A study on the awareness of Green Organization among the IT professionals in Chennai

A first review report

Submitted by Karolin D Roll No: 0804MBA1234 Reg No: 68308200320

A study on the awareness of Green Organization among the IT professionals in Chennai

1 NEED FOR THE STUDY Rising energy costs will have an impact on all businesses, and all businesses will increasingly be judged according to their environmental credentials, by legislators, customers and shareholders. This wont just affect the obvious, traditionally power-hungry smoke-belching manufacturing and heavy engineering industries, and the power generators. The IT industry is more vulnerable than most it has sometimes been a reckless and profligate consumer of energy. Development and improvements in technology have largely been achieved without regard to energy consumption. Environmental issues are receiving unprecedented attention from businesses and governments around the world. As concern for climate change and sustainability continues to grow, and actions now ramp up, businesses are grappling with reducing carbon footprints while remaining profitable. Feeling pressure from customers and other stakeholders, organizations have begun to make serious improvements in their environmental performance, recognizing that if they fail to deliver on this, it frequently translates into a negative impact on profit. Many governments are introducing aggressive environmental policy, encompassing everything from greenhouse gas reduction and natural resource protection to clean power initiatives and incentives for energy efficiency. Many businesses have discovered that Green IT initiatives offer costs savings benefits while reforming the organization, meeting stakeholder demands and complying with laws and regulations. Businesses around the world are realizing that addressing environmental concerns can also benefit the bottom line. They arent jumping on the bandwagon in an effort to save the planet, though this sentiment is certainly expressed in many cases. Rather, businesses see an opportunity: By adopting initiatives that have a positive effect on the environment, they save money, and at the same time, use technology more efficiently. Great opportunities lie in the IT department, where reducing the environmental footprint of technology is now top of mind for many IT leaders.

The cost of energy is the top reason for companies to make a move to Green Organization: The energy consumed by data centers had more than doubled over five year period Over 40% of the cost associated with the data centers are attributed to powering and cooling computer systems The awareness of Green IT among the IT professionals would save energy and the environment. This awareness can be simple or complex and include: Turning off computer at the end of the day Purchasing energy efficient office equipment Promoting virtual meetings and telecommuting Recycling paper products Converting to a Paperless office Properly disposing of obsolete computer equipments Server Consolidation

Creating more awareness among the IT Professional would save the world and benefit business. 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Ben N Kuo and Geoffrey N Dick (2009) had found the factors that would account for the differentiation of Green IT organization among others. A survey done among the IT professionals in Australia revealed that there are various areas where the awareness and action has to improve greening the organization (Alemayehu Molla, Vanessa Cooper, Hepu Deng, Stasys Lukaitis, 2009). An insight on the maturity and diffusion of Green IT among the IT professional in Australia, New Zealand and USA gave a comparative report (Alemayehu Molla, Siddhi Pittayachawan and Brian Corbitt, 2009). Info-Tech Research group has reported based on their survey that North America under performs in the Green IT awareness and action. 3.1 PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

The objective of this project is to find the awareness of Green Organization among the IT professionals in Chennai, India 2

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SECONDARY OBJECTIVES To find what extent are IT professionals are concerned about climate change what are the perceptions of IT professionals in terms of ITs contribution to environmental footprint What are some of the processes IT professionals follow to increase their awareness of Green IT To what extent they are taking actions towards Green IT in their professional lives how do they perceive their working environments preparedness for Green IT METHODOLOGY : : : : : : : Descriptive Approach IT professionals in Chennai (Convenience sample) Primary Data Questionnaire Likert Scale 100 Use of Parametric and non-parametric tests.

Type of Project Target Respondents Data Type Data Collection Method Measurement Scale Sample Size Proposed Analysis (Statistical Tools) and Interpretation methodologies 5. WORK DONE SO FAR Guide Identified Project proposal approved Literature Review completed

Started designing the questionnaire Identified the list of IT professional to whom the questionnaire need to be worked out

6 WORK TO BE DONE
Target Date Tasks Complete the Questionnaire (28/5/2010) Get the questionnaire approved from the guide (9/6/2010) Circulate the questionnaire and get it completed by the IT (21/6/2010)

professionals from various organizations in Chennai Tabulate the data from the completed questionnaire Statistically analyse the data and demonstrate it with statistical tools Draw a conclusion Prepare the Project Report 7 LIMITATIONS 3

(25/6/2010) (5/7/2010) (12/7/2010) (31/7/2010)

The project is limited to IT professionals in Chennai. The project result is purely based on the primary data collected using Questionnaire. EXPECTED DELIVERABLES A report on the awareness among the IT professionals in Chennai on Green

Organization REFERENCES 1. Hart, S. L. (1997). Beyond Greening: Strategies for a sustainable world. Harvard
Business Review, vol. 85, no. 3, pp. 58-68.

2. Info~Tech (2008) North America Underperforms in Green IT Attitudes and Actions,

Info~Tech Research Group, January 2008, pp.1-15.

3. Molla, A. (2008), GITAM: A Model for the Adoption of Green IT, 19th Australasian
Conference on Information Systems Christchurch, New Zealand, 3-5 December

4. Alemayehu Molla, Vanessa Cooper, Hepu Deng, Stasys Lukaitis (2009) - A Preliminary
Report on Green IT Attitude and Actions among Australian IT Professionals, , Green IT Working Paper Series

5. Molla, A., Pittayachawan, S. & Corbitt, B. (2009), Green IT Diffusion: An International

Comparison, Green IT Working Paper Series

6. Ben N Kuo, Geoffrey N Dick (2009) The Greening Of Organisational IT: What Makes
A Difference?, Australasian Journal of Information Systems Volume 16 Number 2 2009

7. Alemayehu Molla, Vanessa A Cooper, Siddhi Pittayachawan (2009) IT And EcoSustainability: Developing And Validating A Green IT Readiness Model

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