The importance of the complementarity between environmental management systems and environmental innovation capabilities: A firm level approach to environmental and business performance benefits

• Complementarities between environmental management systems and environmental innovation capabilities
• Environmental management systems' moderation effects on environmental innovation–firm performance relationship
• Environmental management systems' new “beyond certification” measure

Using a firm-level approach to environmental innovation and drawing on the notion of firm environmental capabilities' complementarities as the potential advantages derived from the connection between the different environmental practices of the firm, we heed the call of environmental management scholars to analyze environmental management systems' potential moderating and indirect effects. More specifically, this work analyzes the existing complementarity between environmental management systems (EMSs) and environmental innovation capabilities and the effect of this relationship on firm performance.In order to reach that goal, we test empirically a novel measure of environmental management systems that takes into account not only the certification but also the degree of development of the distinctive elements that are part of these systems. Our results show that environmental management systems positively moderate the relationship between environmental product innovation and firm market performance. The proposed theoretical model is tested on a sample of 157 firms that belong to the Spanish metal production and transformation industry (one of the most polluting) with 100 or more employees.