Siddhi Pittayachawan

The Green IT Readiness (G-Readiness) of Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis of a Construct and Instrument

The realization that legacy information technology (IT) systems have environmental footprint has elevated the sustainability of IT (Green IT) as a significant IT management issue. However, there is a lack of empirical research to explain Green IT capabilities of organizations and the maturity of those capabilities. This article reports a Green IT Readiness framework to capture the input, transformational and output capabilities that organizations need to nurture in sustainable management of IT. It identifies five components of G-readiness and provides an exploratory framework and a research-ready instrument. The instrument is validated based on data collected from a cross-sectional and cross-country survey of IT managers.

Green IT diffusion: An international comparison

This paper provides a preliminary insight on the status of the diffusion and maturity of “Green IT” as well as some of the driving and inhibiting factors that influence it. The report is largely descriptive and is based on a survey of 143 organisations from Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Overall, the findings indicate that organisations are developing the “right mind-set”, taking a number of “softer actions”’; and investing in new technologies to use IT as part of the solution to pursue both ecoefficiency and eco-sustainability objectives. Nevertheless, the state of Green IT among the surveyed organisations can be considered at the early stage of maturity. In particular: • The results indicate that disposal of IT in an environmentally friendly manner is the most relevant organisational concern about Green IT. It is therefore not surprising that there is significantly more attention paid to policy and practice in the end-of-IT-life management aspect of Green IT. On the other hand, attention to Green IT sourcing is the least adopted. • The need for greater IT efficiency and the pursuit of tangible cost savings from IT operations are the primary drivers for adopting Green IT which has to be articulated in the strategy of an organisation. Likewise, the cost of Greening IT and unclear business values from Greening IT top the list of the factors that inhibit Green IT adoption. This implies that as IT budgets continue to shrink, IT managers may turn to Green IT only if Green solutions are affordable and yield tangible and near term cost savings. Thus, of all the items used to assess Green IT, server virtualisation and consolidation have the widest uptake. Many believe that server virtualisation can produce quick–win cost reduction. • In less than half of the cases reported, the role for coordinating Green initiatives is defined and CIOs are taking a leading role in all Green (IT and non IT) initiatives. However, in the majority of organisations, IT is not yet responsible for its own electricity costs and there are no well developed metrics for assessing the impact of Green IT initiatives. Hence, executives might not know the tangible returns from implementing Green IT. • Limitation of the small sample size withstanding, the findings of this study hint at differences in Green IT initiatives among US, New Zealand and Australian organisations. In Australia and New Zealand, environmental consideration is the primary concern. In US the primary concern appears to be energy efficiency and cost reduction. Thus, while Australian and New Zealand organisations are leading the ‘softer” side of Green IT policies and practices to reduce the environmental impact of IT, US organisations are far more advanced in the adoption of technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency. This might be because of differences in the scale of IT operations. Generally US organisations have larger IT shops. • Despite the initial steps, most CIOs believe that their organisations lack an adequate level of readiness for Green IT. Acknowledgements The research has benefited from inputs of the members of the Green IT research team at the School of Business Information Technology, RMIT Dr. Vanessa Cooper, Prof. Hepu Deng, Dr. Konrad Peszynski and Dr. Say Yen Teoh. Thank you to all respondents for taking the time to complete the survey; Minh Vu and Keith Lau for assistance in hosting the online survey. The School of BIT, RMIT University for funding the research. Green IT Working Paper No.1/2009 2

A multitheoretical approach for solving trust problems in B2C e-commerce

Trust has been identified as a major barrier in online shopping, especially in the B2C e-commerce model. It has been studied for several years, but there is no indicator that a satisfactory solution for trust in online shopping has been achieved. A trust model is proposed in this paper in order to address this issue. It is uniquely based on five current issues (cybercrime, security, control, web interface, and a trusted third party) that impact trust, guided by four supportive theories: Semiotics, Trust in Signs, Simmelian Model of Trust and Trustworthiness. The research was accomplished with an online survey to collect data from online shoppers around the world. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to validate the trust model revealing that privacy and security of information are most important factors affecting trust in B2C e-commerce followed by web interface and control.

Diffusion of e-government services in Australia: Citizens' perspectives

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the diffusion of e-government in urban Australia. The theory of innovation diffusion is used to guide the research accomplished via a survey method. Research findings included in this paper highlight the use of E-Gov service at three levels of administration by urban citizens in Australia and the usefulness of bundled services offering a one stop shop for citizens. Findings discussed in this paper also highlight that factors such as cost and time saving, convenience and online tracking facility significantly impact the adoption of E-Gov services by citizens. It also suggests that the level and frequency of E-Gov service use and access is dependent on the regularity of its need by citizens. Access to technology, socio-economic status and level of education also influence E-Gov adoption by citizens.

