6 Conclusion
As a conclusion for the current Master thesis, it seems relevant
to recall briefly its content and the central problematic and the main
hypothesis tested:
Firstly, the section 2 allowed framing the subject of the
thesis by clearly defining eco-innovation, its determinants and its impact on
competitiveness through a relatively extensive literature review of the major
empirical works done in the field of the three versions of the Porter
hypothesis, namely the weak, the narrow and the strong one.
The conclusions drawn were not as precise as one would expect,
due primarily to technical limits such as measuring the stringency of
environmental regulation or the specificities of each economic context whether
sectoral, national or global.
Secondly, the hypotheses of the thesis were stipulated from
purely theoretical background and articulated in way that they could be tested
empirically. In this context, here is a reminder of the principal problematic
of the thesis:
Does eco-innovation impact positively the firms'
competitiveness?
More specifically, the model tested whether environmental
innovation (including process and product eco-innovation) has a positive impact
on return on sales as an index for competitiveness. The main hypothesis was
accepted with a significant positive coefficient in the first Ordered Probit
Model estimated.
The model was constructed on the basis of an wide theoretical
literature review which provided the essential assumption to define the
relevant independent variables, namely environmental innovation, market share,
product differentiation, patent stock, materials and energy efficiency, capital
intensity and labour productivity. Additional relevant control variables were
introduced to limit the omitted variable bias.
Among the six sub-hypotheses four of them were accepted and
only the two remaining rejected, mainly because the coefficients were not
statistically significantly different from zero which mean that the two models
were not statistically significantly different from each other.
Thus, one can finally conclude that the strong Porter hypothesis
was only partly confirmed and equally rejected, in respect of theoretical
hypotheses of the current study.
Perfectly aware of the limits of the present analysis, the author
justifies the formal errors by the limited time-frame and analytical resources.
Nevertheless, the originality of the
present paper resides in the fact that besides testing the
strong Porter hypothesis on verifying for the positive impact of eco-innovation
on firms' competitiveness, the analysis goes beyond by searching for the key
factors that differentiate the competitive position of ecoinnovative firms
compared to their non-innovative competitors. The preliminary results pending
further investigation confirmed three key factors that allows eco-innovative
firms to outperform their competitors, ceteris paribus, namely: access to green
market such as green public procurement, materials and energy efficiency
(Porter's main argument) and access to border sources of capital at a lower
cost either because stockholders valuate environmental implication of the firms
or by responding to the criteria of green mutual funds.
The author wants to encourage further research in this sense;
another way of approaching the subject is by using dynamic panel data since
Porter claims that the positive effect of environmental regulation on firms'
competitiveness cannot be detected in a static point of view. Furthermore,
including more hypotheses and additional dependent variables may increase the
explanatory power of the model in order to remedy to the problem of the weak
pseudo R2.
Finally, I want to achieve this thesis with the golden words
of the management Guru Peter Drucker who once said: «There are only two
important functions in business: marketing and innovation; everything else is
cost.» (Drucker, 1985) To show that the key of the success for every
business is to innovation according to its costumers' needs, and what the
coming generations most certainly need is a safe and sound environment to
prosper.
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