Journal of Hotel and Business Management
Open Access

Abstract

Sustaining Green Based Competitive Advantage Through Green Intrapreneurial Flexibility Evidence Sri Lanka Based Hotel Industry

Fazeela J Ahsan* and G D Samarasinghe

Strategic flexibility is a key capability for sustaining firm performance particularly on the market driven firm paradigm. Intrapreneurship led flexibility is aimed at quickly responding to both customer preference changes and competitor actions through innovative organizational means and leads to sustain firm’s competitive advantage in a highly volatile environment. However, empirical observations in the hotel industry of Sri Lanka created a puzzle as to why some tourist hotels that had adopted certain market oriented and competitively important eco-friendly initiatives did not feel a taste of superior performance and enduring competitive advantage although theory supported that market driven business strategies lead to sustainable performance. On this ground, the purpose of the study is to explain how green based intrapreneurship and its associated strategic flexibility affect green based sustainable business performance of the industry. It was hypothesized that green intrapreneurial flexibility positively influences the green based sustainable competitive advantage namely; green based financial performance, green market place position and green inimitability. Structured questionnaires were administered to a random sample of senior managers of the listed hotels in Sri Lanka. Linear regression analysis revealed a significant path coefficient which explained green intrapreneurial flexibility positively influenced green based sustainable competitive advantage of the hotel firms in Sri Lanka. The findings have implications that hotel firms should develop green specific intrapreneurial capabilities so that they can flexibly and quickly adapt their green based product and service offerings in responding to changes of the green market requirements by focusing on green based new venture creation, green innovations, green related self-renewal exercises and eco-friendly proactive decision making in order to sustain their competitive advantage from green initiatives.

Published Date: 2025-04-15; Received Date: 2024-09-12