Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
555779 | The Journal of Strategic Information Systems | 2011 | 21 Pages |
Addressing the complexity of the growing number of regulatory imperatives from global institutional environments has prompted firms in the IT sector to leverage the enabling effects of IT-based systems to help manage environmental compliance and related organisational risks. Thus, a new breed of IS—Green IS—emerged in recent years. This paper presents an integrative theoretical model that: (1) employs institutional theory to help explain how a range of exogenous regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive factors from the institutional environment and the organisational field influence IT manufacturers’ decisions on the design and manufacture of environmentally sustainable products; and (2) uses organisational theory to describe the strategic endogenous arrangements that organisations institute using Green IS in order to support sense-making, decision making and knowledge creation around environmental sustainability. The paper employs the findings of a case study of Compliance and Risks’ Ltd. Compliance-to-Product (C2P) application and its implementation in two US-based Fortune 500 IT manufacturers to help validate and refine the a priori theoretical model. The paper therefore makes a significant contribution to theory building on the phenomenon of Green IS, through its articulation of empirically-based theoretical propositions which employ conceptual mechanisms to explain how Green IS can support organisational sense-making, decision making and knowledge sharing and creation around the design and manufacture of Green IT.