Driving green procurement in a developing country: The roles of corporate environmental ethics, environmental training, and top management commitment

From a resource-based perspective, corporate environmental ethics constitutes a valuable, idiosyncratic, and rare intangible resource. Firms with strong environmental ethics can achieve environmental sustainability objectives in their supply market by being more proactive and exploring more environmental improvement opportunities beyond their internal boundaries. The relationship between corporate environmental ethics and green procurement is complex, with some firms embracing corporate environmental ethics symbolically without sufficient investment in green resources and capabilities. However, green human resources and leadership are essential for implementing organizational corporate environmental policies, strategies, and practices. Environmental training can help employees better communicate the firm's environmental values, goals, and standards to suppliers while monitoring and working with them to meet their green procurement objectives. A study conducted in Ghana, a developing country in Africa, investigated the role of corporate environmental ethics in driving green procurement. The study developed a conceptual model suggesting that corporate environmental ethics serves as a vital intangible resource for driving green procurement, especially when channeled into environmental training and when workers acknowledge and secure commitment from top managers. The study found that corporate environmental ethics does not directly relate to green procurement, but it is a significant driver of green procurement if channeled through environmental training. The study also found that the contribution of environmental training to green procurement is amplified in firms where top managers demonstrate a strong commitment to environmental issues. This suggests that top management commitment plays a crucial role in leveraging corporate environmental ethics to drive green procurement. The study's findings have implications for firms in developing countries, highlighting the importance of corporate environmental ethics and environmental training in achieving green procurement objectives. The study employed a survey data from 189 firms in Ghana to test the theoretical proposition. The results indicate that environmental training mediates the link between corporate environmental ethics and green procurement, and the intensity of this mediating relationship varies under different top management commitment conditions. This insight adds to the limited literature on the mechanisms and associated boundary conditions of corporate environmental ethics. The study contributes to the literature on the antecedents of green procurement and expands the understanding of the outcomes of corporate environmental ethics. It also extends the relevance of the resource-based view (RBV) to a context that has thus far received insufficient attention. The study's findings have practical implications for firms in developing countries, highlighting the importance of corporate environmental ethics and environmental training in achieving green procurement objectives.