When Does Supply Chain Learning Improve Environmental Management? Innovation Orientation and Slack Resources as Boundary Conditions

Supply chain learning (SCL) gives firms access to environmental knowledge from supply chain partners, yet its relationship with environmental management practices (EMP) remains unclear. This study examines whether and how innovation orientation (IO) and slack resources (SR), acting as complementary internal organisational conditions, shape the environmental returns to SCL. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory and contingency theory, we analyse survey data from 200 manufacturing SMEs in Ghana. The results suggest that SCL is not directly associated with EMP. However, its association with EMP becomes positive as IO and SR increase, independently. Our theorised three‐way interaction model is not significant, suggesting that high levels of both conditions do not produce an additional joint effect beyond their separate moderating roles. Exploratory conditional slope analyses show that SCL has its strongest positive association with EMP when IO and SR are high. The estimated association is negative when both conditions are low. The findings appear to suggest that environmental learning across supply chains requires internal conditions that support experimentation and implementation. The study advances SCL research by identifying IO and SR as firm‐level conditions that shape the environmental value of interorganisational learning among manufacturing SMEs.