22) Engage with communities (C40) Transportation improvement (C39) 2 Allstate; China Electronics Corporation; China Aerospace Science and Cooperate with suppliers (C23) Technology Corporation; Compass Group; China Pacific Insurance; Save paper (C33) HSBC Holdings; JPMorgan Chase & Co; MITSUI & Co., Ltd.; Mitsubishi Use clean renewable energy (C10) Chemical Holdings; NEC Corporation; Phoenix_Pharmahandel; Schneider Electric; Zurich Insurance Group 3 China Vanke Co., Ltd.; China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co., Green patents (C18) Ltd.; Rosneft Oil; Shenhua Group Green innovation programs (C42) 4 China Merchants Bank; Industrial Bank; Samsung Electronics; Shanxi Environmental activities (C43) Yanchang Petroleum Environmental goals (C17) Energy-saving technology (C5) Green-credit policy (C32) 5 Aviation Industry Corporation of China; China Metallurgical Corporation Waste disposal (C28) Group; China COSCO shipping group; State Grid; Zhejiang Materials Energy-saving reform (C12) Industry Group Corporation Search for new energy (C11) Energy-saving technology (C5) 6 Allianz SE; Credit Suisse Group AG; Emerson Electric; General Motors Improve energy efficiency (C9) Corporation; Magna International Inc.; National Australia Bank Ltd.; Use clean renewable energy (C10) Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; Total Environmental strategy (C16) 7 Deutsche Telekom AG; Idemitsu Kosan; Orange Group; Raytheon Green information and communication Company; Soft Bank; Suncor Energy; Scottish Southern Energy; technology (C4) Standard Chartered Bank; TJX Group; Unipol Group Green data center (C22) Engage with communities (C40) Improve water use efficiency (C15) 8 Aegon; Aviva plc; Chubu Electric Power Company; CHS Group; EDF Use clean renewable energy (C10) Group; Metro AG; Marubeni Corporation; Mitsubishi Corporation; Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Medipal Holdings; Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings; SK Grouo; Environmental strategy (C16) Time Warner Inc; Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company Engage with communities (C40) 9 Airbus Group N.V.; Air France; Anthem Group; BHP Billiton Ltd.; BAE Reduce water waste (C13) Systems plc; Bunge Limited; Comcast Corporation; Cigna Insurance Improve water use efficiency (C15) Group; CVS Health Group; Danone; Eni energy company; Gazprom; Waste disposal (C28) Goldman Sachs; Holland Royal shell oil company; Halliburton Reduce water pollution (C14) Company; International Paper; Indian Oil Corporation; Inditex Group; Johnson&Johnson; Johnson Controls, Inc.; Louis Dreyfus; Lyondell Basell Industries; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Petronas; Pfizer,NYSE: PFE; Ray Pschorr company; Robert Bosch Group; Sodexo; Thyssenkrupp; Talanx Group; TIAA-CREF; Wesfarmers Limited; ZF Friedrichshafen AG 10 Auchan; China Huadian Corporation; Datong Coal Mine Group Co., Ltd., Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Japan Post Holdings Co., Ltd.; Jiangxi Copper Corp; JX Holdings; Japan Waste recycling (C27) Mizuho Financial Group; MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings; Munich Re Group; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.; Michelin; National Grid; Petroleos Mexicanos; Panasonic; Power Construction Corporation of China; SINOCHEM GROUP; Tata Motors; Vinci Group; Walgreens Boots Alliance 11 China Railway Construction Corporation Co., ltd; China National Clean production technology (C1) Machinery Industry Corporation; China United Network Energy-saving technology (C5) Communications Limited; Ford Motor Company; HeSteel Group; Green innovation programs (C42) Jizhong Energy Group; Shougang Group Resource saving technology (C2) 12 Hyundai Heavy Industries; Lufthansa; Microsoft Corporation; Pepsico; Provide training courses (C21) Sanpaolo IMI; Trafigura Beheer BV; Toshiba Corporation Develop and use clean materials (C6) Chemical control (C7) Green design of products (C30) (continued) Zhang et al. 9 Table 3. (continued) Group Companies Criteria 13 Amgen; Alcoa; ACS; ABInbev; Aisin Seiki; Aetna; Arcelor Mittal; ANZ Improve water use efficiency (C15) Bank; Asea Brown Boveri; Bouygues; Bayer; BP Amoco; Bharat Reduce water waste (C13) Petroleum; Cardinal Health Group; CK Hutchison Holdings; Coca- Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Cola; Companhia Vale do Rio Doce; CRH Group; China Minmetals Use clean renewable energy (C10) Corporation; Canon; Cisco Systems; Conoco Phillips; DuPont; Enel; Reduce water pollution (C14) EXOR Group; East Japan Railway Company; Enbridge Group; Fujitsu; Reduce material use (C8) Gilead Sciences Group; Glaxo Smith Kline; Groupe BPCE; Gas Natural Fenosa; Henri Nestle; Heineken Holding; Kroger; IBM Corporation; Kansai Electric Power; KOC; LG Electronics; Lockheed Martin; LG Display; Marathon Petroleum Corporation; Northrop Grumman; National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company; Nike; OAO Lukoil Holdings; OMV Group; Phillips 66 Group; Procter & Gamble; Rio Tinto Group; Roche Group; RWE Group; Royal Bank of Canada; Veolia Environnement Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Ltd.; Reliance Industries; Siemens; Saudi Basic Industry Corporation; Scotia bank; Sanofi; Sumitomo Electric Industries; Toronto-Dominion Bank; TUI Group; ITOCHU Corporation; TSMC; The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company; Telstra; Unilever; United Continental Holdings; Wm Morrison Supermarkets; Wilmar International 14 Boeing; China National Chemical Corporation; Dow Chemical Company; Green design of products (C30) General Electric Company; Hanwha Group; PKN Orlen; Zhejiang Geely Chemical control (C7) Holdings Green innovation programs (C42) In addition to intragroup analysis, an intergroup analysis groups and propose corresponding measures, as shown in is also needed. First, the thirteenth group contains 71 compa- Table 4. nies, accounting for one third of the total number of clusters, From Table 4, for those companies exploring or intending indicating that the corresponding criteria of this group are the to carry out green innovation, they can locate themselves into common concern of most companies when performing green their own industry and make their own green innovation and innovation. In addition, there are three criteria, including development path by referring to the corresponding green energy-saving technology, engaging with communities and innovation measures. For instance, companies in the energy green innovation programs, which also appear in three industry can implement green innovation by actively develop- groups; the companies are highly concerned with these three ing green innovation programs, applying green patents and criteria. At the same time, the frequency of criteria related to improving water use efficiency. The retail and material supply water resources and energy exceeded a value of 7 in all 14 industry can carry out green innovation through energy-saving groups, reflecting the importance of water resources and reform, improving the transportation mode, establishing a energy in green innovation practice (Gao et al., 2020). green data center, engaging with communities, and so on. In Second, there are some criteria that only appear in one group, addition, the industry generally pays attention to water conser- which reflects the particular characteristics of the companies vation and the protection of nature and species diversity and in this group. For example, the second group focuses on reflects the social responsibility of the companies and actively cooperation with suppliers and green offices, the companies generates a good image of consciousness in the process of in the third group have more green patents, the fourth group green innovation. In addition, some companies of an industry of companies focuses on carrying out a series of environ- are distributed discretely, or the number in a group is small; mental activities and is good at setting goals, and the elev- they cannot present a certain trend, such as the communication enth group is primarily concerned with green technology industry, mineral industry, and entertainment industry, so we (Fujii & Managi, 2019). The above analysis shows that there do not give a unified proposal for these types of companies, are similar green innovation