Eco-communal management, transition engagement, and connectedness A moderated mediation model for the performance of renewable energy projects in emerging economies

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast of 2014 indicates a 37% energy demand increase in the next 25 years primarily coming from emerging economies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. To meet the forecasted energy demand increase and ameliorate the ecological stress associated with such increases, substantially increased deployments and effective operations of renewable energy projects is of paramount importance. This study sought to understand the factors impacting successful renewable energy projects and identifies integrative measures for the performance of these projects in the context of emerging economies. Our research suggests well-developed and deployed eco-communal management practices, a type of business model innovation, is the best way to translate the value proposition of RE projects into sustainable value. Our research further suggests level of managerial responsibility bifurcates the translation of strategic objectives of RE projects and the relatedness of the key decision makers into sustainable value through its eco-communal management practices. The impact of knowledge creation on sustainable value is primarily indirect through hastening and affecting transformational changes, hence deploying effective transitions engagements and instituting accurate methods to measure the efficacy of knowledge creation are imperative. Market creation's insignificant and negative relationships with sustainable value and meaningfulness is nuanced from extant literatures, and it may be attributed to a lag in the deployment of sustainable marketing orientation, shift to personal network marketing, and the difference between marketed and perceived benefits of RE projects. To our knowledge, this is the first research paper that combines the high impact applications of renewable energy projects in emerging markets with cognitive, and perceptual performance drivers to develop a systemic and integrative renewable energy project performance measures and the associated predictor variables. Overall, the predictor variables explain 57%, and 72% of the variance in the outcome variables sustainable value, and meaningfulness respectively.