UNIVERSITY OF GHANA

GREEN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRACTICE IMPLEMENTATION IN GHANAIAN ORGANISATIONS

BY BILAL BIN HASSAN 10359444

A LONG ESSAY SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF OPERATIONS AND MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA BUSINESS SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF AN MBA IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS OPTION) DEGREE

JUNE, 2012

DECLARATION

I do hereby declare that this work is the result of my own research and has not been presented by anyone for any academic award in this or any other university. All references used in the work have been fully acknowledged.

I bear sole responsibility for any shortcomings.

.. BILAL BIN HASSAN (10359444)

DATE

CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify that this long essay was supervised in accordance with procedures laid down by the University.

.. DR. RICHARD BOATENG (SUPERVISOR)

DATE

ii

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my family, whom I have had to sacrifice my time with them to spend doing this course.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I will like to first express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Richard Boateng who has been an excellent tutor as well as supervisor and has given me all the guidance and time necessary to successfully execute this research.

I will also like to acknowledge Mr. Manase and Mr. Doku of Fidelity Bank, who took time of their busy schedule to give me a rundown on their organisation and their Green IT project.

A special thanks to all those numerous persons who facilitated in getting data for my paper.

May Allah abundantly bless you all.

iv

LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS
ACPI - Advanced Configuration and Power Interface ACS- Australian Computer society APC American Power Conversion CRAC - Computer Room Air Conditioning CSR- Social Corporate Responsibility ES Energy Saving EPA Environmental Protection Agency EPEAT - Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool EU European Union GIT Green Information Technology ICT information Communication Technology IDC International Data Corporation IFRS - International Financial Reporting Standards. ILO International Labour Organisation IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ISO - International Organization for Standardization IT - Information Technology MEA - Multilateral Environmental Agreements NCPI - network critical physical infrastructure PVC - Polyvinyl chloride RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology SAICM - The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management UPS Uninterruptible power Supply WEEE Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.2.1 : Age of Company............................................................................................. 49 Table 5.2.2 : Industry .......................................................................................................... 49 Table 5.2.3: Company Turnover .......................................................................................... 50 Table 5.2.4 : IT Budget ....................................................................................................... 51 Table 5.2.5 : Length of Service of respondent...................................................................... 52 Table 5.2.6 : Educational Level of Respondent .................................................................... 53 Table 5.3: Knowledge of Green IT ...................................................................................... 53 Table 5.4.1: General Environmental Goals .......................................................................... 54 Table 5.4.2: IT Environmental Goals ................................................................................... 54 Table 5.5.1 : Measurement of Carbon footprint ................................................................... 55 Table 5.52: Energy consumption measurement .................................................................... 55 Table 5.5.3 : Commissioning of 3rd party environmental Audits ......................................... 56 Table 5.6: Sourcing of IT products ...................................................................................... 57 Table 5.7.1: Building environmentally friendly server rooms .............................................. 58 Table 5.7.2 : Printer Consolidation ...................................................................................... 59 Table 5.7.3 : End user device power management ............................................................... 60 Table 5.7.4: Telecommuting capabilities ............................................................................. 60 Table 5.7.5: Remote Conferencing and Video conferencing ................................................ 61 Table 5.7.6: Storage Consolidation ...................................................................................... 62 Table 5.7.7 : Server virtualision........................................................................................... 62 Table 5.8 : IT Equipment Recycling .................................................................................... 63 Table 5.9 Funding for Green IT ........................................................................................... 64

vi

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 5.5.2: Industries of Companies Sampled.. 50 Figure 5.2.3: Company Turnover.52 Figure 5.2.4: Annual IT budget52 Figure 5.10.1a: Green IT Awareness across Industries...65 Figure 5.10.1b: Green IT Awareness across Organizational Ownership.66 Figure 5.10.1c: Green IT Awareness compared with Age of company...66 Figure 5.10.1d: Green IT awareness compared with Length of Service of Respondent..67 Figure 5.10.2a: Organisational Policy on Environment...68 Figure 5.10.2b: IT Environmental Policy of organisations..68 Figure 5.10.3a: Server room build...71 Figure 5.10.3b: Print er Consolidation..71 Figure 5.10.3c: End user device Management....71 Figure 5.10.3d: Telecommuting..71 Figure 5.10.3e : Remote conferencing....72 Figure 5.10.3f : Storage Consolidation...72 Figure 5.10.3f : Server virtualisation and Consolidation...72 Figure 5.12.2a : IBM server rack at Fidelity Bank data Centre.77 Figure 5.12.4: In row cooling system in server rack..80

vii

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study investigates the Green IT practises of organisations operating in Ghana. The study develops a conceptual model which shows how Green IT can be adopted and implemented in an organisational setting.

Methodology: A mixed methods approach consisting of a descriptive survey of 60 companies and a case study of a financial organisation was adopted.

Findings: The findings suggest that most IT Professionals have some knowledge about Green Information Technology with some trying in their own ways to implement some Green IT practices at their workplace. What we found lacking was clear environmental policy guidelines, whether general or for IT. This made Green IT practices in sampled firms, mainly initiatives of the various heads of the IT departments. Cost was the most important driver discovered when it came to implementing green IT practices in the various organisations studied. One major challenge that was identified with organisation in going green was the need to convince top management of the financial benefits of implementing some of the expensive green IT projects.

Research Implications: The research proposes a conceptual framework which utilises the green readiness framework modified to suit the case of a developing country like Ghana. The study develops three propositions which can guide future research.

Practical Implications: The study provides practitioners with a theoretically inspired framework which has also been implemented by organisations in other countries in their bid to be more green in their IT usage and disposal. The practical nature of the study also can act viii

as a guide for firms who are looking to implement environmentally sustainable IT practices to reduce cost and negative effect of IT on the environment.

Originality/Value: This is the first time a research has been done in Ghana or perhaps West Africa to study the green IT practices and, further, propose a conceptual model of green practices which can be adopted by firms in a developing context.

Keywords: Green IT, IT Professionals, Green Ghana, Climate change, Sustainable IT.

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ................................................................................................................... i CERTIFICATION ................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ..................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................................... iv LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ vii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Research Background.............................................................................................. 1 Research Problem ................................................................................................... 6 Research Purpose and Objectives ............................................................................ 8 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 9 Proposed Methodology ........................................................................................... 9 Significance of the Research ................................................................................. 10 Scope and Limitations ........................................................................................... 11 Chapter Synopsis .................................................................................................. 12

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................... 13 2.0 2.1 2.2 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 13 Green Information Technology Defined ................................................................ 13 Green IT Practices in Organizations ...................................................................... 15 x

2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3 2.3

IT Sourcing Green Practices ........................................................................... 15 IT Operations and Services Green Practices ................................................... 17 IT Equipment End-Of-Life Green Practices ................................................... 20

Energy efficiency compliance Regulators .............................................................. 22 Energy Star .................................................................................................... 22 European Union Energy Label ....................................................................... 24 Bureau of Energy Efficiency .......................................................................... 24 Energy Commission ....................................................................................... 25

2.3.1 2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.4

Drivers and Benefits of Green IT .......................................................................... 26

2.4.1 Economic drivers ................................................................................................ 26 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.5 Regulatory Drivers ......................................................................................... 27 Ethical Drivers ............................................................................................... 28

The Conceptual Framework .................................................................................. 29 Attitude .......................................................................................................... 30 Policy ............................................................................................................ 30 Practice .......................................................................................................... 31 Technology .................................................................................................... 31 Governance .................................................................................................... 32

2.5.1 2.5.2 2.5.3 2.5.4 2.5.5 2.6 2.7

The Green IT Framework explained ...................................................................... 32 Summary ................................................................................................................. 34

CHAPTER THREE: CONTEXT OF STUDY ..................................................................... 35

xi

3.0 3.1 3.2

Introduction .......................................................................................................... 35 IT Products Consumption in Organizations ........................................................... 36 E-Waste in Ghana ................................................................................................. 37

3.2.1 How e-waste gets to Ghana ................................................................................. 38 3.3 3.4 3.5 Policy and Legislation Concerning Environmental issues Ghana ........................... 39 Environmental Protection Agency ......................................................................... 41 Summary .............................................................................................................. 42

CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .......................................................... 43 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 43 Research Design ................................................................................................... 43 Population and Sample .......................................................................................... 44 Sampling Procedure ............................................................................................... 44 Sources of Data ..................................................................................................... 45 Research Instrument .............................................................................................. 45 Administration of Research Instrument ................................................................. 46 Analysis of data .................................................................................................... 46 Summary .............................................................................................................. 47

CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION....................................... 48 5.0 5.1 5.2 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 48 Findings ................................................................................................................ 48 Demographic Data ................................................................................................ 49

xii

5.2.1 5.2.2

Age of Companies ......................................................................................... 49 Industry of Companies ................................................................................... 49

5.2.3 Company Turnover ................................................................................................... 50 5.2.4 Company IT Budget ....................................................................................... 51

5.2.5 Length of Service of Respondents............................................................................. 52 5.2.6 5.3 5.4 Educational level of Respondents ................................................................... 53

Green IT Knowledge ............................................................................................. 53 Environmental Goals ............................................................................................. 54 General Environmental Goals ........................................................................ 54 IT Environmental Goals ................................................................................. 54

5.4.1 5.4.2 5.5

Environment Measurements .................................................................................. 55 Measurement of Carbon footprint................................................................... 55 Measurement of Energy consumption ............................................................ 55 Contracting 3rd Party Environmental Audits ..................................................... 56 Environmental Sourcing of IT Products................................................................. 57 Green IT Services and Operations ......................................................................... 58 Building environmentally friendly server rooms. ............................................ 58

5.5.1 5.5.2 5.5.3 5.6 5.7

5.7.1

Table 5.7.1: Building environmentally friendly server rooms .............................................. 58 5.7.2 5.7.3 5.7.4 Printer Consolidation and Reduction. ............................................................. 59 End user device power management............................................................... 60 Telecommuting Capabilities ........................................................................... 60

xiii

5.7.5 5.7.6 5.7.7 5.8 5.9 5.10

Remote and Video conferencing .................................................................... 61 Storage Consolidation .................................................................................... 62 Server Virtualization ...................................................................................... 62

IT End of Life practices ........................................................................................ 63 Green IT Funding .............................................................................................. 64 Discussions/Critical Analysis ............................................................................ 65

5.10.1 Green IT Awareness ...................................................................................... 65 5.10.2 Policy on Environmental Issues and Green IT ................................................ 67 5.10.3 Green IT Practices in the Organisation ........................................................... 69 5.10.4 IT End of life Management ............................................................................ 73 5.10.5 Benefits or Drivers for Green IT Practices ...................................................... 73 5.10.6 Challenges of Going Green ............................................................................ 74 5.11 5.12 Summary of Descriptive Findings .................................................................. 74 Case Study of Fidelity Bank Limited ................................................................. 75

5.12.1 Company Profile ............................................................................................ 75 5.12.2 ICT Profile of the Bank .................................................................................. 76 5.12.3 How the Bank got into Green IT .................................................................... 77 5.12.3 Green IT Project ............................................................................................ 78 5.12.5 Key Findings from Case Study ....................................................................... 82 CHAPTER SIX ................................................................................................................... 85 SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION............................................ 85

xiv

6.0

Summary .............................................................................................................. 85

6.1 Key Findings ............................................................................................................. 86 6.2 Implication of the Research ................................................................................... 88 Implication for Research ................................................................................ 88

6.2.1

6.2.2 Implication for practitioners and organizations ......................................................... 89 6.2.3 Implication for Policy ............................................................................................... 91 6.2.3 Implication for Future Research ................................................................................ 92 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 94

xv

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background Information Technology since its introduction in the early 1960s into the business environment has evolved from the use of room sized mainframes and minicomputers to more sophisticated and powerful servers used by companies to leverage their operations to attain competitive advantages over their competitors (Ward and Peppard, 2002). Businesses all around the world try to stay on top of the competition by adopting strategies that will keep them ahead of their competitors. Information technology (IT) usage has been mentioned as one of the strategies adopted for creating sustained competitive advantages among firms (Barney, 1991; Clemons; 1991; Feeny and Ives, 1990). For example, General Electric was been able to differentiate its service support from its competitors by means of its answer center technology (Porter and Millar, 1985). Otis Elevator similarly differentiated its service operations thanks to its Otisline system (Balaguer, 1990). In Ghana for example, companies in the telecommunications industry invest hugely in infrastructure as they try to compete to woe in new customers with attractive packages (Akrofi and Akrofi, 2011). In all these cases, the judicious use of IT either reduced these firms' costs of operations or increased their revenues by differentiating their products or services, and therefore created value for the organisation (Ward and Peppard, 2002).

The advantage of IT enabling companies gain competitive advantages over their rivals has led to a lot of money invested in information technology over the years. In 2007 worldwide spending on IT exceeded $2 trillion, this was in spite of struggling US economy at that period (Barrels, 2006). For example, Amazon.com in 1998 spent over $430 million to build a state-of-the-art digital business infrastructure that was meant to link up its distribution centres and give it a huge edge over its competitors in the online book selling and consumer 1

goods business (Applegate, 2009). Currently Facebook with its huge user base is planning to expand its infrastructure and build a $730 million massive server farm in Sweden near the Arctic Circle (Couts, 2011). Although investments in IT infrastructure are meant to improve services to consumers, they come with their own attendant challenges because these IT equipment consume huge amounts of electricity. IT has also revolutionised our possibilities for productivity, efficiency and communication, however, this has come with a great price to the environment. Siegler and Gaughan (2008) indicate that the use of IT/S is exploding, growing two times faster than the Gross World Product and consuming large fractions of business' energy costs. In most cases, more than half of this energy is wasted by inefficient technologies, poorly designed systems, or uninformed behaviours. Research done by Gartner institute in 2008, cited IT as being responsible for 2% of the total global CO2 emissions, equivalent to what the airline industry emits (OECD Workshop, 2008). This alarming report in addition to the current vociferous reports and documentaries on the effect of climate change has seen businesses come under increasing pressure from customers, shareholders and proposed legislative changes to improve their environmental credentials (Molla et al., 2009). This has seen IT professionals in practice and academia come out to find ways to make the manufacture, use and disposal of IT products more environmentally friendly. This approach of finding measures to reduce the impact of IT is known as Green IT.

Green IT practice is important for two reasons; these are Climate change mitigation and corporate social responsibility. Research has established that the escalating climate change is largely due to negative human practices on the planet such as industrial pollution, excessive consumption of oil and electricity, large carbon emissions from small cars to large industrial machines, unchecked felling of trees and many more (IPCC, 1992). Bourne out of these issues, there have been calls for the human populace in the forms of treaties and 2

protocol agreements on climate change (Tolba et al., 1998) to find ways to reduce these negative practices which are quickly killing the planet and the death of the planet will mean the extinction of the human race as we know it (Gore, 1993).

One of the factors that accelerated the importance of environmental issues was the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), popularly known as the Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. As a result of the 19 92 Earth Summit over 160 countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climatic Change. This treaty brought a new awareness of environmental problems and a new sense of urgency that enabled people to be mobilized for environmental causes all over the world (Buchholz, 1998; and Mckinney and Schoch, 1998). Environmental concerns have triggered responses from national governments, community, and industry and consumers (Beaumont, et al., 1993; and Pierre and Prothero, 1997). This has seen rise to a number of initiatives by governments and organisations around the world to engage in best practices which promote the wellbeing of the planet. These green efforts/initiatives have been given the term Green or Eco -sustainability and has spawn a lot of green initiatives such as Green IT, green houses, green cars etc. (Lee and Cheong, 2011).