practices between different but we can search for similar business companies as references groups, and there are also differences according to their own in the relevant industry. actual situations. In summary, the research result reveals similarities and Theoretical and Managerial differences in the green innovation practices. Furthermore, Implications to provide valuable reference for companies’ decision-mak- ing of green innovation practices, we summarize six catego- First, we enrich the research on the criteria framework for ries of industries with obvious characteristics in the above green innovation practices. Such a criteria framework is 10 SAGE Open Table 4. Green Innovation Measures for Companies. Category Industry Measures 1 Energy-related industries Carry out green innovation programs, apply for green patents; conserve water, improve the utilization of water resources; address waste and focus on the protection of natural and biological diversity 2 Finance-related industries Implement green offices, save paper; use clean renewable energy, and develop an environmental strategy; focus on waste recycling as well as the protection of nature and biodiversity 3 Diet and pharmaceutical industries Cooperate with suppliers; conserve water and increase water use efficiency; use clean renewable energy and recycle waste materials; protect nature and biodiversity 4 Machinery manufacturing industries Conserve water, increase water use efficiency; carry out green innovation programs and develop or introduce various green technologies; pay attention to the disposal of waste and protect the diversity of nature and biology 5 Electronic information and high-tech Use clean renewable energy; conserve water and increase water use industries efficiency; cooperate with suppliers and implement green offices; protect the diversity of nature and biology 6 Retail and material supply industries Engage with communities; establish a green data center; carry out energy- saving reform; improve the transportation mode basic and important for the study of influencing factors or Finally, there are also important managerial implications evaluations. Researchers in the field of green innovation according to the research results. By exploring the green mostly focus on research on driving factors and influential innovation practices of companies in different industries, we mechanisms, among other factors, whereas the systematic propose suitable measures for green innovation. Other com- and holistic criteria are lacking (H. J. Chen, 2012). In this panies can refer to these measures to improve the efficiency study, we not only consider the common dimensions such as of green innovation. According to the criteria of green inno- “Green technology,” “Energy,” and “Materials” but also cer- vation practices, companies with high correlation are clus- tain distinctive dimensions such as “Cooperation” and tered into 14 groups. Each group of companies places special “Green finance” to determine corresponding criteria. This attention on the aspect of green innovation. It can be seen that new criteria system offers comprehensive insight for the different green innovation practices of companies are based green innovation practices of companies. on their own different business characteristics and business Second, we enrich the methodology of green innovation. modes. For example, in the first group, there are many com- Specifically, we integrate the methods of literature research panies in the retail and material supply industry, which are and content analysis. The dimensions of green innovation keen on energy conservation and improvement of transporta- practices are taken from the existing literature. Based on tion modes, as well as engagement with communities. The these dimensions, the criteria are obtained from data of companies in the third group are mainly in the energy indus- Fortune 500 companies by using content analysis. For try, which concerns green patents and green innovation pro- instance, the corresponding criteria of the dimension “green grams. There are more companies in the financial sector in technology” are energy-saving technology, clean production the eighth group. The use of clean renewable energy and the technology, resource conservation technology, waste recy- formulation of environmental strategies are the key strategies cling technology, and green information and communication for these companies. The eleventh group contains mainly iron technology. The corresponding criteria of the dimension and steel industries and automobile manufacturing compa- “cooperation” are cooperation with suppliers, participation nies. Green innovation practices focus on green technologies, in green organizations, cooperation with peers, and coopera- including clean production technology, energy-saving tech- tion with universities and research institutions. The data nology, and resource saving technology. released by the official websites of companies are scattered At the end of this study, we summarize these groups as six and numerous, so it is difficult to apply a homogeneous industries according to industry characteristics, propose suit- approach to utilize these data (Chan et al., 2016). Through able green innovation measures for each industry, and then the integration of literature research and content analysis, the provide more direct reference to other companies. research results of previous scholars can be included; in Specifically, the energy industry can actively carry out green addition, valuable information contained in a large amount innovation programs, apply for green patents, and focus on of company data can be mined, which greatly improves the the disposal of waste. For the financial industry, the develop- credibility and reference value of the research. ment of specific environmental strategies and green offices is Zhang et al. 11 necessary. The diet and pharmaceutical industry is recom- data obtained in this study only cover Chinese and English mended to work with suppliers to reduce the consumption of languages. Some of the company data published in other lan- raw materials. The mechanical manufacturing industry guages are not analyzed. In the future, we can attempt to should improve the importance of green technology, whereas obtain data from other third-party platforms and involve some electronic information and high-tech industries should more samples with different languages. focus on the use of clean energy. The relevant companies in the retail and material supply industry can try to improve the Declaration of Conflicting Interests mode of transportation by rationally optimizing the route and The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect distributing transportation tools. Other companies can also to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. look for industries with similar types and learn from the cor- responding green innovation measures to improve the effi- Funding ciency of green innovation. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by Key Program of National Natural Science Conclusion Foundation of China (71632004), National Natural Science With the rapid growth of the economy, the environment is Foundation (71962027 and 71702021), China Postdoctoral Science deteriorating daily. 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Exploring Green Innovation Practices: Content Analysis of the Fortune Global 500 Companies:

SAGE Open , Volume 10 (1): 1 – Mar 23, 2020

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Abstract

