Development of a scale to assess the degree of green Information Technology uses by the organizations

Abstract

Issues related to sustainability have received more importance in the research and practice of organizations over the last decades. Specifically, the area of Information Technology (IT) has been responsible for some of the environmental problems that society faces today. In this sense, Green IT appears as a way of combining available resources to sustainable and economic policies in organizations, generating benefits for environment and business. This study aimed to develop and validate a tool for assessing the degree of Green IT use by organizations. We found that Green IT can be measured by the effectiveness of sustainable actions applied to IT field, environmental orientation and environmental awareness of the organization, IT activities monitoring, and environmental expertise of IT organization. Environmental orientation and Green IT actions appear as the most developed dimensions, suggesting they are the main triggers of the Green IT presence in the organization. Environmental awareness, in turn, stands out as the less effective dimension assessed, indicating that environmental issues are not a priority for the investigated companies.