Article : Responsabilité Sociale de l’Entreprise: quels impacts sur l’adoption de pratiques de Green IT ?

A. BOHAS*, N. DAGORN**, N. POUSSING***

* IAE Toulouse & Laboratoire Magellan
** ICN Business School Nancy-Metz, Laboratoire CEREFIGE
*** CEPS/INSTEAD Luxembourg, CREM Rennes

Abstract

While the literature relative to the environment-friendly behaviors mainly puts forward regulations, subsidies or even the research of economic benefits and social legitimacy to explain their adoption, our contribution also takes into consideration the question of the voluntary adoption of these approaches. We particularly asking if the adoption of environment-friendly behaviors in matter of information systems (IS), qualified as Green IT, can also be the expression of the approach of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the field of IS. The intensity of the commitment to CSR approach and different types of Green IT are considered. To our knowledge, this has not yet been studied in the IS literature so far. To analyze the relationship CSR / Green IT, we crosschecked data from two surveys conducted in 2008 and 2011 with the same population of companies based in Luxembourg: one focused on CSR and the other one on the use of ICT in companies. From a database of 815 valid questionnaires resulting from the merger of these two surveys, the article shows that being a company engaged in a CSR approach positively affects the adoption of Green IT practices. In addition, these results reveal the existence of a positive and significant effect of the intensity of the commitment to a CSR approach on the adoption of the most advanced types of Green IT practices. Thus, our work suggests that the approach of CSR is a determinant of Green IT practices but that the latter does not constitute a homogeneous whole since it is possible to differentiate them according to the intensity of commitment to CSR approach.