The Impact of Sustainable Strategic Orientation on Corporate Performance: The Role of Green Product Innovation in Iranian Knowledge-Based Companies

Introduction
Achieving higher performance is an issue that all stakeholders of the company, including customers, employees, and shareholders, expect. In challenging and complex environments, companies gradually realize that the competitive advantage that is obtained does not guarantee the sustainability of the business for the future. This issue puts a lot of pressure on companies to find out how they can improve their performance and advantage in the best way and surpass their competitors. Performance focuses on the company's ability to effectively utilize available resources to achieve predetermined goals. The purpose of this research is to investigate the sustainable strategic orientation on the performance of knowledge-based companies in the country. Through green product innovation.
 
Materials and methods
This research is a survey in terms of practical purpose, in terms of descriptive nature, and in terms of execution method. The statistical population in this research is all managers of knowledge-based companies in the country of Iran. According to the rule of thumb, the statistical sample size is 5–10 times the number of items in the questionnaire. 203 people were selected, and the questionnaires were distributed and collected among them by the non-random sampling method. The data collection tools are standardized questionnaires, sustainable strategic orientation, and green product innovation, and it has been social, financial, and environmental performance. The data collection tool was standard questionnaires. Form validity, construct validity, convergent and divergent validity were used to measure validity, and Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were used to measure reliability, and finally the validity and reliability of the instrument were confirmed.  Data analysis was done in the descriptive part with SPSS software and in the inferential part with SmartPLS3 software.
 
Findings
Based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it was concluded that the data are non-normal, and the data analysis was done with SmartPLS3 software. All factor loadings of the variables are higher than 0.5 and have good validity. The extracted average variance numbers are more than 0.5, so the variables have good convergent validity. Based on the method of Fornell and Larker, the numbers on the main diagonal of the matrix (the second root of the average variance extracted) are more than all the correlation numbers between the variables. The result is that all the variables of this research have good divergent validity. Cronbach's alpha was more than 0.7 in the acceptance area for all variables. The results showed that sustainable strategic orientation has an effect on the social (0.608: 12.574), financial (0.511: 9.698) and environmental (0.375: 9.161) performance of knowledge-based companies in the country. Also, the mediating role of green product innovation in the impact of sustainable strategic orientation on social (0.273: 5.594), financial (0.352: 6.577) and environmental (0.507: 12.108) performance in knowledge-based companies in the country was confirmed.
 
Discussion and Conclusion
In the current competitive environment, one of the prominent features of which is the scarcity of resources, performance management and evaluation plays a vital role for companies. Experts and researchers believe that performance is the main issue in all organizational analyses, and it is difficult to imagine an organization that is not engaged in evaluating and measuring performance. Organizations rely on performance appraisals to provide feedback to managers regarding the achievement of strategic goals. Today, the role of social units in society has undergone many changes, in such a way that business units are expected not only to think about increasing their profits, but also to be accountable to society and to be useful for the society they interact with; Therefore, there is a two-way relationship between business units and society. Companies can provide the market by creating wealth, employment, and innovation and strengthen their activities and improve their competition, if they cooperate to maintain the society that they have played a key role in setting up. On the other hand, society should provide the necessary conditions for investors to get returns, ensure the beneficiaries of the absence of unfair activities, and provide suitable platforms for the development and progress of the company. Strategic orientation refers to guiding principles that directly affect the company's activities and cause behaviors in the company that strengthen performance and sustain the company's survival. Therefore, according to the purpose of this research, which is to investigate the impact of the sustainable strategic orientation of knowledge-based companies on their social, financial, and environmental performance through green product innovation, the results showed that the sustainable strategic orientation of knowledge-based companies has an effect on their social, financial, and environmental performance. And among this, green product innovation has a mediating effect.