Narcissistic CEOs, dynamic capability, and green innovation

Le Chang; Rui Liang; Jinjin Zhang; Xue Yan; Hao Tao; Tonghui Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18898

Narcissistic CEOs, dynamic capability, and green innovation

Heliyon. 2023 Aug 3;9(8):e18898. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18898. eCollection 2023 Aug.

Authors

Le Chang¹, Rui Liang², Jinjin Zhang³, Xue Yan⁴, Hao Tao⁵, Tonghui Zhu⁶

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Modern Acoustics (MOE), School of Physics, Nanjing University, China.
² School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.
³ School of Computer Science, Nanjing Audit University, China.
⁴ School of Finance, Nanjing Audit University, China.
⁵ School of Accounting, Nanjing Audit University, China.
⁶ Nanjing Foreign Language School, China.

Abstract

Green innovation is currently recognized as a critical aspect for organizations to create economic value while contributing to ecological sustainability. Using the rationale of upper echelons theory, the present study introduces CEO narcissism, an important but underexplored psychological trait, and dynamic capability to probe the mechanisms driving green innovation. The regression findings show that enterprises with narcissistic CEOs do better in terms of green innovation. According to the mediation study findings, dynamic capability mediates between the CEO narcissism and corporate green innovation. In addition, the examination of mediated moderation reveals that top management risk aversion could negatively moderate this mediation effect. Such observations not only show that the CEO's personality has the potential to enhance corporate green achievements, but also discover the underlying mechanism which would provide guidance to help firms to be green.

Keywords: CEO narcissism; Dynamic capability; Green innovation; Risk aversion.