One will wonder why Africa should bother with world pollution and climate change issues when the whole world is aware that developed countries are the worst culprits of environmental pollution and carbon emissions and should therefore be held accountable (Andrew, 2007). It has been identified that even though much of the emissions and pollution is from the east and west, Africa will surely be affected as high temperatures will lead to desertification and more floods around coastal areas (Zhenqiu and Yi Lin, 2001). Furthermore we have to remember that these large economies started like the developing

countries and now have got to this current stage. In order for us not to compound the current situation in the near future, we deem it imperative that developing countries should adopt Green IT faster than even the developed countries.

As part of corporate strategies, organisations adopt Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) which is defined by International Data Corporation (IDC) as the strategy an organization or business implements in order to behave ethically and contribute to economic and ecological development (IDC, 2008). Green IT concerns are by no means specific to the IT department. In fact, green issues are fragmented and embedded in many areas of a company's ecosystem from its supply chain to production. Most organisations in Europe favour a companywide strategy over a piecemeal approach to comprehensively address sustainability and environment concerns (Martinez, 2008). In survey done by the IDC on European organisations, 61% of respondents said their green IT initiatives were part of a wider CSR project. CSR strategies are becoming more important in Europe, especially as businesses are less easy to differentiate in terms of revenue growth and profit margin calculations (Martinez, 2008).

In Ghana CSR in the mining industry started as a defensive and reactive measure to complaints from community members and the numerous civil society organisations on the adverse effects of mining in their community. However this defensive measure has now turned in to a full time proactive strategy of engagement. Mining companies operating in the country now have designated Community Relations departments, which are involved in a range of community development works such as the funding, environmentally friendly activities like tree planting exercises and supporting of community assistance programmes (Tawiah and Baah, 2010). In 2005, consortium of mining companies in the country (Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, AngloGold Ashanti Limited, Golden Star Resources and

Goldfields Ghana) to build a plant at Tema at a cost of 40 million dollars to supply 80 megawatts of power to supplement the countrys energy generation effort (Chamber of Mines, 2006).

The world today has never been in as much danger from global warming due to greenhouse emissions from factories of big corporations, energy consumption from data centers, to individual energy consumptions (Murugesan, 2008). In spite of a burgeoning list of ecological problems, many people, including the leaders of our most influential organizations, often think of environmental problems as detached from their everyday business lives and behavior patterns (Jenkin et al., 2010).The responsibility of planning to minimise carbon emissions is not just the responsibility of eco-experts and scientists, IT professionals and organisations must take on the responsibility to ensure that their IT operations are environmentally sound (Waheed and Seddon, 2010).

Even though IT is have thought to be relatively clean, the negative environmental impact of IT operations has slowly been increasing within organisations due to the technology push from IT vendors and the pull from the business needs in organisations (Babin and Nicholson, 2011). For example, as more customer transactions are being processed, more powerful CPUs and more storage are being required to store and process data, these will require building of power hungry server farms as companies like Google and Facebook have been doing (Associated Press, 2011).

To ensure that organisations are able to effectively institute measures to reduce impact of IT on the environment, they should be equipped with best practices and strategies of doing so. With the rapid run up of energy costs and a broadening awareness of the impact of global

climate change, IT organizations are looking for strategies to offset rising costs and to use technology in ways that reduce their environmental impact. Leading organizations are implementing innovative solutions that reduce their utility bills and green their procurement practices. Some key benefits organisations have gained in North America are reduced energy consumption, decreased consumables usage; these lead to cost savings for the organisations as well as enhancing their operational processes and effectiveness with the implementation of features like server virtualisation (info tech, 2010; Osch and Avital, 2010). Further examples are that of Dell and Wal-Mart who are asking their suppliers to take measures to green up their products and their manufacturing processes. They force their suppliers to behave environmentally sound practices. It is argued that in the next five years, the inevitable result is that most of the companies will offer a range of new product and services, and new business opportunities will emerge (Ozturk et al., 2011). Our focus is to find measures to reduce the impact of IT on the environment in Ghana.

1.2

Research Problem

Several studies have been done on Green IT by scholars and researchers all over the world from different angles such as E -readiness to G-readiness (Molla et al., 2008);Green IT and Organisational Learning (Cooper and Molla, 2008); and Green IT Principles and Practices (Murugesan, 2008).

The studies cover a number of countries including developed nations like, Australia (Molla et al. 2008; Molla, 2008); United Kingdom (Mayers et al., 2002; Baharum and Pitt, 2009); United States of America (Grove et al., 1996; Kassaye, 2001): Norway(Vik and Farstad, 2009); Hong Kong (Lee, 2008a); South Korea (Lee, 2008b); and developing countries like India (Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007) and Turkey (Ozturk et al., 2011). Some practitioners have started Green IT initiative projects in USA (Tuhaus Computer Services, 2009; 6

Hewlett-Packard, 2009; Salter, 2010) and in Europe (Martinez et al., 2008). However as seen above, most of these research are concentrated in developed economies with very little work done in Africa and other developing economies. The studies on Green IT in Africa have focused on Obstacles in going green in Africa (Tantawi et al., 2009) which looks at the challenges Egypt has encounted in trying to go green. The study identified the obstacles from the Government side and the consumer opinion and identified that religion, government enforcement of rules and regulations, culture, education, and economic conditions were the main obstacles for going green. The other research was on preliminary insights into Green IT practices in Ghana (Boateng et al., 2010).

The above research review emphasizes a number of gaps for future research.

The first as noticed from the list of Green IT authors above, the paucity of research work done on this topic in Sub-Saharan Africa has necessitated the undertaking of this paper to address this shortfall.

The second is that a similar conference paper presented by Boateng et al. (2010) attempted to address the shortfall. The paper focused on a survey of Green IT practices of 17 sampled companies in Ghana. In their findings they identified low awareness on Green IT on the IT professionals in the firms surveyed as well as well as no strategic perspective on Green IT. The findings in the paper were believed to be preliminary and will therefore require a much larger sample to make it more representative. They also identified a need for practically testing the content and construct validity of the three dimensions of Green IT (sourcing, operation and service, and IT end-of-life management) and developing and testing either an antecedent or causal model of Green IT adoption.

Thirdly Mollas Green IT framework, G-readiness was used only in Australia and is yet to be tested in an African context. Current knowledge is therefore based on study in Australia and hence the need to test it in the Ghanaian context (Molla et al., 2008).

We also find a gap in a paper by Ozturk et al. (2011) who wrote from a developing countrys perspective in Turkey. Their work however reviewed academic as well as practitioner perspectives on Green ICT. The paper was therefore based on the technical details of going green and the various ways in implementing green IT. The gap was that no effort was made to compare the Green strategies thoroughly discussed in their paper to the activities in Turkish organisations.

From the above, Green IT in a developing country like Ghana tends to be an emerging and growing area for research. Green IT spans across a wide area such as Information systems, adoption, learning and practice. The focus of this research is in response of the paucity of research on Green IT in Ghana and sub Saharan African.

1.3

Research Purpose and Objectives

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Ghanaian firms are managing their consumption of IT and other electrical and electronic products in order to reduce their impact on the environment. To achieve this research purpose, the research will aim at addressing the following specific objectives: 1. Explore the awareness and knowledge Ghanaian firms have on Green IT. 2. Explore the specific environmental goals or Green IT policies exist in Ghanaian firms.

3. Explore the Green IT practices which exist in Ghanaian firms, particularly in sourcing, operations and the end-of-life of IT and other electronic and electrical equipment. 4. Explore the benefits being obtained by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies. 5. Explore the challenges faced by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies.

1.4

Research Questions

The primary question of this study is how are Ghanaian firms are managing their consumption of IT and other electrical and electronic products in order to reduce their impact on the environment? To answer these questions the following sub-questions are outlined: 1. What knowledge do Ghanaian firms have on Green IT? 2. What specific environmental goals or Green IT policies exist in Ghanaian firms? 3. What Green IT practices exist in Ghanaian firms, particularly in sourcing, operations and the end-of-life of IT and other electronic and electrical equipment? 4. What benefits are being obtained by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies? 5. What are the challenges faced by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies?

1.5

Proposed Methodology

Our study is built on a similar one undertaken by Boateng et al. (2010). However, their study was limited to 17 companies and this research study intends to increase the number of companies and examine the attitude, policies and practice these companies have in relation to Green IT. We shall adapt a modified version of the Green IT readiness framework by Molla et al. (2008) in building the conceptual framework. A mixed methods approach comprising of 2 case studies and a survey of 100 organizations will be used to develop a 9

rich understanding of how Ghanaian firms managing their consumption of IT and other electrical and electronic products in order to reducing their impact on the environment.

In the case study, interviews, observation and published firm and industry reports will also be used to understand how green practices are formulated and implemented in two firms. Questionnaires will be designed and distributed to the sampled companies in the survey. The 60 organisations are sampled across various industries including Information and Communication Technology, Manufacturing, Finance and Banking, Mining, SMEs and government agencies. The approach to analysing the case study is primarily the use of pattern-matching logic as discussed by Yin (1994). In analysing the quantitative data, descriptive statistical analysis will be used.

1.6

Significance of the Research

The significance of the research can be explored along three strands research, practice and policy. Concerning research, this research is responds to the research gap in the area of Green Information Technology research in Ghana and Africa and will also be a good source of reference for students and researchers who will want to do more research in the area of Green IT in Africa.

Concerning practice this research will develop Green IT implementation checklists which could be a guide for IT/IS practitioners who want to implement or measure their level of Green IT implementation within their Organisations. It could also be used by top management in organisations to integrate Green IT into their strategic corporate plans since customers are now fast becoming environmentally aware of the need to protect the planet and hence will rather do business with companies who are seen to be environmentally 10

friendly in carrying out their businesses. This research is meant to show the current Green IT implementation stage of sampled Organisations in Ghana and this will aid the international community in their quest to classify Ghanas position in the Green IT revolution that is sweeping the world.

Concerning the significance of the study to policy, the research could also have some benefits to the Government, since it could be used by the Ministry of Science and Environment as a policy formulation guide when formulating Green IT Policies for the Country, especially on the issue of e-waste from IT usage. Development agencies especially those involved in environmental issues could also make use of this research to advise them especially those interested in making sure IT equipment are properly disposed of.

1.7

Scope and Limitations

To carry out the research a survey was done on 60 sampled organisations in Accra. Due to the nature of the topic there was the need to have a fair representation of companies across industries. For the reason of time constraint and ease of data collection sampled population were limited to organisation in Accra. None of the organisations will be selected outside the Greater Accra Region. The research looks at Green IT practices and so issues with Green IS will not be reviewed.

Some of the respondents did not reply to the questionnaires distributed whilst others left out some questions unanswered, especially when they questions touched on financial information or when questions were not well understood by respondents. The study will focus on IT Professionals, Chief Information Officer, Heads of IT departments, Systems Analysts and other persons in charge of IT infrastructure in their various organisations. 11

These respondents are targeted because of the nature of the study which looks at environmental sustainable practices using IT equipment. The study will focus on the green IT procurement, use and disposal of IT equipment but will not delve into other environmentally sustainable practices that are not directly related to information technology usage. For example, renewable energy, solar technology, wind technology, planting of trees etc.

1.8

Chapter Synopsis

The entire dedication is divided into six (6) chapters. The first chapter will cover the introduction to Green IT, the research problem, objectives and research questions, proposed methodology, significance of the research and scope and limitations of the study. Chapter two seeks to review available literature pertaining to Green IT research and practice around the world. A Green IT conceptual framework will also be developed in this chapter to put the study in perspective. In chapter three (3) the context of the study is discussed. Chapter four (4) shows how the study was done by looking at the Research methodology used in the study. In Chapter five (5) the findings of the study will be documented and analysed and evaluated with respect to the conceptual framework of the research to answer the research questions stated in chapter one. Finally Chapter six presents concluding recommendations on the Green IT practice and the way forward for this research.

12

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION Arguably, it is has been noted that global warming tends to be the most severe threat to humanity and it poses a challenge which is imminent and uncertain at the same time (Gore, 1993; Ospina and Heeks, 2010). In order to curtail and control the impact of global warming, various international treaties and agreements have been negotiated and signed in order to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide so that hopefully further global warming can be slowed down (Tolba et al., 1998). So where does Information technology fit in? Information Technology has revolutionised our possibilities for productivity, efficiency and communication however IT has had some environmental consequences. The research institute Gartner has estimated, that by now IT is responsible for 2% of the total global CO2 emissions equivalent to what the airline industry emits (Lebech, 2008). As a result, measures to reduce impact of IT on the environment are increasingly becoming a primary concentration of technology professionals, producers, vendors and consumers. These measures are conceptualized as Green IT practices and policies. This chapter seeks to review current research approaches in Green IT and develop a model for analysing the Green IT practices in organizations. 2.1 Green Information Technology Defined

The relatively new concept of green or sustainable IT which was introduced in the academic arena in the early 1997 has gone through several evolutions which have seen several proposed definitions for it by various scholars. Initially green IT referred mainly to the energy efficiency of data centres and other equipment (Murugesan, 2008). From thereon, more holistic approaches have been adopted to include environmental effects on a wider scale (Molla, 2008). While the earliest definitions have used IT or ICT, there is also a call for green information systems, which is entailed to be even more holistic approach (Boudreau et al., 2008). However, it still seems that Green IT, ICT and IS definitions are 13

not distinct neither in academic writing nor in business practice. This research study shall briefly examine some of these proposed definitions and settle on one for the paper.

Murugesan (2008), in a research study on green IT principles and practices, defines the field of green computing or Green IT as the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systemsefficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment . This definition takes a broad view covering the four key processes in the lifecycle of computing, networking and communications systems. Thus, the conduct of these processes should have with minimal or no impact on the environment. Elliot (2007) also defined Green IT through its life cycle as the design, production, operation and disposal of ICT and ICT enabled products and services in a manner that is not harmful and may be positively beneficial to the environment during the course of its whole-of-life (Elliot, 2007, p. 107). This view takes into account the fact that the equipment should become less harmful to the environment and that the technology can also be used to do something that creates greater benefit in other industries. The above definitions tend to focus on the activities in the lifecycle of ICT products. On the other hand, other definitions tend to rather highlight the purpose of Green IT. Loeser et al. (2011) defined Green IT as the systematic application of practices that enable the minimization of the environmental impact of IT, support the superior goal of corporate sustainability, maximize efficiency and allow for company-wide emission reductions based on technological innovations. Thus, the design, production, operation and disposal of ICT products should not just have with minimal or no impact on the environment but also support a superior goal of corporate sustainability. This may be considered as a business imperative than an environmental imperative.

14

A holistic but yet quite detailed view to Green IT is taken in the original work of Molla et al. (2009). According to them Green IT is a systematic application of environ mental sustainability criteria to the design, production, sourcing, use and disposal of the IT technical infrastructure as well as within the human and managerial components of the IT infrastructure in order to reduce IT, business process and supply chain related emissions and waste and improve energy efficiency. (Molla, Cooper, & Pittayachawan, 2009, p. 4) This view accounts for both technology and the human use of it, of which latter is excluded from Green IT in narrower definitions. Thus this definition actually approaches the definition of Green IS. This definition is used in this research.

