Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of other structurally equivalent organizations
because those organizations occupy similar eco-
nomic network positions in the same industry
and therefore share similar objectives, generate
similar commodities, share similar customers and
suppliers, and experience similar constraints (Burt,
1987). Faced with problems posed by uncertain
technologies, decision-makers or managers may
acquiesce to mimetic pressures from the environ-
ment to economize on search costs, to minimize
their experimentation expenses, or to avoid the
risks borne by first-actors (Teo
et al
., 2003). The
study conducted by Wati and Koo (2010) via a
case-comparative study design demonstrated that
four electronic companies evidenced a relatively
similar pattern in responding to green IT chal-
lenges, thereby indicating the presence of mimetic
pressures. In this vein, organizations with the same
ownership structures are expected to develop
similar complementary resources and capabilities
(Darnall and Edwards, 2006). Thus, the adoption
of environmental management practices under
mimetic pressures helps a company compete
in a dynamic environment, and simultaneously
facilitates the creation of valuable knowledge.
These environmental management practices
may include anything from a firm's internal ef-
forts at environmental assessment, planning, and
implementation, to procedures for the integration
of environmental products and process designs
into manufacturing operations (Lucas, 2009) as a
component of organizational capital investment.
Management scholars have also surmised that
a relationship between an organization's environ-
ment strategy and its internal capabilities in the
basic competencies must be established before
organizations can successfully develop advanced
environmental management practices that require
higher-order learning proficiencies (Christmann,
2000; Darnall and Edwards, 2006; Hart, 1995).
Without the support of these capabilities, the
adoption of advanced environmental practices
will prove more costly (Darnall and Edwards,
2006). Firms that take a strategically proactive
stance develop entrepreneurial, engineering,
and administrative processes oriented toward the
integration of external information and opportu-
nities (Miles and Snow, 1978). They also tend
to develop processes and routines to recognize
ideas in order to actively seize and capitalize on
new opportunities, rather than to merely react to
changes (Sharma
et al
., 2007). The ability to ex-
ploit external knowledge is a critical component of
the innovation process, where this ability is largely
a function of the level of prior related knowledge
(Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). The resource-based
view argues that organizations that incorporate
knowledge creation can employ it in order to
create idiosyncratic modes of technology at any
time point (Conner and Prahalad, 1996). These
prior theories suggest the following propositions:
•
Proposition 2a: A firm that adopts a
Strategic Proactive Green IT strategy is
driven by coercive and mimetic isomor-
phism--that is, it emphasizes IS human and
organizational capital investment.
•
Proposition 2b: Strategic proactive green
IT strategies may help a company go be-
yond cost reduction and focus on the intan-
gible value of knowledge creation.
3. Sustained Green IT Strategy
The third strategy is referred to as Sustained
Green IT strategy, and this involves the extent
to which a company elects to integrate different
resource types (e.g. physical, human, social, and
organizational) as reflected by its mix of environ-
mental management practices, in order to obtain
sustainable competitive advantage (Darnall and
Edwards, 2006). A firm that employs this strategy
is likely to regard environmental issues as a top
priority in its business objectives. Sustainabil-
ity is the idea of fulfilling the needs of present
generations without compromising the ability