Green innovation has been attracting increasing attention due to its contributions to the conservation of resources and environmental protection. However, in the process of exploring green innovation, the allocation of resources and the direction of innovation are often inaccurate, which leads to a low efficiency of green innovation. If we can learn the green innovation practices from successful companies, we can certainly provide reference strategies for those companies that are exploring green innovation. Therefore, taking the Fortune Global 500 companies as the analysis object, this research develops the criteria of green innovation practices and conducts a cluster analysis of these companies by using a content analysis method. Finally, this article summarizes the green innovation practices of the six types of industries and provides corresponding countermeasures and suggestions, which provide a strong reference for relevant companies to carry out green innovation. Keywords green innovation, content analysis, cluster analysis, global top 500 companies Green innovation has also become the focus of academic Introduction research. Studies have indicated that green innovation intro- With the rapid development of the economy, environmental duces the ecological idea into the development process to problems have become increasingly prominent. eliminate or reduce the harm caused to the environment Environmental pollution and degradation have become (Gunasekaran & Spalanzani, 2012). In addition, organiza- global problems. Environmental problems, such as global tions with green innovation ability can use green resources warming, ozone depletion, smog, and water pollution, have and gain the ability to respond to customer needs quickly and largely affected economic development and social progress appropriately so as to gain competitive advantage (Albort- for the next generations. With the increase in the number of Morant et al., 2018). Some researchers pay greater attention people and the consumption of resource-based companies, to the study of the influencing factors of green innovation, coal, oil, natural gas, and other nonrenewable energy sources such as policies and regulations (Stucki et al., 2018), quality are gradually decreasing or even being depleted. The use of management (D. Li et al., 2018), and the impact of green these nonclean energy sources exacerbates the deterioration innovation on the economic and social performances of com- of the environment. Firms that do not increase their environ- panies (El-Kassar & Singh, 2019; Q. H. Li, 2014), as well as mental sensitivity will face the risk of losing their upside specific practices, such as green technology innovation (Liu opportunities in a market shaped by environmental factors et al., 2017), green design of products (Hashemi et al., 2015; (Esty & Winston, 2006). Thus, firms have begun to pay more W. Y. Li et al., 2016), and the disposal of waste (Y. S. Chen attention to the impact of their decision-making and manage- ment behaviors on the environment and to promote green Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, China innovation (Cui, 2017; Safari et al., 2018). Some firms focus Renmin University of China, Beijing, China on the green design of products, some focus on raw materials Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, China and clean energy, and others are interested in the innovation 4 University of Nottingham, UK of production processes. Corresponding Author: However, for most firms, green innovation practices are Li Cui, School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, No. 2 Dagong still in the primary stage of exploration. These companies Road, New District of Liaodong Bay, Panjin 124221, China. urgently require relevant theoretical research as a guide. Email: cuili@dlut.edu.cn Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open et al., 2006). However, due to the different characteristics of following terms still exist: ecological innovation, environment the industry and the firm itself, such as business form and innovation, and sustainable innovation. The former two terms resource situation, it is difficult to apply these research con- and green innovation are synonyms, while the concept of the clusions to provide reference models for green innovation for latter is extended to the social level (Schiederig et al., 2012). firms, especially emerging firms, to follow. If we can grasp Because of the different disciplines, academic opinions, and the green innovation practices of some companies, especially preferences of researchers, there is still some argument about representative firms, the firms exploring green innovation the expression and understanding of the concept of “green channels can obtain useful experience to optimize the utiliza- innovation.” Blättel-Mink (1998) noted that green innovation tion of resources, which has significant practical meaning. introduces ecological ideas into the development of new prod- For this purpose, we have two questions to answer. One is ucts, markets and systems, or even economic strategies. Beise how do we identify the criteria of green innovation practices? and Rennings (2005) proposed that green innovation is a series Two is how do we deeply analyze these practices? In the of applications in newly developed or improved processes existing studies about green innovation practices, the criteria about technologies, practices, systems, and products. The pur- are obtained mainly from the literature (Cui et al., 2019; pose is to avoid or reduce environmental hazards. Kemp and Tseng et al., 2013) and may be somewhat inconsistent with Pearson (2007) defined green innovation as the production, the actual situation of the companies’ practices of green inno- assimilation, or exploitation of a product, production process, vation. In addition, most of the state-of-the-art knowledge service, or management method that is novel to the organiza- about green innovation comes from an organization’s case tions developing or adopting them. This method runs through study of environmental issues in management and response the whole life cycle of the product and reduces environmental (Mele & Russo-Spena, 2015); a small amount of research risks, pollution, and other negative effects on the utilization of used a one-time survey, but quantitative research with large resources. Halila and Rundquist (2011) indicated that green samples is seriously lacking (Zhang, 2012). Therefore, to innovation is a general term for a series of innovative activities. answer these questions and further enrich the theoretical It helps improve the quality of the ecological environment and research of green innovation, this article takes the top 500 contributes to sustainable development. Through comprehen- global companies as the research objects and their relevant sive comparison of these concepts, different scholars have data of green innovation practices as the sample, uses a con- formed a consensus of ideas on the definition of green innova- tent analysis method to obtain criteria, and then clusters and tion, including the following: (a) the whole life cycle of prod- analyzes the green innovation practices of companies. ucts; (b) innovative objects are products, processes, services The main contributions of this research are as follows: and methods; and (c) the purpose of innovation is to reduce or First, we develop criteria of green innovation practices by eliminate the impact on the environment. combining the literature with content analysis, which The academic research on green innovation is increas- enriches the criteria framework of green innovation. Second, ingly deepening. Studies on how to reduce the negative we conduct cluster analysis for green innovation practices of impact on the environment began in the early 1990s the top 500 global companies. On one hand, large sample (Schiederig et al., 2012). As early as 1997, some scholars research on green innovation is further enriched; on the other noted that the improvement of the environment needs to be hand, the results have a strong reference value for the practi- integrated into all aspects of business. They studied how to tioners of green innovation. The remainder of this study is carry out green innovation from raw materials to reduce organized as follows. “Literature Review” section is the lit- environmental hazards in the clothing industry (Chouinard & erature review. “Research Method” section describes the Brown, 1997). In addition, many scholars have focused on research method. “Application Illustration” section is an the practice of internal and external green supply chains (Zhu application illustration. “Theoretical and Managerial et al., 2013) as well as green innovative technologies such as Implications” section discusses the theoretical and manage- energy-saving technology and sewage treatment technology rial implications. The last part includes the conclusion and (Costantini et al., 2016; Ociepa-Kubicka & Pachura, 2017). limitation of the study. The ideas of these researchers reflect the green innovation characteristics of different companies. They