2.2

Green IT Practices in Organizations

A firms readiness to GIT is reflected in the extent to which green and sustainability policies are developed throughout an organization and infuse the value chain (Boateng et al. 2010). Extant research has reviewed and posited three value chain areas for consideration in assessing the extent of GIT adoption and use in organizations. The value chain areas cover, IT sourcing, IT operations and services, and IT end-of-life management (Molla et al., 2008). They present a comprehensive perspective of the lifecycle of IT products and services in organizations. This research study will explore these practices within an organizational context. 2.2.1 IT Sourcing Green Practices Green IT sourcing practice captures the extent to which environmental considerations are factored in IT and other purchasing decisions. This practice might vary from one where there is no environmental consideration to a case where environmental considerations are given higher weight (Info~Tech, 2007a). Consumer buying habits are increasingly driven by 15

ethical concerns. Green issues may not only have an impact on consumer buying power, but also affect how both the public and private sector award competitive tenders (Whitby, 2007). A comprehensive green sourcing effort should also assess how a company fundamentally sources of items for its operations, products and services. The starting point is an analysis of the environmental foot print of an IT hardware supply chain and reexamining vendor and service provider selection processes to incorporate their green practices (such as recyclable design and packaging for manufacturers) and social concerns (such as use of child labour and presence of harmful materials in IT supply chain) (Molla et al., 2008). Generally though, green sourcing revolves around evaluating the environmental behaviour of suppliers and partnering with suppliers to improve their performance (Rao and Holt, 2005). Green sourcing practices also include advocating the use of green technologies during request for proposal processes and shortening IT equipment refresh periods to gain access to energy efficient equipment (Info~Tech 2007b). The involvement of suppliers is a critical element of Green IT sourcing practice (Rao and Holt, 2005). Incorporating these measures in to IT procurement decisions can help companies generate benefits in cost reduction goals and can also contribute to a better public image and reputation with stakeholders (Christensen et al., 2008).

Molla (2008) further went on to examine some of the negative environmental impacts of IT equipment which include energy-intensive production methods, wasteful packaging, poor recycling practice and heavy use of hazardous practice (Info~Tech 2007c). Therefore pursuing environmentally preferred purchasing policy enables organisations to adopt a more sustainable sourcing strategy. For example, if an organization has a policy that favours acquiring laptops over desktops, that organization is demonstrating a commitment to Green

16

IT. Estimates indicate that selecting an efficient laptop and operating it efficiently can reduce energy use by 98 - 99% (Molla, 2008).

Another approach to reducing energy costs within organizations is through rightsizing IT equipment to match near-term requirements. Organization should prioritise IT equipment investment to be consistent to their needs. In addition to lowering IT investment in fixed assets, rightsizing IT equipment is estimated to reduce energy consumption by as much as 50% (Info~Tech, 2007d). This is due to the fact that fixed losses in power and cooling are present regardless of how much IT load is actually being used.

In summary, Green IT sourcing entails the following practices: 1. Analysis of the environmental footprint of the firm's IT supplies: a. Identify non-energy efficient ICT products and processes; b. Re-examining supplier/vendor selection processes to incorporate green practices and social concerns; and c. Educating and Partnering with suppliers to improve Green Readiness.

2. Incorporating Green Policies and Goals in Sourcing/procurement strategies: a. Sourcing Green technologies or energy efficient technologies; and b. Rightsizing IT equipment to match near-term requirements.

2.2.2 IT Operations and Services Green Practices Green IT operation practices can range from clients through servers and people to network critical physical infrastructure (NCPI). At the client level, using Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), IT managers not only can reduce power consumption by slowing down processors, spinning down hard disks and shutting off monitors but also 17

reduce a firms environmental footprint (Info~Tech, 2007a). However, arguably few businesses implement these practices. Other operational actions to reduce power consumption include retiring systems, operating existing systems in an efficient manner; and migrating to more energy efficient platforms (for example using blade servers) (Rasmussen, 2006). In addition to supporting Green IT by purchasing green hardware equipment and software to reduce energy cost and consumption, companies can also cultivate Green IT practices the way employees use IT (Baines, 2007). Educating employees on hibernating, putting computers to sleep mode or substituting screen savers for screen power-off may contribute to reducing energy consumption and costs. Since behaviour is sometimes difficult to monitor, some organizations tend to automatically control institute these measures through a group policy on power management (Forrestor, 2009).

On the other hand, organizations can also use virtualisation software to reduce the number of computing systems in use and cut the overall environmental impact. Virtualisation software enables applications to run concurrently wherever theres room for them. Reducing the amount of computing systems in use releases space and liberates the redundant systems for reuse or recycling (Tebbutt, 2009). Info-Tech (2010) research suggests that server virtualisation can reduce one-time and on-going hardware acquisition costs by 40% to 75%, as well as reduce on-going maintenance costs (incorporating power and cooling) by between 25% and 50%. Further, reducing the number of IT equipment opens the door for proper airflow management. According to Pacific Gas and Electric (pG&e), proper airflow management can increase the cooling capacity of a Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) system by 50% or more (Info~Tech, 2009). Therefore building server rooms with a floor layout with facilitate efficient airflow management will save a lot in energy consumed and cost. Despite the 18

benefits of virtualisation, there are also the need upgrade or retire legacy systems for new energy efficient systems may be more cost-effective. Legacy systems may have inefficient power supplies, excessive heat output, and uneconomical design, which contribute to an increase in maintenance costs (Bisbal et al., 1999). Developing migration plans for all IT equipment will ensure that IT is always running the most efficient and up-to-date configurations.

Other Green IT practices include printer management and telecommuting/virtual offices (Trepant et al., 2010). Concerning printer management, there are potential cost reductions in efficient printing management. These include reducing wasted paper, ink, and toner. Printing management practices include switching from desktop printers to departmental printers, implementing double-sided printing, using lower weight/recycled paper for draft print jobs, recycling printer cartridges with refill toners/inks and limiting the use of colour printing (Info~Tech, 2009). Concerning telecommuting, organisations can use web meetings, webinars and basic video-conferencing applications like Skype and iChat to conduct effective business meetings (Tebbutt, 2009). A good example is Skype, launched in Europe in 2003 but acquired three years ago by eBay, and later bought in 2012 by Microsoft, offers free voice and video calling between Internet-connected computers

running the Skype software and equipped with microphone and speakers or a plug-in telephone headset (Blackwell, 2009). Even though Skype offers free services for individuals it has special packages for Business. For example, at Brightstorm Inc., a San Francisco start-up that produces distance learning videos for high school SAT and ACT students and streams them over the Internet, Skype is a strategic tool. Its not the only phone service they use, but its vital. Brightstorm recruits charis matic, personable classroom teachers from all over the United States to teach its video courses. With prospects outside the Bay area, the selection process culminates in a Skype video call in which the teacher auditions. 19

You can imagine the investment of time and dollars if we had to fly to Boston or Denver to meet these people in person to evaluate if they were great teachers, said co -founder and CEO Jeff Marshall (Blackwell, 2009).

In summary, Green IT Operations and Services entail the following practices: 1. Appropriate policy to guide employee behaviour and govern IT usage 2. Workstation efficiency 3. Server consolidation and virtualization 4. Floor layout and airflow management 5. Appropriate upgrade cycles for legacy systems 6. Optimizing printer management 7. Adopting Telecommuting/virtual offices/Remote Conferencing

2.2.3 IT Equipment End-Of-Life Green Practices IT End-of-Life green practices refers to the policies and regulations related to the disposal and settlement of IT equipment/machineries in organizations. It also refers to the compliance of IT equipment/machinery manufactures, users, and resellers in Green IT endof-life management. In terms of IT manufacturers, issues concerning Green IT end-of-life management would be whether the IT equipment and/or packaging is reusable because to crush and/or burn these IT equipment/materials could harm the environment (Alsever, 2008). For example, when a customer purchases an Apple computer or monitor, the company will provide free recycling services to handle the custome rs old computer or monitor, regardless of the manufacturer (Apple, 2008). IT users would prefer to deal with computer suppliers who take in broken and unwanted IT equipment. For example, users are encouraged to consider selling their unwanted equipment through the CellForCash.com for 20

recycling, whereby unwanted items will be refurbished and resold (Alsever, 2008). Domestic end-of-life options include; sell privately second-hand, give to family and friends, store within the home, return to retailers and manufacturers, take to local authority civic amenity sites as scrap for recycling, and dispose of as waste (Meyer et al., 2009). For Business end-of-life- options; transfer or sell to employees, dispose of as waste, donate to public institutions, charities and schools, sell to second-hand brokers, return to manufacturers or distributors and store in offices or warehouse (Landale et al., 2004). Nonetheless, there are other options such as refilling of toners and cartridges, waste paper recycling and refurbishment for reuse (Zendergroup, 2011).

Another issue of concern is e-waste. E-waste is waste electronic equipment - discarded computers, monitors, printers, disks, mobile phones and batteries. Every year some 20-50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated (Basel, 2006). E-waste is an issue because it is not just garbage but contains a lot of hazardous materials - noxious gases, deionised water, lead, mercury, cadmium, PVC, ferrous materials and various oxides (Mohamad, 2003). It is dangerous to discard electronic equipment as if it were normal garbage because of the byproducts and wasteful because a lot of the materials could be reused or recycled. There are various ways to tackle the e-waste problem like recycling, refurbishing and reducing. Companies should recycle their equipment instead of stockpiling it. Companies may stockpile because they dont know how to dispose of the equipment properly, or they believe that they might to use the equipment in the future or they hope to sell it (Velte et al., 2008). Professional recyclers may be of help. They can dispose of hazardous materials so that they wont harm the environment and all remaining recyclable parts are shipped out manufacturers so they can be used again (Greiner, 2008).

21

Refurbishing, in contrast to recycling, is about bringing the hardware to an acceptable working condition. Refurbishing could be a good solution in reducing e-waste as it may help those who cannot afford to buy a computer - poor families, schools with low budgets, third world countries (Velte et al., 2008).

In summary, Green IT Equipment End-Of-Life entails the practices including: 1. Appropriate Disposal of Computing Equipment a. Transfer, sell or donation 2. Refurbishment for reuse/resell or donation 3. Waste Paper Recycling

2.3

Energy efficiency compliance Regulators

2.3.1 Energy Star IT sourcing cannot be fully treated without looking at the Energy Star initiative of the United States of Americas Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Star is an international standard for energy efficient consumer products originated in the United States of America. It was created in 1992 by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration (EPA, USA). Since then, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the European Union have adopted the program. Devices carrying the Energy Star service mark, such as computer products and peripherals, kitchen appliances, buildings and other products, generally use 20% 30% less energy than required by federal standards (Tugend, 2008). Initiated as a voluntary labelling program designed to identify and promote energy efficient products, Energy Star began with labels for computer and printer products. In 1995 the program was significantly expanded, introducing labels for residential heating and cooling 22

systems and new homes (Energy star, 2011). As of 2006, more than 40,000 Energy Star products are available in a wide range of items including major appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more. In addition, the label can also be found on new homes and commercial and industrial buildings. In 2006, about 12 percent of new housing in the United States was labelled Energy Star (EPA-USA, 2008).

The EPA estimates that it saved about $14 billion in energy costs in 2006 alone. The Energy Star program has helped spread the use of LED traffic lights,

efficient fluorescent lighting, power management systems for office equipment, and low standby energy use (Energy star, 2012). Energy Star specifications differ with each item, and are set by either the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Energy, USA. The following are some of the products that Energy star applies to. Computers, Servers, Appliances, Heating and Cooling systems, Home electronics, imaging systems, lightening and new homes (Energy Star, 2012).

The USA Federal government to show how serious it is towards Green IT not only empowered the EPA to implement the Energy Star program and other related ones like the FEMP (Federal Energy management Program) directed all its Agencies through The Energy Policy Act of 2005, to buy either Energy Saving (ES) products, or products designated as energy efficient by the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) (Huang, 2010). The Energy Star initiative is not implemented only in the United States but can be found in other countries, like Japan (eccj.or.jp), Australia

(energystar.gov.au), Taiwan (energystar.org.tw), Canada (oee.nrcan.gh.ca), and Norway (energystar.no).

23

2.3.2 European Union Energy Label An European Union (EU) version of energy star is the European Union energy label. It was directed by the EU directive 92/75/EC, to establish an energy consumption labelling scheme (Europa.eu). The directive was implemented by several other directives thus most white goods, light bulb packaging and cars must have an EU Energy Label clearly displayed when offered for sale or rent. The energy efficiency of the appliance is rated in terms of a set of energy efficiency classes from A to G on the label, A being the most energy efficient, G the least efficient. The labels also give other useful information to the customer as they choose between various models. The information should also be given in catalogues and included by internet retailers on their websites. The EU energy labelling covered, Refrigerating appliances washing machines and tumble dryers, dish washers, ovens, water heaters and hot water storage appliances, air conditioners , light bulbs, television, and cars (Europa, 2012). One of the major differences between Energy Star and EU labelling is that Energy Star incorporated computing products like servers, computers, printers and storage devices (Energy star, 2012).

2.3.3 Bureau of Energy Efficiency Energy saving initiatives are not limited to developed countries, developing countries too seeing the need to save cost on energy consumption also appear greener have setup Agencies specifically to handle energy efficiency issues. One such is the Bureau of Energy Efficiency in India. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency is an agency of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Power created in March 2002 under the provisions of the nation's 2001 Energy Conservation Act. The agency's function is to develop programs which will increase the conservation and efficient use of energy in India (beeindia.nic.in).The government has proposed to make it mandatory for all appliances in India 24

to have ratings by the BEE starting in January 2010 (stify, 2009). The mission of Bureau of Energy Efficiency is to "institutionalize" energy efficiency services, enable delivery mechanisms in the country and provide leadership to energy efficiency in all sectors of the country. The primary objective would be to reduce energy intensity in the economy.

2.3.4 Energy Commission In Ghana the Agency set up by government to oversee all energy issues is the Energy Commission. The commission is a Statutory body corporate with a common seal established by an Act of the Ghanaian Parliament, the Energy Commission Act, 1997 (ACT 541) (Energy Commission, 2010).

The Commission has the following functions: a) To recommend national policies for the development and utilization of indigenous energy resources b) To advice the Minister responsible for Energy on national policies for the efficient and safe supply of electricity, natural gas, and petroleum products having regard to the economy; c) To provide the legal, regulatory and supervisory framework for providers of energy in Ghana(i.e. licensing, prescription of uniform rules of practice by legislative instrument, inspection, monitoring and compliance of rules); d) To prepare, review and update from time to time indicative national plans to ensure that all reasonable demands for energy are met; e) To secure a comprehensive database for national decision making as regards the development and utilization of energy resources available to the nation; f) To promote competition in the energy market and enforce standards of performance.

25

The Energy Commissions mission is to provide leadership and collaborate with our clients the leading energy providers such as Volta River Authority (VRA), Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Bulk Oil Storage (BOST), Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ghana Grid Company and Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to effectively and efficiently create an enabling environment for excellence and fair competition in energy service delivery.

As a regulatory body the Energy Commission encourages building energy efficiency standards and insists on energy efficient appliances. This it has done through the enactment of L.I 1815 namely Energy Efficiency Standards and Labeling (Non-ducted Air Conditioners and self-ballasted Fluorescent Lamps) Regulations, 2005. The Commission has also enacted the Electricity Distribution and Supply (Technical and Operational) Rules,2005 (LI 1816) which specifies the rules of practice for electricity distribution service providers (Energy Commission, 2010).

