A Techno-Economic Perspective of Green IT Implementation in Europe and the US

The present paper investigated the implementation of environmentally responsible IT measures in ten American and nine European organizations. The environmentally responsible IT measures include the implementation of existing hardware and software technologies as well as organizational and managerial actions that aim to reduce environmental impacts of IT use. As a result, adoption of Green IT measures requires adjustments that may modify the physical IT infrastructure and various organizational processes. These adjustments to organizational processes in addition to the infrastructure are ‘techno-economic’ in nature. The term techno-economic denotes concurrent consideration of technological, social, and economic issues surrounding an innovation. We interviewed at least two executives in each of the organizations in our study to assess the extent of Green IT implementation. Based on the analysis of these interviews, we conclude that the techno-economic adjustments were necessary for widespread implementation of environmentally responsible IT measures