Research Effort, Functional Integration, and Environmental Action-Based Competitive Advantage: An Empirical Study

This paper seeks to make an empirical analysis of the degree to which the research effort and functional integration into the design of environmental activity account for a company’s environmental actionbased competitive advantage. To do so, we have used a sample of 110 factories. It has been proven that both factors (the research effort and functional integration into the design of environmental activity) have a positive influence on the factories’ environmental action-based competitive advantage. These outcomes are the main in this paper and they have major implications for companies’ research policy. It proves that there is a new advantage to the managerial effort dedicated to this area: this effort has a positive influence on the relation between a company’s environmental management and its environmental action-based competitive advantage.