2.4

Drivers and Benefits of Green IT

There are three drivers of Green IT that can be identified; these are economical, regulatory and ethical. Even though these drivers are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the content and process of Green IT initiatives can be influenced by the dominant driver which can favour certain Green IT practices (Molla, 2008). 2.4.1 Economic drivers Economic drivers of Green IT refers to the need for increased IT efficiency and the quest of tangible cost savings from IT operations (Molla, 2008). The expansion of global business and networks and the need to setup redundant networks to comply with regulations and to meet business continuity strategies is leading to a dazzling rise in stored data. The volume of corporate data has surpassed one million terabytes in 2007 and is expected to reach a zeta byte by 2010 (IDC in Brocade, 2007). More data implies larger server farms and more 26

demand for power. In the life of a typical data centre, the cost of powering and cooling the data centre is estimated to exceed both the cost of the IT and the electrical equipment (Rasmussen, 2006). As corporate demand for more data processing and storage capability continues to grow, real estate costs to accommodate those needs is becoming an additional challenge (Brocade, 2007). The need for reducing the power, cooling and real estate costs and increasing data centre efficiency might drive some organisations to turn to Green IT (Rasmussen, 2006; Info~Tech 2007d). For example, Data Domain, a provider of data deduplication storage systems uses Green IT design to reduce the cost of data centres (Intel, 2007). Efficiency drivers can lead to Green IT initiatives that yield tangible, near term cost savings. Some of these include electrical power usage analysis, analysis of electrical bill, server virtualisation, retiring energy consuming and idle systems, PC power saving plans, and redesign of data centre architecture (Info~Tech, 2007c; Info~Tech, 2007d; Accenture, 2008). It can also lead to the adoption of fleet management systems and dynamic routing of vehicles to reduce the cost of transportation.

2.4.2 Regulatory Drivers Di Maggio and Power (1983), referred to regulatory drivers of Green IT as the pursuit of legitimacy within the wider social context. The emphasis here is on actions that are encouraged because of the need to meet certain regulatory (mandatory and voluntary) demands. Various number of National, professional and inter-governmental institutions are producing guidelines related to Green ICTs. Some of such bodies are the Commonwealth of Australia Green Office Guide (Common wealth of Australia, 2001), United States of Americas Environmental Protection Agency initiative to study energy use in data centres (Mullins, 2006); Australian Computer Societys (ACS) policy statement on Green ICT (ACS, 2007); European Commission directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). While at the moment, compliance to these and other regulations is 27

voluntary, this is likely to change as more and more organisations set national emission targets and join carbon trading schemes (Mines and Davis, 2007). In the US and EU, ITs environmental footprint and substances used in manufacturing hardware, and electronic waste is coming under increasing spotlight. As legislations become enforceable, they motivate the adoption of certain Green IT practices despite a businesss lack of intention to do so. The predominance of regulatory drivers can lead to minimalist strategy to Green IT adoption. It can encourage Green IT activities such as IT carbon foot print analysis, environmentally preferable IT procurement practices, IT end of life management and increasing the proportion of green power use. 2.4.3 Ethical Drivers Ethical driver refers to good corporate citizenship through the pursuit of socially responsible business practices (Molla, 2008). The permeation of the green movement through every aspect of our lives has caused businesses to increasingly seek social recognition as concerned entities of global and local communities (Mines and Davis, 2007). Some organisations use Social Corporate Responsibility initiatives to capture the minds and share of their key stakeholders such as investors, consumers and the general public (Sen et al., 2006), some even have it in their mission statements. For example, Dell indicates in its social responsibility on the environment on its website that Through innovations in

packaging, energy efficiency and e-recycling, were giving our customers the power to do more while consuming less to minimize their eco-footprint (Dell, 2012). It is indicated by Nunn (2007) that a growing proportion of consumers and investors consider the environmental awareness of a business in their decision to conduct business and buy shares respectively with companies. He further adds that more than 70% of MBA students from top schools are willing to accept a 10-20% lower salary to work for responsible companies. In the past Corporate Social Responsibility was seen as means of damage control and public 28

relation exercise; however this has changed in current times, with it now considered a strategic issue with immense potential to unleash new source of competitive differential (Porter and Kramer, 2006). For example, a global survey of 1260 respondents indicated that 50% are concerned about climate change (Info~Tech, 2008). Another survey of about 150 IT procurement professionals indicates that for some (33%) environmental concerns in planning IT operations are very important and for others (52%) it is somehow important (Mitchell, 2008). Ethical drivers of Green IT can lead to Green IT preferences that associate a business to socially accepted norms of going green such as reducing emission, recycling, reuse and electronic waste management (Mines and Davis, 2007; Sen et al., 2006). In summary, economic, ethical and regulatory drivers can determine the basic motives for Green IT adoption and practice. The locus of the force, whether internal or external or both however depends on a businesss technological, organisational and environmental contexts and on its readiness for Green IT. While businesses that have a better profile of readiness are expected to pull Green IT adoption perhaps driven by economic and ethical considerations, those that lack readiness are likely to come under push pressure or legal and statutory requirements.

2.5

The Conceptual Framework

In carrying out this research study, a conceptual framework was adapted from Molla et al. (2008) and adapted to fit the study. This is the G-readiness framework which was also adopted the concept from e-readiness frameworks, extant literature on Green IT and on research in sustainable business practice and CSR. This research, in adapting the framework, incorporates Green IT practices in sourcing, operating and end-of-life of IT products as discussed in the previous sections.

29

Within the g-readiness framework we conceptualise g-readiness as an organisations capacity to implement holistic Green IT principles, policies and practices. G-readiness represents a combination of five drivers that enable enterprises to deploy environmentally sustainable IT and IT processes that are focused, accountable and measurable. It is a measure of a companys IT preparedness to support its initiatives in the low carbon landscape (Molla et al., 2008). The model proposes that there are at least five important drivers greening IT attitude, policy, practice, technology and governance which together create the critical quality called G-readiness.

2.5.1 Attitude Attitude refers to the affective characteristics of both business and IT leaders and professionals. It measures the extent to which both IT and business professions in organisations are aware and interested about the economical, strategic, regulatory, environmental and social concerns related to the use of IT. Whether an individual joins the green movement, is dependent on subjective motivation and subjective capability (Galtung, 1986). While investigating the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviour, Chan and Yam (1995) reported that people tended to be convinced more through emotional appeal than a logical reasoning when the harmful effects of environmental pollution are being conveyed to them. On this basis, whether or not an organisation takes Green IT issues seriously will be dependent on (at least partially), IT and business leaders sentiment to environmental concerns.

2.5.2 Policy Policy readiness measures the extent to which green and sustainability policies are developed throughout an organisation and permeate the value chain. For example, most IT companies do not have any policy supporting the philosophy of Green IT (Pearlman n.d.). 30

Three value chain areas can be considered to assess the extent of policy readiness - IT sourcing, IT operations and services and IT end-of-life management. Arguably, the lack of policies at the firm-level may be a reflection of the lack of the Green IT policies at the national-level. Thus, if there are no industry policy requirements firms may have no guidelines to follow.

2.5.3 Practice The policy dimension of g-readiness captures the intellectual dimension of g-readiness. However, not all policies are implemented smoothly and organisations might vary in the actual implementation of their policies. Practice readiness measures to what extent an organisation has translated its concerns and policies into actions. A businesss green practice along its value chain from inbound to reverse logistics influences g-readiness (Rao and Holt, 2005).

2.5.4 Technology Green IT is also about acquiring more environmentally effective (greener) technologies. A key driver of g-readiness success in the area of technology is to build a green technological infrastructure. This includes both NCPI, such as power supplies and IT infrastructure (Brocade, 2007; Rasmussen, 2006). Rossi (2007), highlights that businesses and countries spend billions of dollars each year to power computers. This creates a bad image for IT as being energy-consuming and bad for the environment. RMIT University, which claims to be leading Australian universities in green electric power consumption, is incrementally moving to buy more green power from 2% in 2007 to 15% in 2008 to 20% in 2010. Some of the commonly adopted green technologies include server virtualisation, IT recycling, data centre energy optimisation and rightsizing IT equipment (Info~Tech, 2007c; 2007d).

31

To measure their g-readiness along the technology dimension, organisations can look at the green IT practices described at the previous section.

2.5.5 Governance Governance refers to the management infrastructure to implement Green IT. It is the operating model that defines the administration of Green IT initiatives. Gartners (2008) case study reveals that Green IT requires sound management infrastructure to understand impacts, prioritise actions and manage the enterprises responses. Roles, responsibilities, accountability and control for Green IT initiatives need to be clearly established. Should a business assign the responsibility for Green IT initiatives to CIOs, or should it come under environmental managers? Should IT organisations be held responsible for electricity costs and accountable for energy efficiency? Answers to these and similar questions define the governance dimension of Green IT.

2.6

The Green IT Framework explained

Below is the new construct for the Green IT which we shall use for the study.
Reexamining supplier/vendor selection processes to incorporate green practices and social concerns; Educating and Partnering with suppliers to improve Green Readiness; Sourcing Green technologies or energy efficient technologies; and Rightsizing IT equipment to match near-term requirements Appropriate policy to guide employee behaviour and govern IT usage; Workstation efficiency; Server consolidation and virtualization; Floor layout and airflow management Appropriate upgrade cycles for legacy systems; Optimizing printer management Adopting Telecommuting/virtual offices

Sourcing
Awareness/ Attitude

GREEN IT
Policy/ Governance Practice/ Technology

Service and Operating

End-of-life Management

Figure 1: Green IT Framework

Legend Formally Defined Strategies towards GIT Informally Defined or Non-Defined Strategies Defined towards GIT

Appropriate Disposal of Computing Equipment Refurbishment for reuse/resell or donation Waste Paper Recycling Refills and Recycling of Printer Ink

32

The above diagram depicts the Green IT Framework used in this research. In the diagram, two types of arrows are used, the straight green arrow and the broken blue arrow. The green arrow depicts formally defined strategies towards Green IT in an organisation. The blue broken arrow depicts informal defined or non-defined strategies defined towards Green IT. This implies that Green IT could be a formally defined strategy in an organisation where policies are set out to government the purchasing, use and disposal of IT equipment to minimise negative impact on the environment. This is illustrated in the diagram where formal strategies are defined for each life cycle of the IT products; sourcing, service and operating and End of life management through Awareness, Policy and practice. In the case of formally defined strategies, the Organisation will create Green IT awareness in its Staff through trainings and seminars (Molla and Cooper, 2010), building a strong attitude amongst staff concerning environmentally sustainable practices in IT. Regarding Policy and Governance, top management will need to establish policies that will guide and act as standards to be adhered to in the three IT lifecycles of sourcing, operations and end of life. Practice and technology will make sure that IT personnel will have the right and company approved technology at their disposal to implement the Green IT strategies of the organisation.

With informally defined or non-defined strategies, it is found that in most companies where this ensue, they do not have top management sanctioned Green IT policies in place to cater for Green Sourcing, Operations and End of life management (Pearlman, n.d.). One might find the IT department or other departments involved the practice of one green IT strategy or the other which could just be an initiative of the head of department to reduce cost or wastage. For example in one organisation in Ghana, the human resources manager always insisted that printing should be done on both sides of the sheet and waste papers should be kept to be used to draft letters. 33

2.7

Summary

Examining the various literature from academic as well as practitioner point of view we find that Green IT Practices in organizations can be classified into Sourcing, Operations and End of Life strategies. We also looked at the drivers of Green IT and identified three main drivers, Economic, Regulatory and Ethical drivers. In looking at the literature from various scholars we came out with a conceptual framework which is based upon Molla s (2008) Green Readiness Framework. The Conceptual framework will be used to in the analysis to help answer question on the extent of Green IT practices in Ghanaian organizations.

34

CHAPTER THREE: CONTEXT OF STUDY

3.0 Introduction This study will be looking at the Green IT practises in Ghanaian companies, in doing this study we will have to understand the Country and environment in which these organisations operate. Ghana is located in West Africa and is boarded by three French speaking countries, Cote dIvoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Ghana is one of the most thriving democracies on the African Continent and is often been referred to as an island of peace in one of the most chaotic regions on earth (Ghanaweb, accessed 2012). Ghana has more than twice the per capita output of the poorer countries in West Africa (British Council, 2012). Known for its gold in colonial times, Ghana remains one of the world's top gold producers (Brown, 2012). The country's economy is dominated by agriculture, which employs about 40 per cent of the working population and is one of the leading exporters of cocoa in the World (Ghanaweb, 2011). Other exports such as cocoa, crude oil, natural gas, timber, electricity, diamond, bauxite (Aluworks, 2010), and manganese are major sources of foreign exchange, even though Ghana continues to experience electricity and gas shortages, and remains a developing nation after 55 years of independence from the declining British rule. A country covering an area of 238,500 square kilometres, Ghana has an estimated population of 24 million, drawn from more than one hundred ethnic groups - each with its own unique language (Ghana Statistical Service, 2012). English, however, is the official language, a legacy of British colonial rule. The country is a predominantly agricultural based, However in recent years the manufacturing, extractive, and services sector have seen great contributions to employment and Gross Domestic Product. These have not come without their attendant problems, such as environmental issues. The extractive industries; ie the mining industries have been accused of undermining the environments in which they operate and some leave land desolate and unusable for any agricultural or even habitable purposes (Bermdez, 2006). Another uncontrolled business is the imports of metal scraps 35

from old fridges, computers, printers, television, printers and other electrical gadgets into the Country, these scraps are normally old computers that are shipped from the developed countries down to Africa and Ghana especially to be disassembled and the components taken out for various purposes (Dogbevi, 2010; Darko, 2010).

3.1

IT Products Consumption in Organizations

The purchase of IT-related products in Ghana has risen steadily and very rapidly in the last decade thanks to huge investments being made in the country (Ghanaweb, 2011). This has even been increased with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in the country which has led to the setup of hundreds of companies a few local and many from developed countries as well as some African countries who have had some experience in oil management (McLure, 2010). The question we will as is what kind of IT equipment are being purchased? How energy efficient are they? How are IT consumables like printer cartridges discarded? What happens to the thousands of computers purchased and used every year when they become unserviceable in the organisations? Most organisations purchase computer systems which comprises, the monitor, system unit, mouse, keyboard, UPS (uninterruptible power supplies), printers. Others are the scanners, laptops, projectors, servers, backup devices, mobile devices (smartphones, tablets). These are normally one time purchases which will last for up to 4 years before they are written off in their books and disposed of (Ball, 2006). We also have the IT consumable which are purchased frequently like printer ribbons, toners, ink cartridges, re-writable CDs and DVDs, papers and these are used very regularly and can form huge techno trash if not well disposed of (Darko, 2010). Ghana does not currently have any recycling centre that can handle these ewaste that are internally generated in the country and thus a big worry for the environment (Dogbevi, 2010). There are however moves by some private companies to build recycling 36

plants in the country; Zoomlion, a waste management company in Ghana, is said to currently in the process of building the largest recycling plant in Africa estimated to cost 40m (Gyekye, 2012).

3.2

E-Waste in Ghana

One of the dark sides of technology is the accumulation of technological garbage known as e-waste (Minas, 2012). Even though developed countries are the highest consumers of technology products, developing countries like Ghana end up suffering from techno garbage from the developed countries (Dogbevi, 2010). In mid-2008 a Greenpeace team including campaigner Kim Schoppink and photographer Kate Davison came to Ghana to document and gather evidence of what really happens to electronic waste generated in the developed countries. In their report they indicated that Ghana was one of the places where they discovered hi-tech toxic trash causing horrendous pollution in Ghana to the environment and the people (Green peace, 2008).

