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The radical decline of the environment is mainly due to the vast dependency and depletion of natural resources. Although many factors are held accountable for damaging the environment, technology has shown to be one of the main contributors to the rising of various ecological problems (e.g., high energy consumption and e-waste), but also, recognized to be part of the resolution (Muslim, Sim, & Hee, 2019). From a broad perspective, the term “technology” is widely defined as the collection of skills, knowledge, systems, processes, and techniques that combine resources to achieve organizational objectives. When technology addresses environmental concerns, it is known as green or sustainable technology. Green technology, which is the main interest of this research, is defined as the efficient and ecological practice or use of technology resources to increase organizational performance and productivity (Murugesan, 2010); thus, maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage over other rivals in the industry.
In a recent report by BusinessWire (2019), the green technology market is projected to reach US$ 28.9 billion by 2024, but yet, there are no empirical studies that explicitly examine the concept of green innovation in developing nations. In green technology literature, such countries have been overlooked when compared to developed countries; thus, business reports without empirical support may be considered inaccurate and misleading for future investors and businesses. Furthermore, there have been urgent research calls for examining the role of technological innovations in developing countries, where there is a lack of green technology implementations (Li, Pan, Kim, Linn, & Chiang, 2015). As such, this research examines the concept of green innovation in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) regions.
On one hand, the global and rapid spread of innovative technologies has modernized the medical sectors by providing fast, effective, and sustainable healthcare services (Sodhro, Pirphulal, Sangaiah, Sekhari, & Ouzrout, 2018). On the other hand, the healthcare sector is identified as the main contributor to environmental pollution and health risk hazards (e.g., radioactive, toxic chemicals, and water wastes) (World Health Organization, 2017). Yet, the healthcare industry has been infrequently examined in green technology literature when compared to other major business sectors (e.g., tourism, automotive, hospitality). Thus, limited findings may hinder breakthrough discoveries in green medical devices and ecological solutions. For such motives, this research focuses on MENA healthcare industries. Therefore, the research question is the following:
Drawing on the knowledge-based theoretical perspective, this research develops and tests a model consisting of five different technological innovation characteristics (relative advantage (RA), complexity (COM), compatibility (COP), observability (OB), and triability (TR)) as antecedents, green innovation (GI) as a mediator, and sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) as an outcome with government environmental support (GES) as a moderator. For the testing of the seven proposed hypotheses, a survey was administered to 305 clinical/non-clinical hospital staff members from six hospitals in the Middle East and 305 clinical/non-clinical hospital staff members from nine hospitals in North Africa.
Two complementary contributions are offered by this research. First, empirical studies in GI mainly focused on developed (e.g., Europe, America, China, etc.) rather than on developing countries (e.g., Middle Eastern or African regions) (Muslim et al., 2019). Second, empirical examination of the concept of GI in the healthcare industry has been relatively ignored (Muslim et al., 2019). Thus, to date, no cross-national initiative has been carried out to examine GI in the context of the MENA healthcare sector. This research attempts to address such a knowledge gap (see Table 1 for a comparative analysis that supports the contributions of this research).