also indicate that there are some differences between different companies Literature Review in selecting a green innovation strategy. However, few stud- This section provides a comprehensive review of the litera- ies explore these different characteristics at present. ture on green innovation practices and content analysis. The characteristics of green innovation in companies are the concentrated reflection of enterprise green innovation strategy. If these characteristics are grasped and summarized, Green Innovation Practices firms in different industries with different characteristics can “Green innovation” is a hot topic that has attracted much atten- refer to the corresponding green ideas to implement green tion in recent years. When scholars describe innovation that is innovation practices; save time, resources, and capital; and helpful in reducing the impact on the natural environment, the improve the efficiency of green innovation. However, Zhang et al. 3 through the research presented in the literature, we find that found that green process innovation has a positive impact on the current research is mostly based on case analysis or small green product innovation. In short, content analysis is an sample surveys. The research contents are mainly focused on effective method to objectively and systematically describe the influential factors of green innovation, the dynamic or analyze the relevant content of research topics. mechanism, and the utility evaluation. There are few studies By reviewing the relevant literature of content analysis, it on green innovation characteristics, and the representation can be seen that this method can analyze the change of atten- and reference value are not strong. Thus, companies have tion by determining the frequency of vocabulary and can difficulty in finding their own position and have to learn and explore the potential association of content by mining the draw experience from current studies. To better reflect the common appearance of keywords to explore features, trends, overall characteristics of green innovation and improve fea- and cognition (Duriau et al., 2007). Therefore, the use of sibility and operability, research on green innovation for content analysis to analyze green firm data and explore green large sample company data is necessary. The data mining innovation practices has strong applicability. However, method can obtain potential valuable information from a although content analysis has been widely used in manage- large number of complex data, so it can meet the demand of rial research, few studies use content analysis to explore the large sample data research. practice of green innovation in firms, which leads to the lack of theoretical guidance in the process of seeking green inno- vation practice. To explore the green innovation laws of dif- Content Analysis ferent industry firms and to determine the overall As a commonly used analytical method in the research of characteristics of green innovation practice, this article ana- social sciences, content analysis is a technique of gathering lyzes the specific measures of green innovation adopted by and organizing diverse data, involving coding information Fortune Global 500 companies using the content analysis into various groups or categories based on selected criteria method, summarizes the internal links and the differences (Soldatenko & Backer, 2019). By examining and interpreting between them, and provides valuable and feasible sugges- the particular body of research systematically, content analy- tions for other firms to develop green innovation practices. sis is able to identify its themes, patterns, and limitations and then provide new insights into the essential ideas and further Research Method guide practical actions (Hagen, 2018). Content analysis can be seen as a phase of information processing, which can vari- This section mainly elaborates the procedures of using con- ously use qualitative and quantitative research techniques to tent analysis to study the green innovation practices of com- clearly analyze the text content of relevant topics (Miah panies. First, we obtain the dimensions/themes of green et al., 2017). In general terms, a high-quality content analysis innovation practices from the literature (see Table 1). Second, can provide a replicable methodology for future studies, we collect the related data of the top 500 global companies especially when publications include a wider description of and obtain the criteria according to the dimensions. Then, criteria used to conduct the research (Camprubí & Coromina, cluster analysis is conducted to classify the companies. 2016). In addition, content analysis has great analytical flex- Finally, the analysis of green innovation practices for compa- ibility, and scholars often used it to analyze the essential facts nies in different groups is conducted. The detailed proce- or related trends of some research contents (Duriau et al., dures are as follows. 2007; Liao, 2018). Due to the versatility of content analysis, its application is Step 1: Determine the Dimensions considerably extensive (Camprubí & Coromina, 2016). On of Green Innovation Practices one hand, it can be used to induce or deduce realities (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Moldavska and Welo (2017) selected an The dimensions of green innovation practices are obtained inductive content analysis method to analyze the definitions from the literature. The literature research method is not lim- of sustainable manufacturing published from 1990 to 2016 in ited by time and space. We can summarize and draw lessons a variety of academic journals to identify the current under- from previous research results. Through collecting, sorting, standing of what researchers mean by the concept. On the and reading relevant literature on corporate green innova- other hand, it can use qualitative or quantitative approaches tion, the important dimensions reflecting the research con- to carry out different levels of analysis, such as assessing tent are determined. The details of the dimensions are shown changes or detecting trends and exploring the relationship in Table 1. between variables (Kondracki et al., 2002; Liao, 2018). Soldatenko and Backer (2019) conducted content analysis of Step 2: Extract the Criteria of Green previous studies on cross-cultural tourist motivation com- Innovation Practices parison to reveal gaps in the literature and to indicate future research trends. Xie et al. (2019) adopted the content analy- Based on the dimensions, the corresponding criteria are sis method to capture the data of listed firms in China and obtained from the green innovation data of companies by 4 SAGE Open Table 1. Dimensions and Corresponding References of Green Innovation Practices. Dimensions References Green technology (D1) Nieminen et al. (2007); Liu et al. (2017) Materials (D2) Chouinard and Brown (1997); Y. S. Chen et al. (2006); Hashemi et al. (2015) Energy (D3) Yi (2013); Yuan et al. (2017) Water (D4) Willard (2005) Environmental management system (D5) Winter and Lasch (2016) Cooperation (D6) J. Wang (2010) Waste (D7) Willard (2005); Y. S. Chen et al. (2006) Product (D8) Willard (2005); Hashemi et al. (2015); W. Y. Li et al. (2016) Green finance (D9) Bal et al. (2013) Green office (D10) Gou et al. (2012) Supply chain (D11) Laari et al. (2017); Aziz et al. (2016); Knez et al. (2011); Mina et al. (2014) Green activities (D12) Axon (2016); D. Li et al. (2017) using word frequency statistics. There are three substeps: 2015 to 2017, so we use the latest published reports to obtain research object screening, data acquisition, and data data. For the companies without reports, we use “environ- encoding. ment,” “sustainability,” and “green innovation” as keywords (Chinese website with the corresponding Chinese vocabu- Substep 1: Select the research object. As the global top 500 lary as keywords) to collect materials related to the research companies as research objects come from all over the world, content. there are great differences in language, mode, and other aspects, which is inconvenient when obtaining the research Substep 3: Code data. This study uses NVivo10 software to data. At the same time, there are also differences in time and encode and analyze the company data. NVivo10 can address