These e-waste or techno trash accrue out of the ever-growing demand for the latest fashionable mobile phone, tablets, flat screen TV or super-fast computer which creates ever larger amounts of obsolete electronics that are often laden with toxic chemicals like lead, mercury and brominated flame retardants (Amoyaw et al., 2011). Rather than being safely recycled, much of this e-waste gets dumped in developing countries. During their investigation into the shady e-waste trade, the Green Peace team uncovered evidence that ewaste is being exported, often illegally, to Ghana from Europe and the US.

In their investigations the team identified yards where unprotected workers, many of them children, dismantle computers and TVs with little more than stones in search of metals that can be sold. The remaining plastic, cables and casing is either burnt or simply dumped in de 37

open. Some of the samples contained toxic metals including lead in quantities as much as one hundred times above background levels. Other chemicals such as phthalates, some of which are known to interfere with sexual reproduction, were found in most of the samples tested. One sample also contained a high level of chlorinated dioxins, known to promote cancer (Green peace, 2008).

3.2.1 How e-waste gets to Ghana Containers filled with old and often broken computers, monitors and TVs - from brands including Philips, Canon, Dell, Microsoft, Nokia, Siemens and Sony - arrive in Ghana from Germany, Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands under the false label of "second-hand goods". Exporting e-waste from Europe is illegal but exporting old electronics for 'reuse' allows unscrupulous traders to profit from dumping old electronics in Ghana. The majority of the containers' contents end up in Ghana's scrap yards to be crushed and burned by unprotected workers. Some traders report that to get a shipping container with a few working computers they must accept broken junk like old screens in the same container from exporters in developed countries (Minas, 2012). (Fig 2: Used computers being packed from a container)

(Source: Tema Habour)

38

3.3

Policy and Legislation Concerning Environmental issues Ghana

There are currently no specific laws relating to ITs impact on the environment, however there has been Environmental Protection laws in Ghana which dates back to the colonial era. The laws back then were mostly related to disease prevention and control and they were often enforced in the bigger towns where government officers and factories were located. For example, one of the earliest laws on our statue books is the Beaches Obstruction Ordinance (Cap 240) of 29th January 1897 (EPA website). After independence, several laws were passed to help the young nation develop its industrial capability. Environmental Protection however became topical in Ghana after the 1972 Stockholm Convention. This led to the establishment of the EPC in 1974 it was later transformed to the Environmental Protection Agency in 1994 (Osei et al., 2011). The environmental laws that are enforced by the EPA are: Environmental laws in the Constitution: The 1992 constitution of the 4th Republic in chapter six specifically article 41 (k) enjoins the citizens of Ghana to protect and safeguard the environment. This is for both employers and employees of Ghana. It is therefore not out of place that parliament passed the Environmental Protection Agency Act 1994 (1992 Constitution of Ghana). Environmental Protection Agency Act (Act 490) The Act which is in three parts established the Agency and defined its functions. Environmental Assessment Regulations Part I of the Legislative Instrument deals with registration and permitting procedures.

39

Pesticides Control and Management Act 1996 (Act 528) The third statute of the EPA but not a very well-known one is the Pesticides Control and Management Act, 1996, (Act 528). This law deals with pesticide importation licensing and permitting procedures.

International and Multilateral Environmental Agreements Ghana has also ratified a number of chemical and waste related Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and adopted a number of codes and international declarations including the following listed below (Osei et al., 2011). a. The Basel Convention on the Control of Trans boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal; b. The Vienna Convention on Protection of the Ozone Layer; c. Montreal Protocol on Control of Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; d. The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure of certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade; e. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; f. ILO Convention on the Safety of Chemicals at the Workplace; g. London Amendment of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer; h. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation on Environment and Development; i. j. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development - Agenda 21; and The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).

40

3.4

Environmental Protection Agency

In Ghana the Environmental Protection Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in Ghana. The Agency is been in operation for over 3 decades and has the job of making sure the air, land, and water are taken good care of by everyone in todays society so that the next generation can inherit a cleaner and healthier world. It has the following corporate objectives: 1. Create awareness to mainstream environment into the development process at the national, regional, district and community levels; 2. Ensure that the implementation of environmental policy and planning are integrated and consistent with the countrys desire for effective, long -term maintenance of environmental quality; 3. Ensure environmentally sound and efficient use of both renewable and nonrenewable resources in the process of national development; 4. Guide development to prevent, reduce, and as far as possible, eliminate pollution and actions that lower the quality of life; 5. To apply the legal processes in a fair, equitable manner to ensure responsible environmental behaviour in the country; 6. Continuously improve EPAs performance to meet changing environmental trends and community aspirations; 7. Encourage and reward a commitment by all EPA staff to a culture based on continuous improvement and on working in partnership with all members of the Ghanaian community

41

3.5

Summary

Ghana is a fast growing economy with technology demands from individual high, middle and low bracket income earners as well as organisations, increasing every year. We have seen the repercussions of imports of used computers and accessories on the country, however these are equipment used outside Ghana and imported. The question is what happens to the new ones bought and used in Ghana, what regulations are there to regulate these one since there are no regulations on environmentally sustainable IT usage or Green IT. We find in the statute books regulations that can be used to regulate the importation of e-waste however Ghana currently has not Green IT Policy to guide the manufacture, sourcing, use and disposal of general IT equipment like computers and accessories. One of the Policy implications of this research is to emphasize urgently to Government to get policies in place on environmentally sustainable IT purchase, usage and disposal.

42

CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

4.0

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Ghanaian firms are managing their consumption of IT and other electrical and electronic products in order to reduce their impact on the environment. This chapter shows how the work was carried out looking at the target and study population, sampling procedure and sample size, types and sources of data used, the research instrument used, how the research instrument was administered and how the data acquired was handled.

4.1

Research Design

There are several research designs which may be followed to conduct a research study. Examples include case-study design, survey design, cross-sectional design, longitudinal design, comparative design and experimental design (Saunders et al., 2009). The researcher selected a case-study design for this study in order to obtain a detailed analysis of the case in an organisation as well as a survey of the 60 organisation in Ghana. Yin (1994) defines case study as an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident. Thus, a case study is an investigation of specific real-life phenomena, such as individuals, organizational or managerial processes, programs, and organizational change. Case-study design normally involves two types of approaches, single case-study and multiple case-studies (Saunders et al., 2009). There was therefore a strong case for using mixed-methods approach comprising of a case study of Fidelity Bank Limited to give a fair understanding of how the concept has been adopted and used by the IT department of Fidelity Bank. As well as a survey of 60 organizations will be used to develop a rich 43

understanding of how Ghanaian firms managing their consumption of IT products in order to reducing their impact on the environment. A survey is conducted on the sampled 60 companies since the sample size is quiet large and will not allow for a full case study to be conducted on each of them with the limited time available.

4.2

Population and Sample

Population is the group of interest to the researcher, the group to whom the researcher would like to generalize the results of the study. The main target population for the study are organisations in the Accra Metropolis. This population is targeted by the researcher because they are easily accessible and they pose the relevant information that is useful for the study. In conducting a research, it is often impossible, impracticable and too expensive to collect data from all the potential units of analysis which in this case companies in the Accra Metropolis. Hence a smaller number of units which is the sample are often chosen to represent the whole population. The sample size of sixty (60) was chosen for the study because it is representative of the organisations and industries in the Accra Metropolis and they were relatively accessible. The 60 organisations are sampled across various industries including Information and Communication Technology, Manufacturing, Finance and Banking, Mining, SMEs and government agencies.

4.3

Sampling Procedure

There are two types of sampling techniques used in various research studies. These are probability and non-probability sampling. The researcher used convenience as well as purposive sampling techniques to select the sample. Convenience sampling is a nonprobability sampling technique where subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher. Thus, owing to constraints such as budget, resources and time, the researcher used convenience sampling to select sixty (60)

44

companies from various industries within Accra Metropolis to form the sample for the study.

4.4

Sources of Data

There are two different types of data to be collected, one is in the form of new data for a specific purpose, and this type is called primary data. The second type is the secondary data, which is data that already exists, that has been written by another author, for a different purpose (Hussey and Hussey, 1997). The two types of data sources; primary and secondary were used for the study. Surveys were adopted to gather primary data sources since they are good for capturing large amount of respondents in a limited time (Angus and Katona, 1953). Primary data was sourced through questionnaires distributed to companies selected for the study. The other primary source of data was oral surveys, where interviews where granted to respondents who were able to make time as well as full interview from IT personnel at Fidelity Bank. On the other hand, Secondary sources of data for this research were acquired through journals downloaded from the internet, scholarly research materials, conference proceedings, magazines, a few text books, annual reports of companies.

4.5

Research Instrument

Questionnaire is the main instrument used for gathering data. The questionnaire was distributed among organisations selected for the study. The questionnaire enabled the researcher to locate and gain access to the individuals who have the requisite information on the topic. The questionnaires were made up of questions to gather demographic data on respondents like, the gender, age, educational levels, length of service etc. Questions related to Green IT sourcing, operations and end of life were designed around the likert scale models, questionnaire were made up of open and closed ended questions. Questions designed were done with the guidance from the Green IT Maturity Benchmark Tool by 45

Info~Tech Group. This tool allows organizations to benchmark their green IT maturity scores against 800+ companies and peer groups by revenue, IT budget, and number of IT employees. The reasons for using the questionnaire method as an instrument of data collection was based on the fact that it provides a wider coverage of the sample and also it facilitates the collection of a large amount of data.

4.6

Administration of Research Instrument

Questionnaires were administered personally to respondents by the researcher; others were emailed to the respondents after agreeing with them to do so over the telephone. In all 60 questionnaires were given out and all the questionnaires distributed to the respondents were answered and collected back. In the administration of the questionnaires, the researcher personally paid a number of visits to the respondents to distribute the questionnaires. Participant in the survey comprised of Chief Information officers, Heads of IS/IT departments, and Senior Information systems officers, and Systems Analysts.

4.7

Analysis of data

Data analysis according to Yin (1994) involves examining, categorising, tabulating or otherwise recombing the data collected. Both qualitative and quantitative tools were used to analyse data collected. In analysing the quantitative data, descriptive statistical analysis were used. Results from the questionnaires were codified and inputs entered into the statistical application SPSS for data processing. In analysing the qualitative data in the case study, pattern-matching logic as discussed by Yin (1994) is used. Frequency tables as well as bar charts and pie chart were employed to analyse the result of the questionnaires. Results of the findings from the processed data were used discuss the findings and compare them to the literature gathered on Green IT.

46

The approach to analysing the case study is primarily the use of pattern-matching logic as discussed by Yin (1994).

4.8

Summary

This study applied quantitative as well as qualitative approaches to carry out the research. In gathering data, surveys as well as case study methods were utilized. 60 companies were sampled in the Greater Accra regions from various industries and questionnaires administered to representatives of IT departments in the organisations. Questionnaires, interviews and observation were used to gather primary sources of data. Secondary sources were acquired from companies documents, scholarly works online, magazines, conference papers, newspapers, and websites. Most of the questionnaires were delivered personally and others via emails. All questionnaires were answered and returned; though some left out a few questions they did not feel comfortable to answer. For examples some left out the questions on financial information of the company. Other on questions they did not fully grasp.

47

CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

5.0 Introduction

This research paper was carried out to determine the extent to which organisations in Ghana were aware and practising Green IT strategies. In this chapter, findings from administering of research instruments will be made available, analysed and discussed in order to answer the research questions this paper posed in the introductory chapter. The said research questions that will be addressed by the findings are:

1. What knowledge do Ghanaian firms have on Green IT? 2. What specific environmental goals or Green IT policies exist in Ghanaian firms? 3. What Green IT practices exist in Ghanaian firms, particularly in sourcing, operations and the end-of-life of IT and other electronic and electrical equipment? 4. What benefits are being obtained by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies? 5. What are the challenges faced by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies?

5.1

Findings

The findings of the survey were grouped into profile data; which gathered information about the organisations under study, as well as the respondents answering the questions. The other groupings were environmental goals, energy consumption measurement, sourcing practices, IT services and operation practices, IT end of life practices.

48

5.2

Demographic Data

5.2.1 Age of Companies Table 5.2.1 : Age of Company

Cumulative Percent 13.6 30.5 39.0 47.5 100.0

Valid

1-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years Above 20 years Total

Frequency 8 10 5 5 31 59 1 60

Percent 13 17 8 8 52 98 2 100

Valid Percent 13.6 16.9 8.5 8.5 52.5 100.0

Missing Total

System

N=59

Of the 60 companies sampled, 13% had been in business for less than 6 years, 17% were between 6 10 years in operation, 8% had been operating between 11-15 years, 5% had been in business between 16-20 years and 51.7% had been operating for over 20 years.

5.2.2 Industry of Companies Table 5.2.2 : Industry

Cumulative Percent 24.6 45.6 73.7 77.2 78.9 86.0 87.7 100.0

Valid

Communications Manufacturing Finance/Insurance Education Trading/Retail IT Health and Pharmaceutical Others Total

Frequency 14 12 16 2 1 4 1 7 57 3 60

Percent 23 20 27 3 2 7 2 12 95 5 100

Valid Percent 24.6 21.1 28.1 3.5 1.8 7.0 1.8 12.3 100.0

Missing Total

System

N = 57

49

The sampled companies were selected from various industries, 23% were companies who were involved in business in the communications sector, these included telecom companies and other companies offering support services to telcos, 20% of the companies were from the manufacturing industry, 27% from finance and insurance sector, 3% from the educational sector, 2% in the retail and trading sector, 6.7% in the I.T. industry, 2% from the Health and Pharmaceutical industries and 7% from miscellaneous industries. Below is a graphical representation of the data. Figure 5.5.2: Industries of Companies Sampled

Industries
2% Communications 12% 25% 2% 3% Manufacturing Finance/Insurance Education Trading/Retail 21% 28% IT Health and Pharmaceutical Others

7%

5.2.3 Company Turnover Table 5.2.3: Company Turnover

Valid

Below 200,000 200,000-500,000 500,001-1,000,000 1,000,001-2,000,000 Above 2,000,000 Total

Frequency 8 4 4 7 27 50 10 60

Percent 13 7 7 12 45 83 17 100

Valid Percent 16.0 8.0 8.0 14.0 54.0 100.0

Cumulative Percent 16.0 24.0 32.0 46.0 100.0

Missing Total

System

N=50

50

The above table shows the turnover of the sampled companies. In tabulating the results, it was noticed that 10 people did not answer the section one the company turnover. Some said they did not know and others were not ready to divulge it. From the 50 who answered, 8 companies made an annual turnover below $200,000, four (4) posted between $200,000$500,000, with another four group indicating $500,000-1,000,000, seven (7) companies had a turnover of between $1,000,000-2,000,000, with 27 having turnover of over $2,000,000. 5.2.4 Company IT Budget Table 5.2.4 : IT Budget
Cumulative Percent 15.7 31.4 56.9 80.4 100.0

Frequency Valid Below 20,000 20,000-50,000 50,001-100,000 100,001-500,000 Above 500,000 Total Missing Total System 8 8 13 12 10 51 9 60

Percent 13 13 22 20 17 85 15 100

Valid Percent 15.7 15.7 25.5 23.5 19.6 100.0

N=51

Out of the 60 respondents 51 answered the question of the annual IT budget of their organisations. It seemed some companies had an apathy towards releasing financial data. 9 persons left this section blank. The data collected showed that 13.% of the companies had an annual IT of less than $20,000. Another 13.3 had a budget between $20,000-$50,000, 22% had IT funding between $50,000-$100,000, most of them comprising of 20% had a budget between $100,000-$500,000 and 17% had budget in excess of $500,000. Bar charts depicting the companies financials are presented overleaf.

