Understanding Green IS Initiatives: A Multi-theoretical Framework

Sustainability is one of the key issues that organizations confront today, and ecologically responsible ("green") information systems (IS) initiatives are manifestations of sustainable business practices. Engaging in green IS initiatives can be challenging due to poor understanding of their holistic process. In this research, we develop a multitheoretical framework to provide a holistic understanding of the process of implementing and adopting green IS initiatives. The framework examines how these initiatives’ structures, organizational attributes, and environment may influence this process. The framework also provides an agenda for how future studies of green IS can use the constructs proposed and develop them, undertake case studies to expand our propositions, and conduct surveys to verify propositions. In addition, practitioners can use our framework to better understand the differences between various types of green IS initiatives, identify which organizational and environmental factors to adopt, and gain a holistic view of the entire process.