the expression of green innovation data published by differ- many types of content, summarize a large number of scat- ent companies. Therefore, it is necessary to select the tered data related to the research topic, and mine hidden research object according to certain rules. To ensure the information so that researchers can quickly capture the infor- smooth development of the research, the selection conditions mation in the data. In addition, the exploration function of are as follows: NVivo10 can help researchers perform correlation analysis and clustering analysis, which are needed in this study. The a. The company has its own website and allows access nodes in different levels encoded by NVivo have subordinate through the researcher’s network environment; relationships. According to the purpose of this study, the b. The content of the company’s official website is pre- company data are imported into software for coding with the sented in Chinese or English; dimensions as the first-level nodes. We adopt the method of c. The company’s official website has separate modules, manual coding and automatic coding to obtain the second- such as “CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility),” “sus- level nodes as the criteria of green innovation practices. The tainable development,” “green,” and “sustainability.” coding process mainly includes open coding and axial coding. Substep 2: Extract data. The main source of data is the com- pany report published on the website, including annual Open coding. Open coding belongs to the stage of mean- reports, sustainable development reports, and social respon- ing formation. In this stage, manual coding is adopted. While sibility reports. The annual report is a comprehensive sum- browsing each company’s information, we select a part of mary reflecting the development of the company. Sustainable the information with practical meaning and use the core key- development reports include the actions of managing and words or phrases in this part as the criteria. The reference improving economic, environmental, and social perfor- points with the same meaning are integrated into the same mances by companies, the results of these actions, and future criterion. At this stage, multiple indicators are allowed to improvements (Zhong & Gan, 2006). The content of social encode the same part of the information. responsibility reports usually involves various aspects of economic responsibility, environmental responsibility, and Axial coding. Axial coding belongs to the stage of con- social responsibility (Xu & Xu, 2011). The green develop- cept formation. The criteria that have been formed are fur- ment strategy we focus on is the important part of the com- ther inducted and generalized. The criteria with the same or pany reports. Due to the different published time of the similar meaning are merged. After all the criteria are deter- reports belonging to different companies, the time range is mined, the remaining company data are encoded in the form Zhang et al. 5 of automatic coding, and the corresponding coding matrix are more likely to take environmental actions initiatively, is formed to facilitate the verification of the automatic cod- such as green innovation, than smaller ones (Darnall et al., ing and improve the accuracy and credibility of the coding. 2010). Larger companies also have greater social influence Because the data cannot be encoded, we create a memo link and can satisfy the stakeholders’ demands for more aggres- for them. sive environmental measures (Etzion, 2007). Second, the top 500 global companies involved in all walks of life in many Step 3: Cluster companies according to the criteria of green inno- countries can reflect the green innovation characteristics of vation practices. After encoding, we use NVivo10 software companies in different industries, so the research results to perform correlation analysis and cluster analysis based on have a more extensive application value. the criteria of green innovation practices. Correlation analy- sis is used to quantify the degree of correlation between vari- Determination of Dimensions and Criteria ables by introducing certain statistical criteria. This helps us to predict and analyze the regularity of the relationships First, we select 12 dimensions from the literature. The details between things or phenomena (Liang et al., 2016). Cluster are as follows. analysis classifies the data samples according to the similar- Clean technology (D1) is a sustainable technology that ity or dissimilarity of the pattern features so that the data in can minimize the use of natural resources in the production the same set are as similar as possible, and the data between process and achieve zero emissions (Nieminen et al., 2007). different groups are different as much as possible (M. Wang, In small and medium companies, the promotion of clean 2008; J. Wang, 2010). Through the cluster analysis, we can technology is highly valued by stakeholders (Liu et al., discover the similarities and differences between the research 2017). Starting with raw materials (D2), exploring how to objects. These similarities and differences can reflect the reduce the impact on the environment from the early stages characteristics of the research objects clearly. In this study, of the product life cycle is also an important aspect of corpo- the Pearson correlation coefficient of NVivo software is used rate green innovation (Y. S. Chen et al., 2006; Chouinard & to analyze the material source. On the basis of correlation Brown, 1997; Hashemi et al., 2015). In addition, the energy analysis, cluster analysis for the companies is completed (D3) problem has also been emphasized by the state and according to the similarity of criteria coding. company. The U.S. national and local governments actively promote the use of renewable energy and focus on improving Step 4: Analyze the green innovation practices of compa- energy efficiency (Yi, 2013). Companies should not only pay nies. According to the clustering results of companies, the attention to energy issues but also the saving and recycling of green innovation practices of companies in the same group water resources (D4) (Willard, 2005). To promote green as well as between the groups are analyzed by the compara- development, some companies try to build an environmental tive analysis method. management system (D5) (Winter & Lasch, 2016) and some focus on cooperation (D6) with scientific research institu- tions and suppliers (Irena, 2015). The disposal of waste (D7) Application Illustration (Y. S. Chen et al., 2006; Willard, 2005) and the green design of products (D8) are also challenges for many companies in Data Sources the process of green innovation (Hashemi et al., 2015; W. Y. The “Fortune” global top 500 list is the most famous and Li et al., 2016; Willard, 2005). The development of green authoritative list used to measure the world’s largest compa- finance (D9) has become an important factor for banks and nies, known as the “ultimate list,” and is published by the other financial companies to improve their competitiveness “Fortune” magazine once a year. The list ranking is mainly (Bal et al., 2013). Promotion of a green office (D10) (Gou based on sale revenue. The scale of the company is also con- et al., 2012) and green supply chain (D11) management can sidered. The research objects of this study are the top 500 result in competitive advantages for companies (Aziz et al., global companies published by fortune Chinese websites on 2016; Knez et al., 2011; Laari et al., 2017; Mina et al., 2014). July 20, 2016. These companies come from more than 30 In addition, carrying out various green activities (D12) countries, of which 134 are in the United States, 110 in (Axon, 2016; W. Y. Li et al., 2016) can enhance firms’ green China, and 52 in Japan. Their numbers rank in the top three development level. The dimensions of green innovation on the list. In addition, the companies cover all walks of life, practices of companies are shown in Table 1. of which the real estate industry, finance and insurance Then, according to the selection rules in “Research industry, energy industry, and communication industry are Method” section, we finally obtain 284 available data points the major industries. The reasons for choosing the top 500 