51

Figure 5.2.3: Company Turnover

Figure 5.2.4: Annual IT budget

Company Turnover
30 25 20 15 10 5 0 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

IT Budget

5.2.5 Length of Service of Respondents Table 5.2.5 : Length of Service of respondent

Cumulative Percent 72.4 91.4 98.3 100.0

Valid

1-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years Total

Frequency 42 11 4 1 58 2 60

Percent 70 18 7 2 97 3 100

Valid Percent 72.4 19.0 6.9 1.7 100.0

Missing Total

System

N=58

The survey also sought to see how long respondents have been working with their respective organisations. Out of the 60 respondents 58 answered the question relating to the length of service. Most of the respondents had less than 5 years working experience with their present organisation, 42 respondents fell into this category, 11 of the respondents had been working in their current organisation between 6-10 years, with four (4) having worked with their organisations between 11-15 years. Only one IT professional had been working with the organisation for over 16 years. 52

5.2.6 Educational level of Respondents Table 5.2.6 : Educational Level of Respondent

Cumulative Percent 8.5 54.2 83.1 98.3 100.0

Valid

Diploma First Degree Masters Professional Doctorate Total

Frequency 5 27 17 9 1 59 1 60

Percent 8 45 28 15 2 98 2 100

Valid Percent 8.5 45.8 28.8 15.3 1.7 100.0

Missing Total

System

N=59

The respondents were mostly IT professionals with varying level of academic qualifications. Five had diploma, twenty-seven had first degrees, 17 had acquired their Masters Degree, with 9 having professional certificates and one respondent with a Doctorate degree.

5.3

Green IT Knowledge

Table 5.3: Knowledge of Green IT

Cumulative Percent 6.9 31.0 100.0

Valid

No knowledge Heard of it but no understanding Adequate knowledge Total

Frequency 4 14 40 58 2 60

Percent 7 23 67 97 3 100

Valid Percent 6.9 24.1 69.0 100.0

Missing Total

System

N=58

In our quest to find out the knowledge level of the IT professional on the issue of Green IT, we found out from respondents that four (4) of them had never heard of Green IT before, fourteen (14) said they had heard of it but had no idea what it was and forty (40) said they knew what Green IT was.

53

5.4

Environmental Goals

5.4.1 General Environmental Goals

Table 5.4.1: General Environmental Goals

Frequency Valid Not planned Currently planning Completed Total 36 19 5 60

Percent 60.0 22.0 8.0 100.0

N = 60 The researcher sought to find out if the organisations had any general environmental goals set out by top or senior management. Twenty-six (36) respondents said their companies did not have any top management backed environmental goals, nineteen (19) companies were in the explorative stage and five (5) companies indicated they had completed it.

5.4.2 IT Environmental Goals

Table 5.4.2: IT Environmental Goals

Frequency Valid Not planned Currently planning Completed Total 39 16 5 60

Percent 65.0 27.0 8.0 100.0

N = 60 On the issue of IT Environmental goals, thirty-one organisations (39) indicated they did not have any IT environmental goals in place, sixteen (16) organisations were currently exploring, and five (5) organisations said they had it in place.

54

5.5

Environment Measurements

5.5.1 Measurement of Carbon footprint

Table 5.5.1 : Measurement of Carbon footprint

Cumulative Percent 75.0 86.7 91.7 95.0 100.0

Valid

Not planned Currently exploring Currently planning Implementing Completed Total

Frequency 45 7 3 2 3 60

Percent 75 12 5 3 5 100

Valid Percent 75.0 11.7 5.0 3.3 5.0 100.0

N = 60 In reply to the question of if the companies take steps to measure the carbon footprints they leave behind in their daily IT usage, a staggering 75% of the respondents said they didnt have any form of measure. 12% said they were currently exploring, 5% currently planning, 3% implementing and 5% said they had implemented means of measuring their carbon footprints. 5.5.2 Measurement of Energy consumption Table 5.52: Energy consumption measurement
Cumulative Percent 36.7 50.0 56.7 90.0 100.0

Valid

Not planned Currently exploring Currently planning Implementing Completed Total

Frequency 22 8 4 20 6 60

Percent 37 13 7 33 10 100

Valid Percent 36.7 13.3 6.7 33.3 10.0 100.0

N = 60 The study also intended to find out if companies had means of measuring their energy consumption so as to make efforts reduce them. Twenty-two of the companies making 37% said they did not have any means of measuring energy consumption. Eight (8) organisations

55

indicated they were exploring it, four (4) said they were currently planning, twenty (20) were implementing and six (6) had completed.

5.5.3 Contracting 3rd Party Environmental Audits Table 5.5.3 : Commissioning of 3rd party environmental Audits
Cumulative Percent 62.7 72.9 91.5 94.9 100.0

Valid

Not planned Currently exploring Currently planning Implementing Completed Total

Frequency 37 6 11 2 3 59 1 60

Percent 62 10 18 3 5 98 2 100

Valid Percent 62.7 10.2 18.6 3.4 5.1 100.0

Missing Total

System

N = 59 Contracting environmental auditors to perform environmental audits on organisations is a good way of testing ones environmental actions. Pursuant to that questions were put to respondents if their companies hire the services of these environmental auditors to perform annual environmental audits. 62% of the respondents said they have never invited or made plans to invite environmental auditors. 10% said they were currently exploring, with 18% currently planning and 2% implementing. Only three (3) companies indicated they were doing it.

56

5.6

Environmental Sourcing of IT Products

Table 5.6: Sourcing of IT products

Cumulative Percent 38.3 55.0 66.7 90.0 100.0

Valid

Not planned Currently exploring Currently planning Implementing Completed Total

Frequency 23 10 7 14 6 60

Percent 38 17 12 23 10 100

Valid Percent 38.3 16.7 11.7 23.3 10.0 100.0

N = 60

Green IT sourcing implies the practice of environmentally preferable IT purchasing. This involves adoption of sourcing practices such as analysis of the environmental foot print of an IT hardware supply chain, evaluation of the green track record of software and IT services providers, incorporating green issues (such as recyclable design and packaging) in vendor evaluation, and inclusion of social concerns in IT procurement decisions (Molla et al., 2008). A good way to start cleaning up your IT is to include environmental questions in your purchasing requests. Questions such as Are you ISO 14001 certified? or Do the devices meet energy or environmental certifications? encourage your IT suppliers to demonstrate the environmental credentials of their company and the products youre buying (Tebbutt 2009).

In line with this a survey on the Green Sourcing of companies was conducted and it was revealed that 38% of respondents did not consider how Green their suppliers of IT products were when ordering their computer and accessories. 17% of respondents said they were currently exploring the issue, 12% were planning, whilst 23% were implementing it , and with 10% actually interested in how Green their suppliers were before they buy from them. An Information Systems Manager from an Insurance company had this to say on IT sourcing when we interviewed him: 57

Even though we have been hearing of Green IT, it has really never been our practice to buy IT equipment taking into factor the environmentally friendliness of the company. All that Management wants to know is that the equipment we are procuring are of good quality and affordable . However, in our brief interview with an IT Director at one of the Multinational Manufacturing company he said that: In our organization, we believe in giving back to mother Earth what she has made available for us, so not only are we practicing eco- friendly activities but also promote and prefer to do business with firms of similar thinking. We therefore normally look out for EnergyStar compliant computers when we are doing IT procurement.

5.7

Green IT Services and Operations

5.7.1 Building environmentally friendly server rooms.

Table 5.7.1: Building environmentally friendly server rooms

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Frequency 30 2 4 13 7 56 4 60

Percent 50 3 7 22 12 93 7 100

Missing Total

System

N = 56 Servers consume a lot of power and generate tremendous about of heat. In order to reduce and moderate energy usage of servers, server rooms have to be built specifically to make sure they are environmentally friendly and allow for efficient airflow and energy 58

consumption. In line with this, questions were asked about how companies server room were built and we had the following responses. 50% of respondents comprising 30 companies said they had no environmental plans when building server rooms or leasing office. Two (2) companies said they had been implementing less than 12 months, four (4) companies had been implementing over 12months, with thirteen (13) stating they were now piloting or implementing. Seven (7) said they had fully implemented. Four (4) respondents didnt answer the question.

5.7.2 Printer Consolidation and Reduction. Table 5.7.2 : Printer Consolidation

Frequency 4 1 5 14 35 59 1 60 Percent 7 2 8 23 58 98 2 100

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Missing Total

System

N = 59 Printer consolidation and print reduction seeks to minimise the number of printers used in the organisation to save energy and printing costs and cost of buying printers. Instead of every department having its own printer, a centralised printer can be procured for every floor in a building. In seeking to find out if companies do practice printer consolidations, 7% of respondents said they had not planned for printer consolidation, 2% had been implementing in less than 12 months, 8% had been implementing in more than 12 months, 23% were piloting or currently implementing and 58% had fully implemented it.

59

5.7.3 End user device power management Table 5.7.3 : End user device power management
Frequency 7 9 5 12 27 60 Percent 12 15 8 20 45 100

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

N = 60 End user device power management practices allowed equipment such as computers to be set in low power consumption mode when not utilised. For example when a user leaves his desktop for over 30 minutes, the computer could go into sleep mode so that its energy usage will drop. 11% of the respondents indicated that they had no end user device power management plans in place and had not been practising it. 15% indicated they had been practising it in less than 12 months, 8% had been practising it for over 12 months now, 20% were piloting or implementing now and 45% had fully implemented it.

5.7.4 Telecommuting Capabilities Table 5.7.4: Telecommuting capabilities

Frequency Valid Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total 16 2 5 12 25 60 Percent 27 3 8 20 42 100

N = 60

60

Telecommuting allowed workers to perform duties they would have done in the office outside the office environs by logging into the companys network and carrying out office duties online from another location. 27% of respondents on telecommuting usage, said they do not use it, 3% had been implementing in less than 12 months, 8% had been implementing over 12 months, 20% were piloting and 41% had fully implemented it.

5.7.5 Remote and Video conferencing

Table 5.7.5: Remote Conferencing and Video conferencing

Frequency 13 10 4 12 20 59 1 60 Percent 22 17 7 20 33 98 2 100

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Missing Total

System

N = 60 One of the good practises that reduce carbon footprints and costs is remote conferencing and video conferencing. The removes the cost of transportation be it air or road and also saves the environment from air pollution caused by vehicles and planes. Of the 60 organisations, 22% indicated they were not implementing video or remote conferencing. 17% had been implementing it in less than a year, 20% were piloting it and 33% had fully implemented it.

61

5.7.6 Storage Consolidation Table 5.7.6: Storage Consolidation

Frequency 5 7 8 15 24 59 1 60 Percent 8 12 13 25 40 98 2 100

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Missing Total

System

N = 59 Storage consolidation allows data to be centralized, reduces costs and IT operational efficiency. 8.3% of respondents had not storage consolidation practices in place, 11.7% had been implementing in less than a year, 13.3% had been implementing over 12 months, 25% were piloting and 40% had fully implemented it.

5.7.7 Server Virtualization Table 5.7.7 : Server virtualision

Frequency 11 7 3 21 17 59 1 60 Percent 18 12 5 35 28 98 2 100 Valid Percent 18.6 11.9 5.1 35.6 28.8 100.0

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Missing Total

System

N = 59 Virtualisation is the process of making a server do what several servers will do. It requires special software to be installed on a server, after which the software is used to create images 62

of other servers on that one server. These virtual servers will simulate the work of actual servers. This saves energy cost, cost of buying servers and cost of having a big server room (Bose and Lui, 2011). Result from the survey showed that 18% of the companies did not implement server virtualisation. 11% had been implementing it in less than 12 months, 5% had been implementing in more than 12 months, 35% representing 25 organisations had been piloting it and 28% had fully implemented virtualisation.

5.8

IT End of Life practices

Table 5.8 : IT Equipment Recycling

Frequency 27 5 4 7 16 59 1 60 Percent 45 8 7 12 27 98 2 100

Valid

Not planned Implementing less than 12 months Implementing in more than 12 months Piloting or implementing now Fully implemented/Completed Total

Missing Total

System

N = 59 One of the problems IT usage brings is what happens when the equipment purchase have reached the end of their useful life in the companies. How are equipment disposed of without harming the environment and those living in it? One of the ways old equipment can be safely disposed of is by recycling. Of the 60 respondents, 45% did not recycle their old computer equipment. 8% said they had been practising some form of recycling within the last 12 months, 7% had been doing it over a year, 12% had been piloting and 27% said they had fully implemented it. In an interview with a Telecommunications company about IT end of life, the response was:

63

Normally we sell of our equipment to staff as unserviceable items, we have never really sent them for recycling because we have no idea of a recycling plant in Accra . We noticed some companies were not interest in refilling their toner cartridges and this is an excerpt of an interview from an Insurance companys IT Manager: we had a very bad experience with refill toner cartridges where the toner leaked and damaged some of our printers. We have been therefore very sceptical about using refill cartridges.

5.9

Green IT Funding

Table 5.9 Funding for Green IT

Cumulative Percent 8.6 20.7 63.8 81.0 100.0

Valid

Very easy Quiet Easy Not sure Quiet difficult Very difficult Total

Frequency 5 7 25 10 11 58 2 60

Percent 8 12 42 17 18 97 3 100

Valid Percent 8.6 12.1 43.1 17.2 19.0 100.0

Missing Total

System

N = 58 The researcher tried to find out how easy or difficult it will be to source funding from Senior Management for Green IT initiatives. 8% thought it will be very easy, 12% said it will be quiet easy, 41% where not sure, 16% indicated it will be quiet difficult and 18% stated it will be very difficult. An interview with An IT Officer in an insurance company on future green IT funding produced a big laugh. Pointing in reference to a corner where two old tower servers stood on the floor with a 17 CRT monitor on one of them, he blurted that: My brother it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to get funding for this Green IT, take a look at the my server room, see we still using CRT monitors!. 64

5.10

Discussions/Critical Analysis

5.10.1 Green IT Awareness What knowledge do Ghanaian firms have on Green IT? Figure 5.10.1a: Green IT Awareness across Industries
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

No knowledge Adequate knowledge

N=55

It was interesting to note that most of the IT professionals had adequate knowledge of Green IT, about 67% and only 6% had no knowledge at all. We noticed that a majority of respondents who had adequate knowledge in Green IT were from multinational companies who had their mother organizations in the developed countries and had been exposed to the Green concepts. Corporate bodies were next in line after the Multinationals; however Governmental organizations were identified to be places where their IT professionals had never heard of Green IT before. Another interesting observation was that companies which had been operating for a relatively long period of time intended to have their IT Managers having a good understanding of Green IT; however it was noticed that the Green IT awareness of the professionals dwindled as their length of service increased at their job places. So you will find that most of IT professionals who had good knowledge of Green IT had been working for not more than 5 years. Green IT awareness was pervasive in the Finance/Insurance industry followed by the communications and the IT companies who 65

indicated a good Green IT awareness. We found an appreciable level of Green IT practices in one of the finance companies which was used in the case study. Below is a bar chart that depicts Green IT awareness across the various industries surveyed.

