Insight into the Balancing Effect of a Digital Green Innovation (DGI) Network to Improve the Performance of DGI for Industry 5.0: Roles of Digital Empowerment and Green Organization Flexibility

Abstract

Under the background of double carbon target and digital intelligence era, the innovation resources and innovation environment that manufacturing enterprises rely on have shown exponential growth. Digital green innovation (DGI) has gradually become the mainstream paradigm of innovation. How to achieve a balance between a local DGI network (LDGIN) and a remote DGI network (RDGIN) and how to use the role of digital empowerment and green organization flexibility to improve the performance of DGI are very important issues facing manufacturing enterprises at present. However, this problem has not been fully addressed in the existing research. In this study, the influence mechanism of LDGIN and RDGIN on the DGI performance of manufacturing enterprises was revealed, considering the moderating role of digital empowerment and green organization flexibility. The linear regression method was used to analyze the 562 valid data obtained by questionnaire survey. The results of this study are as follows. The effect of the DGI network on manufacturing enterprises’ DGI performance is heterogeneous because of LDGIN and RDGIN. The establishment of embedded links in a DGI network inevitably requires manufacturing enterprises to pay the corresponding costs. The over-embedding of manufacturing enterprises into RDGIN will have a negative impact on DGI performance. The balance between LDGIN and RDGIN has an important impact on manufacturing enterprises’ operation. The comprehensive balance and relative balance indexes constructed in this paper show that an appropriate balance can promote the improvement of the DGI performance of manufacturing enterprises. Digital transformation and organizational structure innovation are changing the business model of manufacturing enterprises and can regulate the relationship between the LDGIN and RDGIN and the DGI performance of manufacturing enterprises. The balance of DGI network embedding in practice shows the important role and enlightening significance of local and remote search in developing countries.