from the top 500 global companies, including 202 English global companies are as follows. First, through the selection and 82 Chinese data points for encoding. To ensure consis- criteria of the top 500 global companies, the companies in tency in data formats, all Chinese data are translated into the the list are the strongest companies in the world, with rela- corresponding English data. Then, we randomly select some tively high sales revenue and large scales. Larger companies data from the 284 company data to encode manually based 6 SAGE Open on primary indicators. When 132 company data are encoded, Analysis of Green Innovation Practices the secondary indicators formed by axial encoding have As shown in Table 3, the first group of companies is involved already been well identified by the software and can meet the in the supply of raw materials, sales, transportation, communi- demand of automatic coding afterward. Examples of manual cations, and finance industries, which are most concerned coding are as follows: about cooperation with universities and research institutions, The following data from Apple’s official website are used followed by the establishment of green data centers, combined as an example to introduce the encoding process: with the community and improvement of the mode of trans- port. The second group mainly contains financial companies Partnering with suppliers for clean energy. The electricity we but also includes electronic information technology, infra- use in our supply chain to process raw materials, make parts, and structure, and so on; this group pays more attention to coop- assemble our products is the single biggest source of our carbon footprint. So in 2015, we created a program to help our partners eration with suppliers and the use of clean renewable energy around the world reduce their energy use, power their facilities (Kim & Park, 2018). In addition, the frequency of saving with clean energy, and build high-quality renewable energy paper is also high, showing the companies in this group pro- projects. mote green offices. The companies in the third group are mainly the energy industry. The key criteria are green patents 1. Energy ——— “power their facilities with clean and green innovation projects, indicating that such companies energy,” “build high-quality renewable energy projects.” tend to start with the knowledge level in the process of green — Use clean renewable energy innovation. The fourth group, including Samsung Electronics, 2. Cooperation ——— “partnering with suppliers.” — Yanchang Petroleum, and the two major banks, attaches Cooperate with suppliers importance to environmental protection activities, establishes environmental protection targets, and uses energy-saving tech- First, according to the keywords “energy” and “partnering nologies. In addition, a green credit policy is an important cri- with,” we determine that this paragraph is related to the terion for the banking sector (Chang et al., 2019). Companies “Energy” and “Cooperation” of the dimensions. Then, the in the fifth group are all from China, involving equipment specific content “power their facilities with clean energy” manufacturing, transportation, and power. The concerned cri- and “build high-quality renewable energy projects” about teria are waste disposal, energy conservation reform, new “Energy” is encoded as the corresponding criterion “Use energy, and energy conservation technology development. lean renewable energy,” and “Partnering with suppliers” These companies pay more attention to the energy problem. In about “Cooperation” is encoded as the corresponding sec- the sixth group, the financial industry predominates; this group ondary criterion “Cooperate with suppliers.” In the same also includes automotive manufacturing and energy. The most way, a total of 43 criteria are obtained that meet the needs of concerned criteria of green innovation practices are the the research and have a hierarchical relationship with the improvement of energy efficiency, use of clean and renewable dimensions; see Table 2. energy, and the formulation of environmental protection strat- egies. The seventh group’s companies include communica- tions, finance, energy, and retail industries. The criteria of Company Clustering these companies are green information and communication In this section, we use the “explore” function of NVivo10 technology, green data centers, engaging with communities, software to conduct Pearson correlation analysis of various and improvement of water use efficiency. The eighth group companies in accordance with coding similarity and then involves financial insurance, electric power, energy and chem- select the 209 companies with strong correlation (correlation ical industries, medicine and the media, and so on. This group coefficient ≥.6; J. Wang et al., 2014) to perform cluster anal- focuses on the use of clean and renewable energy, protection ysis based on the criteria in Table 2. Because the number of of nature and species diversity, environmental protection strat- clusters is generally less than the square root of the sample egies, and engagement with communities. The ninth group is number (Vesanto & Alhoniemi, 2000), we take the integer involved in many industries, but the main one is the energy part of 209 as the number of clusters. The companies are industry. The main criteria are to reduce water pollution and classified into 14 groups. See Table 3 for details. waste, improve water use efficiency, and dispose of waste In Table 3, the first column is the 14 groups that were (Shao et al., 2017). The tenth group is mainly the insurance classified; the second column includes the names of each industry and also includes energy, electricity, mining, and company in different groups; the third column contains the automobile machinery manufacturing industries. The com- criteria of the green innovation practices corresponding to mon criteria of such companies are waste recycling and the the companies in each group. Here, only the criteria with protection of natural and biological diversity. The eleventh the highest frequency are listed as the representative group is mainly engaged in steel automobile manufacturing criteria. and the construction industry. This group pays more attention Zhang et al. 7 Table 2. The Dimensions and Criteria of Green Innovation Practices. Dimensions Criteria Green technology (D1) Clean production technology (C1) Resource saving technology (C2) Waste recycling technology (C3) Green information and communication technology (C4) Energy-saving technology (C5) Materials (D2) Develop and use clean materials (C6) Chemical control (C7) Reduce material use (C8) Energy (D3) Improve energy efficiency (C9) Use clean renewable energy (C10) Search for new energy (C11) Energy-saving reform (C12) Water (D4) Reduce water waste (C13) Reduce water pollution (C14) Improve water use efficiency (C15) Environmental management system (D5) Environmental strategy (C16) Environmental goals (C17) Green patents (C18) Monitoring and evaluation system (C19) Environmental regulation (C20) Provide training courses (C21) Green data center (C22) Cooperation (D6) Cooperate with suppliers (C23) Participate in green organization (C24) Cooperate with peers (C25) Cooperate with universities and research institutions (C26) Waste (D7) Waste recycling (C27) Waste disposal (C28) Product (D8) Product recovery (C29) Green design of products (C30) Green finance (D9) Green financial bonds (C31) Green-credit policy (C32) Green office (D10) Save paper (C33) Telecommuting (C34) Facilitate green transformation (C35) Supply chain (D11) Control producing area (C36) Green sales chain (C37) Green warehouse (C38) Transportation improvement (C39) Green activities (D12) Engage with communities (C40) Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Green innovation programs (C42) Environmental activities (C43) to green technology, including clean production technology, are divided into several types, including energy, finance, medi- energy-saving and emission-reduction technologies, and low- cine, food, information technology, and manufacturing. The carbon technologies (Masso & Vahter, 2008). There are criteria in this group are to reduce water pollution and waste, numerous green innovation projects in such companies. The improve water use efficiency, use clean renewable energy, companies in the twelfth group are in different types of indus- reduce the use of raw materials, and protect nature and biodi- tries. The criteria include training courses, the use of cleaning versity. The fourteenth group is mainly petrochemical and materials, chemical control, and green product design. There machinery manufacturing, focusing on green product design, are a large number of companies in the thirteenth group. They the control of chemicals, and green innovation projects. 