Figure 5.10.1b: Green IT Awareness across Organizational Ownership

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

No knowledge Adequate knowledge

N = 58

Figure 5.10.1c: Green IT Awareness compared with Age of company

Above 20 years 16-20 years 11-15 years 6-10 years 1-5 years 0 5 10 15 20 Adequate knowledge No understanding

N= 57

66

Figure 5.10.1d: Green IT awareness compared with Length of Service of Respondent

16-20 years 11-15 years Adequate knowledge 6-10 years 1-5 years 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 No knowledge

N = 56

5.10.2 Policy on Environmental Issues and Green IT What specific environmental goals or Green IT policies exist in Ghanaian firms? Examining the general environmental goals or policies in the companies, we identified that most companies had no policies on general green environmental practices, only 28% of the 60 surveyed had some sort of environmental goal set up by senior management. We also noticed that even out of the ones that had it, most had general environmental policies because of the laws of the country which mandated them to have such policies due to the kind of activities they were involved in. For example it was observed that manufacturing and mining companies who were made up of the percentage of companies implementing such policies. It was also gleaned from interviews that they were mandated to make sure that toxic outputs from their processes were safely disposed of and should not harm the community they were operating within. A similar phenomenon was observed with the communications companies especially when it came to the erecting of their masts which is believed to emit some radiations. Opinions however vary on how dangerous such emissions were to the people living around the area.

67

Figure 5.10.2a: Organisational Policy on Environment

Others Trading/Retail Education Finance/Insurance Manufacturing Communications/IT 0 5 10 15 20 Completed Currently planning Not planned

Figure 5.10.2b: IT Environmental Policy of organisations

Others Trading/Retail Education Finance/Insurance Manufacturing Communications/IT 0 5 10 15 Completed Currently planning Not planned

The picture is not much different when we examined specific IT environmental goals of the companies. Most companies making about 52% of the survey had no plans at all in place. This however did not mean they did not implement any green IT initiatives. When we probed some companies it revealed that even though they did not have policies in place, some departments and also IT departments had their own ways of implementing some green 68

initiatives even though they did not have Green IT in mind. To most it was to reduce the cost of overheads in their department. This agrees with the economic reason of Green IT (Molla , 2008).

5.10.3 Green IT Practices in the Organisation

What Green IT practices exist in Ghanaian firms, particularly in sourcing, operations and the end-of-life of IT and other electronic and electrical equipment?

Examining the various Green IT practices being sourcing, operations and end of life, it was discovered from the survey that, Green IT sourcing was the least patronised green IT activity amongst the surveyed organisations. The surveyed showed that over 50% of organisation in Ghana didnt have any policy and practice on sourcing green IT products from supplier who had a history of being green in their production of their products. What most companies looked at was a good affordable brand, but not really a good green brand. The good thing though is that some of these good brands are now turning green, for example dell seems to be a very popular brand in Ghanaian organisations and they have been implementing a number of green initiatives (dell, 2012). It was also identified that some of the companies required that their computers must be Energy star complaint, this was prevalent in some of the Multinational organisations where interviews and surveys were conducted.

On the general aggregations of activities to reduce greenhouse effects and energy wastage, we noticed that most companies were involved in ways to reduce their energy consumption, however we have to be quick to add that these initiatives were not actually done with the 69

environment in mind but rather as a cost cutting measure. This helps to buttress the point that going Green does not have to be an expensive venture as most companies might think but it has a positive relation with cost (Murugesan, 2008). We observed that when it came to capital expenditure like building server rooms which will in the long run save a lot on energy usage, an astounding 62% of respondents had no plans of building them, only 8% had fully operational server rooms and the rest were still exploring the idea. The reason they gave was the cost of building a new server room. In an interview with an IS Manager of a manufacturing company on server room build after he showed me a makeshift room with computers and an old server he said, Even sourcing funding to get a new server is a problem not to mention building a server room which will cost thousands of dollars, forget it. Most of the companies with good server rooms or data centres were the telecos, banks and some manufacturing companies. On the issue of printer consolidation and reduction of paper use, we found an astounding 92% who were in one way or the other implementing ways to reduce paper wastage was well as a centralized printer management. Like already indicated these were borne out of the fact that printing cost was very high in most of the organisations and this was a way of cutting down on such high cost. This is seen all around the world, for more than 65% of companies, decreasing consumables such as paper, toner, ink and energy are driving forces behind printer consolidation and reduction. As one manager of a 1000-employee insurance firm said, We eliminated 300,000 pages of output a year by moving to print-on-demand . . . with [savings of] six to nine cents per page. The firm realized operational savings of nearly $30,000 year-over-year (Info-Tech Group 2009).

70

Figure 5.10.3a: Server room build

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Figure 5.10.3b: Printer Consolidation

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Not planned Piloting Completed

Not planned piloting complete

We noticed that 78% of the respondents indicated that they were implementing server virtualization with most centred in the communications, manufacturing and finance industries. It was interesting to note that some however had no idea what virtualization was all about. An interesting case was an interview with an IT officer in a trading company when I asked if he implemented any form of virtualisation, he said they were not allowed to use company bandwidth to play virtual games!. When it came to issue of reducing carbon footprints with less travel and more technology enabled meetings, we found that most of the respondents making up 70% said they were involved in one form of remote conferencing or online collaboration. However we found out that most staff preferred to travel due to the perks and allowances that accrued to them during and after their trips.

Figure 5.10.3c: End user device Management

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Not planned piloting completed

Figure 5.10.3d: Telecommuting

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Not planned piloting completed

71

Figure 5.10.3e : Remote conferencing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Figure 5.10.3f : Storage Consolidation

12 10 8 6

Not planned piloting completed

4 2 0

Not planned piloting completed

Figure 5.10.3f : Server virtualisation and Consolidation

12

10
8 6 4 2 0 Not planned piloting complete

72

5.10.4 IT End of life Management It was discovered that most companies did not have any policy or structured plans on how to dispose of their IT equipment after their useful life. Though we some were recycling printer cartridges and refilling tonners, we identified from interviews that most IT professionals were sceptical about recycled tonners even though they could save some money. This was because of bad experiences they had in the past where these recycles toners and cartridges leaked and messed up their printers. Some companies however used these refilled ink cartridges from reliable sources. On the issue of disposal of equipment some companies allowed their staff to buy them, others just dispose of them in trash. There are no identified recycling centres in Ghana where old machines like monitors and system units which contain some toxic parts can be sent to when these machines cannot be donated or sold off. This meant that even if the companies have intension to recycle their old equipment, there are no where they can send them to apart from the trash.

5.10.5 Benefits or Drivers for Green IT Practices What benefits are being obtained by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies? The main driver and benefit of green IT practices that was identified from the research through some interviews was that of cost savings. In the survey we identified most companies being involved in one green IT operational practice or the other, in fact almost all the companies had one sort of green IT operational activity in place, be it printer cartridge recycling, duplex printing, virtualisation, or storage consolidation. This is in line with Mollas (2008) observation that effective implementation of Green IT Practices can lead to tangible cost savings. A good example was when one Head of infrastructure of a bank reported of how cost was reduced when they implemented virtualisaton on the servers. We made a savings of 40% from implementing virtualization on our servers.

73

5.10.6 Challenges of Going Green What are the challenges faced by firms with Green IT practices and/or policies? They survey showed that Ghanaian organisation had a long way to go in the implementation of Green IT strategies and one important challenge that was identified was funding of green IT initiatives. When survey was analysed it was realised that most of the IT departments had issues sourcing funding for various IT projects not to even mention green IT projects. So most of the respondents thought it will be quiet difficult to get funding from top management to finance green IT investments. The issue of funding threw out the challenge of knowledge of green IT itself by top management. What was realised was that some IT professionals themselves were not aware of Green IT practices so one could imagine the situation with top management. The issue of ignorance of the concept was identified as one of the major challenges of going green as also pointed out by Tantawi (2006) in his study on green IT Egypt.

5.11

Summary of Descriptive Findings

We have been examining the findings of survey done on 60 organizations in Ghana pertaining to their Green IT knowledge and practice. The findings have shown positive and negative signs to Green IT awareness and practice in Ghanaian companies. The discussions showed how some companies handle green sourcing of IT products where most companies are more interested in brand name and cost rather than greenness of the suppliers. When it came to Green IT practices we saw most of the companies involved in at least one green IT practice activity. Finally we looked at what drove companies to practice green initiatives and what benefits accrue. Cost savings was seen as a major benefit and driver for almost all companies. The main end of life practices discovered were donations of equipment to charity or school and in some cases auctioned off to employees.

74

5.12

Case Study of Fidelity Bank Limited

5.12.1 Company Profile Fidelity Bank is a commercial bank in Ghana which was issued with its Universal Banking License on June 28th 2006, making it the 22nd bank to be licensed by the Bank of Ghana. It is one of the twenty-seven (27) licensed commercial banks in the country (BOG, 2010). The Bank is owned by Ghanaian and Foreign individual and institutional investors including ADB and SSNIT, and also by its Executives. The Bank was formerly Fidelity Discount House, the leading discount house in Ghana. After operating profitably for 8 years, the business environment in the country drew investors to the idea of establishing a bank (Fidelity bank, 2011). The bank has 26 branches country wide, twenty-two (22) in Greater Accra, four (4) in Ashanti regions, one (1) in the Northern Region, one (1) in the Volta Region and three (3) in the Western Region of Ghana which are all linked to the companys Wide Area Network (WAN). Fidelity Banks vision is to become a world -class financial institution that provides superior returns for all stakeholders. With People who are professional and proactive, state of the art Technology, exceptional Corporate Governance Standards, good knowledge of the Local Market, Financial Capital and above all, a Customer-Centric Culture, Fidelity Bank is contributing its quota to the development of the banking industry and by extension the Ghanaian economy (Fidelity Bank, 2010).

Fidelity Bank was chosen as a case study on implementation of Green IT practises in Ghanaian organisations because the writer had got information from the Infrastructure Manager of the bank in a telephone conversation that the bank was implementing Green IT. The researcher then thought it an excellent opportunity to see first hand how a Ghanaian company was actually practising Green IT.

75

5.12.2 ICT Profile of the Bank In order to provide its customers with competitive and reliable services, Fidelity bank employs state-of-the-art technology to manage its data and online transactions. The bank has ATM at all its branches as well as ATMs at strategic locations in the country. It employs top calibre IT personnel who not only have computer science degrees, but various certifications in the area of Security, Network administration, Server configurations, data management etc. The Bank has a data centre at Ridge which acts as the heart of the online transactions performed by the bank staff and customers. It implements 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to allow for safe internet transaction feature it gives its customers. The 128-bit SSL is the highest level of security commercially available. The banks has over 500 personal computers, a sizable number which are thin client computers. The Bank has two data centres at its Ridge tower offices, one centre houses blade servers which run in an HP run environment employing room cooling system. The other data centre is IBMs state-of-the-art Scalable Modular Data Centre (SMDC) with in row cooling technology supported by powerful backup power equipment from APC which is said to be the first ever installed in Ghana. See below image from their new data centre which houses the Green IBM equipment.

76

Figure 5.12.2a : IBM server rack at Fidelity Bank data Centre

Fidelity Bank follows a strict policy of Backup, Storage and Retrieval for all its systems, which includes Internet Banking, and has an offsite location at Spintex where backup tapes are sent for storage. The bank runs a Wide Area Network which links up its 22 branches nationwide as well as its numerous ATMs strategically position all around the country.

5.12.3 How the Bank got into Green IT The Fidelity bank did not just decide all of a sudden to try Green IT practices; the bank got into it when it tried to resolve the issue of expanding customer base and branch networks which demanded expansion in the old infrastructure. In order to support its fast growing customer base as the company kept expanding after it went into full scale universal banking, management decided it was time to upgrade its current infrastructure into a more powerful and scalable one. The decision on the type of infrastructure and vendor to choose was not an 77

easy feat as IT Department now had the arduous task of convincing top management on the kind of infrastructure to invest in. Management wanted a cost effective infrastructure but IT were looking beyond just cost of the infrastructure, but also new green technologies which allowed for lower power consumption as well as lower carbon emissions which will lead to long term energy and cost savings. In the year 2009, the bank decided to invite top IT companies around the world to offer the best and most cost effective networking infrastructure to meet their new demands. Various companies including HP, IBM and Dell were asked to for proposals, IBM was eventually chosen even though they were not the cheapest, they however seem to have been able to convince top management of the long run cost savings ability of their infrastructure. After winning the bid IBM partnered with APC who are one of the top power equipment and backup providers to execute the project.

5.12.3 Green IT Project In an interview with the Infrastructure Manager of the Bank, it was gathered that the Bank does not have a written down policy concerning Green IT but it was the passion the Information Technology Manager which drove the companys IT towards more green IT practices. In a separate interview with the IT Manager, he said I had always had a passion for Green IT since I was invited to Copenhagen on a Green Banking Seminar in 2007; from there on I have been reading articles on Green IT planned to have it implemented whenever the opportunity arose.

When it came to sourcing of IT equipment, it was gathered that there was no clear green policy concerning IT procurement. With the purchase of computers, the Infrastructure Manager said what they looked out for was a good desktop that was scalable and cost effective. They did not really particular about the energy consumption of the computers purchased. It was when it came to purchase of server equipment that they considered the

78

technology involved, the ability to virtualise, scalability of the servers, direct and indirect costs. Director costs were explained as the actual cost of the equipment and indirect was the cost of using, maintaining and upgrading the equipment. The Banks Green Practices come to light when their IT services and operations were examined. The first step the Bank took toward a more Green IT operations was the building of an energy efficient data centre and the procurement of the state-of-the-art New Scalable Modular Data centre which employed an advanced and very energy efficient in row cooling system. The old data centre employed room cooling systems, which was ineffective approach to cooling for next-generation data centres. In room-oriented architecture, the (Computer Room Air Conditioning) CRAC units are associated with the room and operate concurrently to address the total heat load of the room. A room-oriented architecture may consist of one or more air conditioners supplying cool air completely unrestricted by ducts, dampers, vents, etc. or the supply and/or return may be partially constrained by a raised floor system or overhead return plenum. One major problem of the room-oriented design is that it is heavily affected by the unique constraints of the room, including the ceiling height, the room shape, obstructions above and under the floor, rack layout, CRAC location, the distribution of power among the IT loads, etc. The result is that performance prediction and performance uniformity are poor, particularly as power density is increased. Another significant shortcoming of room-oriented architecture is that in many cases the full rated capacity of the CRAC cannot be utilized.

All these problems are addressed by the in row cooling system which is utilised by the new Scalable Modular Data centre. With a row-oriented architecture, the CRAC units are associated with a row and are assumed to be dedicated to a row for design purposes. The CRAC units may be mounted among the IT racks, they may be mounted overhead, or they

79

may be mounted under the floor. Compared with the room-oriented architecture, the airflow paths are shorter and more clearly defined. In addition, airflows are much more predictable, all of the rated capacity of the CRAC can be utilized, and higher power density can be achieved. See below an image of one of the row coolers.

Figure 5.12.4: In row cooling system in server rack

(Source: Fidelity Bank Data center)

The row-oriented architecture has a number of side benefits other than cooling performance. The reduction in the airflow path length reduces the CRAC fan power required, increasing efficiency. This is not a minor benefit, when we consider that in many lightly loaded data centers the CRAC fan power losses alone exceed the total IT load power consumption. A row-oriented design allows cooling capacity and redundancy to be targeted to the actual needs of specific rows. For example, row-oriented architecture allows one row of racks to run high density applications such as blade server, while another row satisfies lower power

80

density applications such as communication enclosures. A row-oriented architecture can be implemented without a raised floor. This increases the floor load bearing capacity, reduces installation costs, eliminates the need for access ramps, and allows data centres to exist in buildings that otherwise do not have the headroom to permit the installation of a sufficient raised floor (Dunlap and Rasmussen, 2006).

