Exploring Green IT and Green IS: Insights from a case study in Brazil

The role of Information Technology (IT) has been highlighted in the discussions around environmental sustainability in organizations. As an alternative to tackle the problem, the concepts of Green IT and Green IS has emerged in the current literature and has opened possibilities to guide companies in the direction of sustainable business. We present here a Green IT/IS framework built considering four units of analysis: economy, environment, process and technology. This model seeks to investigate how constructs like energy efficiency, optimized equipment utilization and sustainable information systems are considered by an organization in terms of practices, policies and corporate strategy. In this paper, we argue that organizations which are evolving towards sustainable business go through different maturity stages until contribute effectively to the environment. In this sense, although Green IT, that is more focused in reducing the impact caused by IT, be an important milestone for the company, it has a lesser impact in the long term than Green IS, that has the potential to change and create new business models and processes. Moreover, we present a case study that was conducted in a large multinational company from the software industry in order to verify the depth of Green IT/IS strategies and practices in place. At last, the empirical findings are analyzed and presented in the light of the theoretical model proposed in this study.