8 SAGE Open Table 3. Company Clustering and Corresponding Criteria of Green Innovation Practices. Group Companies Criteria 1 Continental AG; Lowes; Morgan Stanley; Noble Group; Sysco; United Cooperate with universities and research Technologies Corporation; Vodafone Group institutions (C26) Green data center (C22) Engage with communities (C40) Transportation improvement (C39) 2 Allstate; China Electronics Corporation; China Aerospace Science and Cooperate with suppliers (C23) Technology Corporation; Compass Group; China Pacific Insurance; Save paper (C33) HSBC Holdings; JPMorgan Chase & Co; MITSUI & Co., Ltd.; Mitsubishi Use clean renewable energy (C10) Chemical Holdings; NEC Corporation; Phoenix_Pharmahandel; Schneider Electric; Zurich Insurance Group 3 China Vanke Co., Ltd.; China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co., Green patents (C18) Ltd.; Rosneft Oil; Shenhua Group Green innovation programs (C42) 4 China Merchants Bank; Industrial Bank; Samsung Electronics; Shanxi Environmental activities (C43) Yanchang Petroleum Environmental goals (C17) Energy-saving technology (C5) Green-credit policy (C32) 5 Aviation Industry Corporation of China; China Metallurgical Corporation Waste disposal (C28) Group; China COSCO shipping group; State Grid; Zhejiang Materials Energy-saving reform (C12) Industry Group Corporation Search for new energy (C11) Energy-saving technology (C5) 6 Allianz SE; Credit Suisse Group AG; Emerson Electric; General Motors Improve energy efficiency (C9) Corporation; Magna International Inc.; National Australia Bank Ltd.; Use clean renewable energy (C10) Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; Total Environmental strategy (C16) 7 Deutsche Telekom AG; Idemitsu Kosan; Orange Group; Raytheon Green information and communication Company; Soft Bank; Suncor Energy; Scottish Southern Energy; technology (C4) Standard Chartered Bank; TJX Group; Unipol Group Green data center (C22) Engage with communities (C40) Improve water use efficiency (C15) 8 Aegon; Aviva plc; Chubu Electric Power Company; CHS Group; EDF Use clean renewable energy (C10) Group; Metro AG; Marubeni Corporation; Mitsubishi Corporation; Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Medipal Holdings; Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings; SK Grouo; Environmental strategy (C16) Time Warner Inc; Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Company Engage with communities (C40) 9 Airbus Group N.V.; Air France; Anthem Group; BHP Billiton Ltd.; BAE Reduce water waste (C13) Systems plc; Bunge Limited; Comcast Corporation; Cigna Insurance Improve water use efficiency (C15) Group; CVS Health Group; Danone; Eni energy company; Gazprom; Waste disposal (C28) Goldman Sachs; Holland Royal shell oil company; Halliburton Reduce water pollution (C14) Company; International Paper; Indian Oil Corporation; Inditex Group; Johnson&Johnson; Johnson Controls, Inc.; Louis Dreyfus; Lyondell Basell Industries; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Petronas; Pfizer,NYSE: PFE; Ray Pschorr company; Robert Bosch Group; Sodexo; Thyssenkrupp; Talanx Group; TIAA-CREF; Wesfarmers Limited; ZF Friedrichshafen AG 10 Auchan; China Huadian Corporation; Datong Coal Mine Group Co., Ltd., Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Japan Post Holdings Co., Ltd.; Jiangxi Copper Corp; JX Holdings; Japan Waste recycling (C27) Mizuho Financial Group; MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings; Munich Re Group; Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.; Michelin; National Grid; Petroleos Mexicanos; Panasonic; Power Construction Corporation of China; SINOCHEM GROUP; Tata Motors; Vinci Group; Walgreens Boots Alliance 11 China Railway Construction Corporation Co., ltd; China National Clean production technology (C1) Machinery Industry Corporation; China United Network Energy-saving technology (C5) Communications Limited; Ford Motor Company; HeSteel Group; Green innovation programs (C42) Jizhong Energy Group; Shougang Group Resource saving technology (C2) 12 Hyundai Heavy Industries; Lufthansa; Microsoft Corporation; Pepsico; Provide training courses (C21) Sanpaolo IMI; Trafigura Beheer BV; Toshiba Corporation Develop and use clean materials (C6) Chemical control (C7) Green design of products (C30) (continued) Zhang et al. 9 Table 3. (continued) Group Companies Criteria 13 Amgen; Alcoa; ACS; ABInbev; Aisin Seiki; Aetna; Arcelor Mittal; ANZ Improve water use efficiency (C15) Bank; Asea Brown Boveri; Bouygues; Bayer; BP Amoco; Bharat Reduce water waste (C13) Petroleum; Cardinal Health Group; CK Hutchison Holdings; Coca- Protect nature and species diversity (C41) Cola; Companhia Vale do Rio Doce; CRH Group; China Minmetals Use clean renewable energy (C10) Corporation; Canon; Cisco Systems; Conoco Phillips; DuPont; Enel; Reduce water pollution (C14) EXOR Group; East Japan Railway Company; Enbridge Group; Fujitsu; Reduce material use (C8) Gilead Sciences Group; Glaxo Smith Kline; Groupe BPCE; Gas Natural Fenosa; Henri Nestle; Heineken Holding; Kroger; IBM Corporation; Kansai Electric Power; KOC; LG Electronics; Lockheed Martin; LG Display; Marathon Petroleum Corporation; Northrop Grumman; National Union Life and Limb Insurance Company; Nike; OAO Lukoil Holdings; OMV Group; Phillips 66 Group; Procter & Gamble; Rio Tinto Group; Roche Group; RWE Group; Royal Bank of Canada; Veolia Environnement Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Ltd.; Reliance Industries; Siemens; Saudi Basic Industry Corporation; Scotia bank; Sanofi; Sumitomo Electric Industries; Toronto-Dominion Bank; TUI Group; ITOCHU Corporation; TSMC; The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company; Telstra; Unilever; United Continental Holdings; Wm Morrison Supermarkets; Wilmar International 14 Boeing; China National Chemical Corporation; Dow Chemical Company; Green design of products (C30) General Electric Company; Hanwha Group; PKN Orlen; Zhejiang Geely Chemical control (C7) Holdings Green innovation programs (C42) In addition to intragroup analysis, an intergroup analysis groups and propose corresponding measures, as shown in is also needed. First, the thirteenth group contains 71 compa- Table 4. nies, accounting for one third of the total number of clusters, From Table 4, for those companies exploring or intending indicating that the corresponding criteria of this group are the to carry out green innovation, they can locate themselves into common concern of most companies when performing green their own industry and make their own green innovation and innovation. In addition, there are three criteria, including development path by referring to the corresponding green energy-saving technology, engaging with communities and innovation measures. For instance, companies in the energy green innovation programs, which also appear in three industry can implement green innovation by actively develop- groups; the companies are highly concerned with these three ing green innovation programs, applying green patents and criteria. At the same time, the frequency of criteria related to improving water use efficiency. The retail and material supply water resources and energy exceeded a value of 7 in all 14 industry can carry out green innovation through energy-saving groups, reflecting the importance of water resources and reform, improving the transportation mode, establishing a energy in green innovation practice (Gao et al., 2020). green data center, engaging with communities, and so on. In Second, there are some criteria that only appear in one group, addition, the industry generally pays attention to water conser- which reflects the particular characteristics of the companies vation and the protection of nature and species diversity and in this group. For example, the second group focuses on reflects the