Organizational capabilities

This chapter elaborates the environmental management in the aspect of organizational capabilities. First of all, internal integration is the decline of functional barriers and the facilitation of real-time information sharing across different organizational functions. In particular, internal environmental information integration is helpful to reinforce corporate environmental adaptability, and improve the effectiveness of business functions in response to new challenges such as changes in customer expectation and market trends. Internal integration helps firms to achieve better performance in delivery, production costs, product quality, and production flexibility. Besides, environmental innovativeness a firm’s ability to develop new environmental management practices that can facilitate the production, assembling and distribution of a product or service while reduce negative environmental impacts; hence, environmental innovativeness enables a firm to sustain business growth, raise the return on investment, and improve environmental performance. Similar to environmental innovativeness, environmental adaptability is vital for firm to effectively lower its environmental impacts. Environmental adaptability, which is referred to the degree of flexibility and responsiveness in responding to new market demands and requirements, allows firms to modify their extant products and processes and launch new products with shorter lead times to cope with the fast changing market expectations and environmental regulations. These benefits will put the firms at the advantage of first-movers which would gain larger market shares and higher investment returns.