Collaboration as a Key Enabler for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) Implementing Green ICT

What Drives Smes Towards Green Ict?

There are number of factors that drive a business to adopt and embrace green ICT initiatives. These initiators have been discussed in the past by Unhelkar and Dickens (2008). Four such specific initiators that propel an organisation to develop and implement an environmentally responsible strategy are the social and political pressure, rules and regulations, enlightened self-interest and a responsible collaborative business eco-system. These are discussed next in the context of an SME, as also shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1.

Drivers for environmental responsibility in small and medium business (based on methodscience.com)

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  Social & political pressure: when there is pressure on an organisation from the society in which it exists, then the organisation is forced to consider environmental strategies. Social pressure can come in from the marketing department that wants to differentiate the products or services, the education system that enforces green values in the upcoming generation, or the political pressure from the electorate. However, such pressure is not legally binding, but relies on the ability of a collective opinion to enforce good corporate citizenship.

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  Rules and regulations: Government environmental legislation that makes it legally mandatory for a company to implement environmental measures within their business operations further enforces the generation of environmentally responsible strategy.

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  Enlightened self-interest: when an organisation, on its own accord, realizes the need to be environmentally responsible, and creates or adopts a green strategy. This initiator can also be cost driven or driven by the need to have brand recognition or even be driven by the need for business continuity

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  Responsible Business Eco-System: when the entire eco-system of the industry and the environment in which an organisation exists, including its business partners, suppliers and customers are all creating and implementing green ICT initiatives; being part of such a business eco-system enforces an organisation to follow suit or be left out.

People, Process And Technologies For Sme’S Green Ict Effort

Examining Green ICT initiatives under the standard ITIL framework of processes, technology and people, one can see how SMEs lack in all three to turn Green ICT into reality for them and why it still remains largely an elusive goal. Figure 2 graphically represents the three areas SMEs can leverage to accomplish IT operations that are Green and therefore give them the benefits that other organisations are realizing from this accomplishment.

Figure 2.

Examine Green ICT improvements for SMEs in terms of people, processes and technology