Assessing the Barriers of Green Innovation Implementation: Evidence from the Vietnamese Manufacturing Sector

Abstract

Sustainability concerns are rising as an interesting topic in both academia and industry. Many scholars revealed that green innovation is an excellent solution to enable organizations to achieve various benefits, such as enhancing their reputation and competitive advantages. Thus, this is the first study in Vietnam to consider the barriers to implementing green innovation. The research aims to identify the obstacles to green innovation practices in the Vietnamese manufacturing sector. The interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach has been conducted to provide the interactions among the green innovation implementation barriers. The authors ground this study to bridge the theoretical and practical for green innovation practices in the Vietnam situation. Based on the experts’ perspectives, they proposed that Vietnamese manufacturers must deal with thirteen essential barriers to green innovation adoption. Further, six interaction levels and the MICMAC analysis clarified cross-relationships among challenges by evaluating the driving and dependence power. Indeed, the empirical results emphasized that financial capability constraints and lack of government support are the most decisive challenges. In contrast, market competition and uncertainty concern is the easiest obstacle to address by the Vietnamese manufacturers. Therefore, this study has provided some insightful contributions for the top managers and other scholars to consider.