The Use of E-Business in Agribusiness: Investigating the Influence of E-Readiness and OTE Factors

Abstract This study explores antecedents to sector based e-business use. Sectoral e-business studies are valuable to understand the absorption of e-business in different economic sectors, the specific challenges of using e-business across different sectors and the potential of different sectors to integrate into the global digital value chain. Drawing from the perceived e-readiness model (PERM) and the Organizational, Technological and Environmental (OTE) framework, an integrated e-business use model is proposed. Data were collected from a survey of firms in the horticulture sector in Australia. Empirical analysis of the integrated model show that e-business use within the horticulture sector is at the initial state of maturity. In terms of the antecedent factors, this research shows that technology competence, financial commitment, perceived environmental e-readiness and organizational size are influential factors that directly affect e-business use. Perceived organizational e-readiness has an indirect influence on e-business use. The implications of these findings to both global IT management and e-business research are discussed. Practitioners such as governments, horticulture associations, growers and growers associations and digital marketplace operators, through understanding these factors affecting e-business use, can make effective decisions to develop their support, capabilities and offerings respectively.

ICT Risk Management in Organizations: Case studies in Thai Business

Risks related to information communication and technologies (ICTs) still occur in organizations. In spite of development of ICT risk management methodologies that have been published in numerous frameworks and/or standards to help organizations deal with ICT risks, it has still been questioned about whether or not its methodology has manifested success. This research identifies the current profile of ICT risk management planning and investigates success in implementation in Thai organizations of both the Control Objectives for the Information and related Technology (COBIT) framework and the ISO/IEC 17799 standard for dealing with ICT risk management. The findings from three case studies indicate that successful ICT risk management planning focuses on the collaboration between the management level activities and the operational level activities in order to cope with ICT risks successfully.

Using IS/IT to support the delivery of Chinese medicine: The design of a Chinese medicine clinic system

Using Information System/Information Technology (IS/IT) in Chinese Medicine (CM) has not been discussed much, if at all, in the literature. This is unlike the numerous references to the role for IS/IT to support various aspects of western medicine practice. Though the diagnosis and treatments between western medicine and CM are different, the clinical processes are similar. Thus, we contend that by implementing IS/IT system solutions, CM practice can also enjoy many benefits. CM practice relies on expert knowledge, hence applying knowledge management (KM) concepts to any proposed Chinese Medicine Clinic System (CMCS) is a necessary critical factor in the design of suitable IS/IT solutions in this context. This paper serves to identify a role for IS/IT in assisting CM clinic daily key processes as well as identify key system features and functions for a suitable CMCS.

INVESTIGATING THE POSSIBILITY FOR IS/IT TO SUPPORT THE DELIVERY OF CHINESE MEDICINE

As Chinese medicine (CM) has increased in popularity globally it now becomes imperative to investigate ways in which safe, efficient, effective and evidence-based approaches might be adopted into CM practice. In the case of western or more traditional healthcare delivery practice, IS/IT is often adopted and employed to assist in this regard and thus this paper examines how IS/IT might be used to support the delivery of CM. In particular, the paper investigates how IS/IT tools and techniques might be used in supporting CM clinics daily processes and thereby bring greater value to a countrys healthcare. In doing so, this paper studies the current global CM situation and provides a solid foundation for how to design and develop an enterprise wide CM clinical management system.

Inquiring Knowledge Management Systems -- A Chinese Medicine Perspective

Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) can facilitate superior healthcare delivery. However, studies of IS/IT systems and implementations for Chinese Medicine (CM) practice are very limited. We analyze different inquiring systems and identify that CM can be more easily mapped as a combination of Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems where multiple perspectives and facts as inputs are considered and analyzed in complicated tasks. These two inquiring systems also have characteristics to cater for formal data analysis but the outcome or solution maybe individual and/or non-predefined. This is important in the context of CM and provides the platform for CMs individual prescriptions for the same disease in different patients. From this perspective, we explore how IS/IT might be used to support the delivery of CM clinics in their daily operations. This research uses a mixed research method to study a case clinic in the context of CM clinical medicine management system.

Factors of people-centric security climate: Conceptual model and exploratory study in Vietnam

There is an increasing focus on the persuasive approach to develop a people-centric security climate where employees are aware of the priority of security and perform conscious security behaviour proactively. Employees can evaluate the priority of security as they observe and interact with the security features that constitute the security climate of the workplace. We examined the fundamental challenge that not every employee could recognise those features. In this multi-stage research, we adopted the theoretical lens of symbolic interactionism to advance a conceptual model which explains the relationship between organisations social networks and the formation of information security climate. A descriptive case study in Vietnam was then conducted to refine the proposed model. The findings validated and extended the dimensions of information security climate, as well as identified the relevant organisations social networks (i.e. information, affect, and power) that lead to its formation.