Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of future generations to meet their own needs
(Hart, 1997). According to institutional theory,
a firm's ability to generate rents from resources
and capabilities will be dependent on the firm's
efficacy in managing the social contexts of these
resources and capabilities (Oliver, 1997). When an
organization enters into an exchange relationship
that runs counter to institutionalized patterns, the
maintenance of the relationship requires greater
efforts (Teo
et al
., 2003). Organizations can be
regarded as a set of interdependent relationships
among primary stakeholders (Hillman and Keim,
2001). Effective stakeholder management may
constitute an intangible resource that can serve to
enhance firms' ability to outperform competitors
in terms of long-term value creation. Investments
in social capital rest largely on the enhancement
costs of environmental knowledge via the re-
lationship (both informal and formal) between
individuals and teams within the firm, as well as
the relationships with stakeholder groups outside
the organization (Lucas 2009). Stakeholder theory
(Freeman, 1984) proposes that a firm's economic
condition is significantly related with other types
of stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers,
financiers, and communities. Investment in these
intangible resources requires the development of
norms that facilitate collaboration, interaction, and
the sharing of ideas both within and outside the
firm (Subramanian and Youndt, 2005). Ambiguity
and uncertainty make the selection of an appro-
priate strategy somewhat difficult (Abrahamson
and Hegeman, 1994), and thus organizations
create norms of strategic behavior that may be
deemed acceptable by social actors (DiMaggio
and Powell, 1983). In the case of interactive
technologies (in this study, this refers to Green
IT) that involve reciprocal interdependence and
complementary innovations, the frequency of use
among an organization's suppliers and custom-
ers may directly create positive externalities and
increase the technical value of innovation for
the organization (Teo
et al
., 2003). Hence, we
proposed the following:
•
Proposition 3a: A firm that employs a
Sustained Green IT strategy incorporates
the importance of IS partnership quality as
a key resource along with other resources
by considering coercive, mimetic, and nor-
mative isomorphism.
•
Proposition 3b: Sustained Green IT strat-
egy may direct a firm toward long-term
sustained competitive advantage by em-
ploying rare, valuable, and inimitable key
resources.
Green IT Strategies Generic Scheme
(Path Dependency Approach)
Path dependency in technology adoption (Co-
hen and Levinthal, 1990) is another theoretical
perspective associated with the resource-based
view of the firm. According to this perspective,
a firm's ability and capacity to adopt newer tech-
nologies are most likely a function of the extent
of the firm's historical experience (Lockett
et al
.,
2009). Firms in the same industry compete with
substantially different resources using disparate
approaches. These firms differ due to differing
histories of strategic choice and performance
(Schwartz, 2009). Both institutional pressures and
organizational characteristics can affect the man-
ner in which organizations adopt environmental
management practices (Hoffman, 2001; Schwartz,
2009). Schwartz (2009) studied three companies,
focusing on their development of environmental
strategies, and concluded that the companies
adopted different strategies for the management
of environmental demands and that the strategies
used by each involved a specific sense of 'depen-
dency'. In order to develop inimitable capabili-
ties, the companies should attempt to describe an
optimal capability development trajectory that is
both strictly path-dependent (in order to sustain
first-mover advantages) and non-substitutable
with an equally efficient trajectory (Miller 2003).
Miller (2003) also asserted that companies'
