Few articles have focused on the green aspect of intellectual capital namely green intellectual capital. Nowadays, due to increasing concerns regarding environmental issues, it is essential to investigate the effects of green intellectual capital on organisational sustainability. Hence, this study examines the linkage between the dimensions of green intellectual capital (green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital) and business sustainability. Data were gathered from 168 manufacturing small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia, and analysed using the Partial Least Squares approach. The results show that green structural capital and green relational capital have positive relationship with business sustainability, while green human capital did not. Finally, the implications and limitations of this study were discussed and the recommendations for future studies presented.

Introduction

Sustainability has become a topic of interest for both academics and practitioners. A wide discussions and debates about the concept of sustainability, its important and the way to achieve it are pervasive. The economic profits of business activities have increased prosperity and living conditions globally; however it leads to environmental destruction and social inequality directly and indirectly (Sullivan et al., 2018). Current research by Gong et al. (2018) showed that many environmental destructions occurred and an estimated 60% of the ecosystems worldwide have been degraded. If nothing is done to solve this, environmental problems will continue to increase and it will worsen. However, most of the organisations claim that these environmental corruptions are not caused by their business activities and see it as the issue to be ignored. Besides that, not all organisations were up on the idea of sustainability. In fact, business landscapes are now different than before with limitation of resources, increasing rates in technology, emerging markets and new business models disruptions for conventional method (Sullivan et al., 2018). The term sustainability was first applied to in dealing with natural environment degradation and its negative impact on human health, social well-being and economic growth. The definition from World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) points out that sustainability is the “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” which commonly and widely used in literature and can be applied to these three composite outcomes namely economic, social and environmental.