The Impact of Green Intellectual Capital on Integrated Sustainability Performance in the Indian Auto-component Industry

Abstract

TPurpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of green intellectual capital (GIC) on integrated sustainability performance of organizations.This is done to respond to the call of Dumay and Cai (2014) for new ideas to enhance intellectual capital research (ICR) as a differentiation theory of innovation practice (Dumay et al. 2013) to coincide with the third stage of IC research (to build strong organizations)following Guthrie et al. (2013) and the fourth stage of IC research (to expand into ecosystem)following Edvinsson (2013). Scholars, thought leaders and business leaders are of the view that intellectual capital is perpetual capital to build businesses across economic cycles to strike gold by being True North. This study is undertaken to be in line with both the third stage of IC research which is a recent stream of literature that addresses the praxes of IC as they are implemented in organizations and the fourth stage of IC research that concentrates on building strong economic, social and environmental eco-systems, where healthy organizations can flourish (Dumay, 2013). The study alsoaddresses a current need because the 12 business models followed by organizations all over the world have a number of common categories and adequate conditions for a lean-green transformation for an organization and its supply chain (Duarte and Cruz-Machado, 2013). With IC being instrumental in the determination of national economic performance and enterprise value (Petty and Guthrie, 2000) in the knowledge economy or the next economy (Drucker, 2001 a, b), it is imperative to study its impact on organizational sustainability performance. Thus, this study drawsa conceptual bridge between green intellectual capital (GIC) and integrated sustainability literature to investigate as tohow firms mobilise their GIC in order to implement integrated sustainability performance in their business practices.