social responsibility of the companies and actively cooperation with suppliers and green offices, the companies generates a good image of consciousness in the process of in the third group have more green patents, the fourth group green innovation. In addition, some companies of an industry of companies focuses on carrying out a series of environ- are distributed discretely, or the number in a group is small; mental activities and is good at setting goals, and the elev- they cannot present a certain trend, such as the communication enth group is primarily concerned with green technology industry, mineral industry, and entertainment industry, so we (Fujii & Managi, 2019). The above analysis shows that there do not give a unified proposal for these types of companies, are similar green innovation practices between different but we can search for similar business companies as references groups, and there are also differences according to their own in the relevant industry. actual situations. In summary, the research result reveals similarities and Theoretical and Managerial differences in the green innovation practices. Furthermore, Implications to provide valuable reference for companies’ decision-mak- ing of green innovation practices, we summarize six catego- First, we enrich the research on the criteria framework for ries of industries with obvious characteristics in the above green innovation practices. Such a criteria framework is 10 SAGE Open Table 4. Green Innovation Measures for Companies. Category Industry Measures 1 Energy-related industries Carry out green innovation programs, apply for green patents; conserve water, improve the utilization of water resources; address waste and focus on the protection of natural and biological diversity 2 Finance-related industries Implement green offices, save paper; use clean renewable energy, and develop an environmental strategy; focus on waste recycling as well as the protection of nature and biodiversity 3 Diet and pharmaceutical industries Cooperate with suppliers; conserve water and increase water use efficiency; use clean renewable energy and recycle waste materials; protect nature and biodiversity 4 Machinery manufacturing industries Conserve water, increase water use efficiency; carry out green innovation programs and develop or introduce various green technologies; pay attention to the disposal of waste and protect the diversity of nature and biology 5 Electronic information and high-tech Use clean renewable energy; conserve water and increase water use industries efficiency; cooperate with suppliers and implement green offices; protect the diversity of nature and biology 6 Retail and material supply industries Engage with communities; establish a green data center; carry out energy- saving reform; improve the transportation mode basic and important for the study of influencing factors or Finally, there are also important managerial implications evaluations. Researchers in the field of green innovation according to the research results. By exploring the green mostly focus on research on driving factors and influential innovation practices of companies in different industries, we mechanisms, among other factors, whereas the systematic propose suitable measures for green innovation. Other com- and holistic criteria are lacking (H. J. Chen, 2012). In this panies can refer to these measures to improve the efficiency study, we not only consider the common dimensions such as of green innovation. According to the criteria of green inno- “Green technology,” “Energy,” and “Materials” but also cer- vation practices, companies with high correlation are clus- tain distinctive dimensions such as “Cooperation” and tered into 14 groups. Each group of companies places special “Green finance” to determine corresponding criteria. This attention on the aspect of green innovation. It can be seen that new criteria system offers comprehensive insight for the different green innovation practices of companies are based green innovation practices of companies. on their own different business characteristics and business Second, we enrich the methodology of green innovation. modes. For example, in the first group, there are many com- Specifically, we integrate the methods of literature research panies in the retail and material supply industry, which are and content analysis. The dimensions of green innovation keen on energy conservation and improvement of transporta- practices are taken from the existing literature. Based on tion modes, as well as engagement with communities. The these dimensions, the criteria are obtained from data of companies in the third group are mainly in the energy indus- Fortune 500 companies by using content analysis. For try, which concerns green patents and green innovation pro- instance, the corresponding criteria of the dimension “green grams. There are more companies in the financial sector in technology” are energy-saving technology, clean production the eighth group. The use of clean renewable energy and the technology, resource conservation technology, waste recy- formulation of environmental strategies are the key strategies cling technology, and green information and communication for these companies. The eleventh group contains mainly iron technology. The corresponding criteria of the dimension and steel industries and automobile manufacturing compa- “cooperation” are cooperation with suppliers, participation nies. Green innovation practices focus on green technologies, in green organizations, cooperation with peers, and coopera- including clean production technology, energy-saving tech- tion with universities and research institutions. The data nology, and resource saving technology. released by the official websites of companies are scattered At the end of this study, we summarize these groups as six and numerous, so it is difficult to apply a homogeneous industries according to industry characteristics, propose suit- approach to utilize these data (Chan et al., 2016). Through able green innovation measures for each industry, and then the integration of literature research and content analysis, the provide more direct reference to other companies. research results of previous scholars can be included; in Specifically, the energy industry can actively carry out green addition, valuable information contained in a large amount innovation programs, apply for green patents, and focus on of company data can be mined, which greatly improves the the disposal of waste. For the financial industry, the develop- credibility and reference value of the research. ment of specific environmental strategies and green offices is Zhang et al. 11 necessary. The diet and pharmaceutical industry is recom- data obtained in this study only cover Chinese and English mended to work with suppliers to reduce the consumption of languages. Some of the company data published in other lan- raw materials. The mechanical manufacturing industry guages are not analyzed. In the future, we can attempt to should improve the importance of green technology, whereas obtain data from other third-party platforms and involve some electronic information and high-tech industries should more samples with different languages. focus on the use of clean energy. The relevant companies in the retail and material supply industry can try to improve the Declaration of Conflicting Interests mode of transportation by rationally optimizing the route and The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect distributing transportation tools. Other companies can also to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. look for industries with similar types and learn from the cor- responding green innovation measures to improve the effi- Funding ciency of green innovation. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by Key Program of National Natural Science Conclusion Foundation of China (71632004), National Natural Science With the rapid growth of the economy, the environment is Foundation (71962027 and 71702021), China Postdoctoral Science deteriorating daily. 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Journal

SAGE OpenSAGE

Published: Mar 23, 2020

Keywords: green innovation; content analysis; cluster analysis; global top 500 companies

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