Another advantage is that it lowers capital expense. Over-conservative designing of a data centre with row and perimeter coolers results in significant capital expense waste. Up to half of this expense can be eliminated by relying on the row coolers to cool the entire data centre load (VanGilder and Torell, 2011). In row cooling best of all lowers energy usage and costs. Over-provisioning of coolers results in added energy expense, especially if the unnecessary coolers have fixed-speed fans, which is common in perimeter. Apart from cooling efficiency the new green data centre also allowed for efficient virtualisation of servers. Instead of having many server blades to cater for various services, which will mean more energy use and power consumption, virtualisation are implemented on the servers and which are said by the Infrastructure Manager of the bank to give a savings of 40% (Fidelity, 2012).

On the issue of consolidated printing, it was ascertained that printer consolidation was implementable in some departments, however in some other units there was the need to have more than one printer installed. The Infrastructure Manager explained that due to the sensitive nature of some documents a centralised printing point was not a good option. It was also gathered that some of the computers in the bank were thin client computers. This it was explained help to reduce cost involved in hardware cost and software, reduce energy usage, and reduce maintenance and software upgrade times. Thin client computers are a stripped down version of a full desktop computer which rely on a server for processing

81

power and applications to run. The bank is currently implementing telecommuting technology for some of the support staff; however it is yet to open up the feature since they are still piloting it.

On the End of life practices in the bank, it was learnt that the bank mostly donates its old computers to schools and other charitable organisations. All hard disks are however removed and replaced before any old computer goes out of the bank premises. This has led to a stock pile of hard disks in the IT store room.

5.12.5 Key Findings from Case Study From the study of Fidelity Bank, it is seen that even though they did not have a clear cut policy on Green IT, they had made giant steps by investing in a multi-million dollar stateof-the-art data centre which even though quiet expensive, was greener than previous data centre technologies used. It allowed for various green practices such as energy conservation and control, virtualisation and storage consolidation management. At the end of the life of their computers, the bank does not just do not just throw away old computers but refurbish them, replace the hard disks and donate them to needy institutions. The key lessons to be drawn from the case study are:

Awareness In the above case study we realise the innovativeness of the IT manager played a key role in getting the organization into Green IT. This innovative attitude and willingness to learn was also identified by the Infrastructure manager, who is the supervisor of the IT manager. Thus we may propose that:

82

Proposition 1: Green IT awareness in organisations tends to be influenced by the managerial capabilities of IT managers, which are characterised innovation and willingness to learn.

Practice As realised from the case study, Green IT gained the commitment of top management after the IT manager and infrastructure manager demonstrated a case for direct cost-reduction and efficiency benefits from building of an energy efficient data centre and the procurement of the state-of-the-art New Scalable Modular Data centre which employed an advanced and very energy efficient in row cooling system. These practices tend to follow the recommendations from our framework on Server virtualization, Floor layout and airflow management and upgrading legacy systems. The bank was also concerned about energy efficient computing systems. Thus we may propose that, Proposition 2: To gain the commitment of top management for Green IT projects, IT managers may need to demonstrate the direct economic benefits to the firm, beginning with immediate/short-term cost-reduction.

Governance and Policy Though the bank did not have specific policies on Green IT, there is existence of practices which seem to promote Green IT whiles also protecting the company. For example, even though the bank practiced centralised or network printing, it also recognised the fact that, due to the sensitive nature of some documents a centralised printing point was not a good option for all workstations. Furthermore, at the end-of-life of computers, hard disks were replaced before the computers were disposed through donations to charities. These two initiatives demonstrate that, Green IT practices should primarily consider the interests of the

83

organization privacy and security in its implementation. This should be captured in the green policies of organizations to protect the organizations from exposing themselves to breaches which can affect their competitiveness. Thus we may propose that, Proposition 3: In developing Green policies, measures should be put in place to protect the firms and prevent Green IT practices from compromising critical organizational processes and information.

Finally, to promote innovative initiatives like that of the IT manager, organizations may consider instituting rewards for innovations by employees which contribute to reducing their environmental impact and reduce the consumption of energy. For example, some Airports in Europe reward employees with the best parking spots on the staff parking areas for driving a drive a hybrid or small fuel efficient car (Airlinetrends.com, 2010). Though this may be far-fetched in an African context, rewards can begin from effective management of paper, workstation efficiency to telecommuting on projects.

84

CHAPTER SIX SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION

6.0

Summary

This research work was carried out to do a survey of sixty (60) Ghanaian companies on their awareness and policy and practice of Green IT strategies. The research was borne out of the need for IT professionals to implement strategies that will reduce energy consumption and carbon footprints from the use of IT products. IT is said to contribute in 2008 2% to the global CO2 emissions. This research was to fill the paucity in research on Green IT in sub-Saharan Africa and Ghana, and to discover the extent to which Ghanaian organizations are implementing Green IT strategies and what benefit have accrued out of it. Relevant literature from academia and practice was reviewed in the second chapter, where Green IT was defined and examined in the context of organizational practices. Regulatory bodies around the world on energy consumption as well as green computing issues were discussed. The various drivers to Green IT in organizations were also discussed in detailed after which a conceptual framework was established. The framework was named the Green IT frame work which was an adaptation of the G-Readiness framework from Molla (2008). The context of the study was discussed where a brief history of Ghana was documented followed by IT consumptions in organizations. The issue of e-waste was also discussed and the regulatory body in charge of environmental issues in Ghana, the EPA was looked at as well at the Environmental laws in Ghana.

In carrying out the study, a mixed method approach of a survey and case study were adopted. The survey was carried out on the 60 organizations whilst a case study was done on Fidelity Bank to have an in depth look at Green IT strategies it practiced. The survey

85

looked at demographic data on the organizations, and the respondents, asked questions concerning, environmental policies, Green IT policies, energy consumption, green sourcing, green IT practices and IT end of life management. Finally the findings of the survey were documented in the fifth chapter after which they were thoroughly discussed with tables and charts.

The findings showed positive signs that shows that Ghanaian companies are waking up to the challenge of climate change and global warming and are willing to implement strategies that will go a long way to mitigate ITs effect on the environment. However further investigations showed that most of the so-called green practices found in some companies were just a means to cut cost but were not really done to be environmentally friendly.

6.1 Key Findings

The key findings of the study from the previous chapter are grouped into quantitative and qualitative findings and summarised below.

6.1.1 Key Quantitative Findings The first key finding showed that most IT Professionals had some knowledge about Green IT and its implication for businesses. This was supported by the 67% of the respondents who indicated good working knowledge of Green IT as against 7% who had never heard of it. 23% had heard of it but really did not have a full working knowledge of it.

The second key finding was that general environmental and IT environmental policies were almost non-existent in Ghanaian organisations. Apart from companies who were mandated by law to have some environmental impact policies in place like mining, telecoms, and 86

some manufacturing companies the rest had no such policies that will be a guide for sound environmental practices when it came to IT usage and disposal. The survey showed that only 8% of the companies had any form of general or IT related environmental goals or policies, with 27% indicating there were future plans for that. The 65% left didnt have and had no plans for it in the near future.

Another key finding was in the measurement of carbon footprints and energy consumption measurement. The study indicated that most of the companies, 87% made no effort to find out what carbon footprints they were leaving in their use of IT equipment, with just 8% indicating steps towards carbon footprint measurement. However with energy consumption measurement, the results were split into two where 50% indicated they had measures in place to track their energy consumption. The others in the other half were implementing it or planning towards it.

The fourth key quantitative finding was results from Green IT service and operations. The organisations where questioned about their position on efficient server room builds, printer consolidation, end user device power management, telecommuting capabilities, remote and video conferencing, storage consolidation and server virtualisation. Results from the aforementioned showed 70%, 96%, 93%, 84%, 87%, 95%, and 82% respectively admitting they were implementing the Green IT service and operations practices mentioned.

6.1.2 Key qualitative Findings The first key qualitative finding was that Green IT awareness in organisations tends to be influenced by the managerial capabilities of IT managers, which are characterised innovation and willingness to learn.

87

The second finding indicated that in order to gain the commitment of top management for Green IT projects, IT managers may need to demonstrate the direct economic benefits of Green IT to the organisation, beginning with immediate/short-term cost-reduction.

Thirdly it was identified that there was the need to promote innovative initiatives seen in the case study of Fidelity Bank exhibited by the IT manager. Organizations may consider instituting rewards for innovations by employees which contribute to reducing their environmental impact and reduce the consumption of energy.

Finally it was it was acknowledged that in the pursuance of implementing green practices there were possibilities of compromising critical organisational processes and information. It is therefore imperative that in developing Green policies, measures should be put in place to protect the firms from such risks.

6.2

Implications

This research was undertaken to investigate the extent to which Green IT practices were being implemented in Ghanaian organizations. Findings from the survey conducted for this research gave insight into how the organizations viewed and handled the issue of environmentally sustainable IT practices. The results ascertained, have allowed recommendations to be made looking at the implication this study has for research, to practitioners and industry, to policy and direction for future study. 6.2.1 Implications for Research This research will act as a foundation to Green IT research in Ghana and the sub Saharan region since there is a huge gap in Green IT literature in the West African sub region. 88

Students as well as other researchers will find immense literature to aid them build upon it to fill other gaps this study left behind. The research was based on a conceptual framework which looked at the Green IT cycle of, Sourcing, Service and Operations and End of life management. The research indicated high awareness to Green IT by most IT professionals interviewed, however practicing of green sourcing was relatively low due to the reasons used to procure computers and other IT equipment which were mainly cost and at times brand name. The research also indicated that disposal of computers should be done with circumspection so as not to let data of organizations fall in the wrong hand.

6.2.2 Implications for Practitioners and Organizations This research does will not only benefit the academia but also practitioners and organizations that plan to go green in their IT usage. The study deals thoroughly with how the full cycle of green IT can be practiced in an organization no matter its size. There were several lessons that were drawn from the research. Firstly, we identified that in most organisation IT practitioners had adequate knowledge of Green IT, however we noticed that in most of the public organisations and government agencies, there was very low or no idea about Green IT. The research therefore shows that government will have to increase education and awareness of environmentally sustainable practices to its employees especially the IT professionals. The second lesson was in energy conservation. It was discovered that awareness of an organisations energy consumption pattern could help it control its consumption once it knew where the high consumption was coming from. The study indicated that most organisations were not taking steps to measure their energy consumption and so in the end accrue huge electricity bills.

89

The study also examined the issue of green sourcing which had quite a low patronage in the industries surveyed. However literature indicates that having a green suppliers was more environmentally beneficial as well as cost effective because green IT products tended to be very energy efficient (Murugesan, 2008).

The study also showed that practising green IT could lead to various forms of cost saving benefits, whether direct or indirect. This was shown in the large amount of organisations involved in one form of green IT practice or there other. The major motive we therefore found for organisations implementing green IT practices was the cost savings benefit they derived.

An important issue that was identified in the research was IT security and Green IT practice. In practicing Green IT care must be taken so that the organisational data and processes are not compromised. For example when it comes to recycling or disposal of computers, care must be taken that data on the hard drives do not fall in the wrong hands. What some companies did was to remove and replace hard disks before donating computers to charity.

The study also indicates that, staff will go their way to implement energy conserving practices and good environmental if well motivated. There is therefore a correlation between staff motivation and green initiatives. The study showed that when it comes to disposal, the option to give to donate to charity, refurbish or recycle are available, though there are hardly places where old computer parts are recycles, so they either end up in the trash or donated to charity. In order to garner public interest in green issues, especially in industries, the Association of Ghana industries

90

can institute awards for the best Green IT practising company it order to build more interest of firms in the area of environmentally sustainable IT. One challenge that was identified was the need to convince top management of the cost benefit of going green. The IT professionals in organisations therefore had a lot of convincing to do when trying to seek funding for their green initiatives.

6.2.3 Implications for Policy In terms of policy towards Green IT, the contribution of the government cannot be over emphasised. Government will be a direct beneficiary of good environmental practices by firms in the country. Firstly, good environmental practices will reduce the strain on governments purse to provide more health facilities to meet the rising health problems arising from badly disposed e-waste materials, as seen in the dangerous case of e-waste landfills at agbobloshie. Secondly, green IT practices could be part of solution to governments inability to provide sustainable and adequate electricity to meet the high demand from industry. There is high wastage of energy by organisations and individuals, and provision of a solid policy on Green IT could drastically reduce such wastage so that the energy generated can meet the demand of the country. Government will therefore need to demonstrate green awareness by developing policies to direct all ministries, departments and agencies to only procure IT equipment which are certified energy efficient, like the Energy star labels. This will require suppliers bidding to supply IT equipment to make sure all IT equipment supplied comply with a particular energy saving initiative as per the directive of the policy. The research also brought out the issue of increasing e-waste not only from imports of old computer equipment for scrap but also the huge number of computer and accessories procured annually by companies and government agencies. Government can empower a private company like RLg computers (a Ghanaian owned computer and fon assembling 91

firm) or a new IT recycling company, to take possession of unserviceable computers and IT equipment after their useful life in organisations and recycle or refurbish and selling them cheaply back to government who can distribute them amongst the very deprived schools across the country. To help in developing and enforcing green IT policies in the country, existing agencies setup to handle environmental and energy issues such as the EPA and Energy commission can be empowered to perform environmental and energy audits on various organisations periodically. In order to rope in private organisations without implementing draconian policies, special Green IT awards categories can be added to the Ghana Club 100 award, with a set of environmental sustainable criteria set out for companies to meet. The recognition and exposure this award will give to companies, will entice them to be more green in their IT usage.

6.2.3 Implications for Future Research This research has opened up the opportunities for more research in the area of Green IT in the West African sub region. This research was limited to 60 organizations in Greater Accra. Future research could be done increasing the sample frame or expanding the sample to the other regions of Ghana to study the awareness and practice of green IT countrywide. There are very interesting study areas that could also be done in specific industries like Finance, Mining and Manufacturing industries. Furthermore, the correlation between IT budgets and the possibility of implementing green IT in organisations is another area that will be interesting to research into. The research also brought out the issue of balancing security and green practices, another research could be in the area of how implementing green IT could be limited by the need to protect data and other sensitive activities. finally is also a need for practically testing the content and construct validity of the three dimensions of Green IT (sourcing, operation and service, and IT end-of-life management) and 92

developing and testing either an antecedent or causal model of Green IT adoption. This research therefore provides a foundation upon which other studies might build their framework

93

REFERENCES
ACS - Australian Computer Society (2007) Australian Computer Society Policy Statement on Green ICT, Available from www.acs.org.au.

Airlinetrends.com (2010, Feb 16th) Airports reward employees for green commuting, Airlinetrends.com Available at:http://www.airlinetrends.com/2010/02/16/airport-

green-commuting/ [accessed June 10th 2012]

Akrofi Y. K. and Akrofi K. A. (2011) Information Technology Investments and Organizational Performance of the Telecommunications Industry in Ghana. Research Journal of Information Technology 3(3): 118-132,

"Aluworks.com". Aluworks.com. Retrieved 26 June 2012.

Amoyaw O. Y., Agyekum O. O., Pwamang J. A, Mueller E., Fasko R., Schluep M. (2011). Ghana e-Waste Country Assessment; SBC e-Waste Africa Project.

Andrew A. M., (2007). Cybernetics and Systems on the Web; Global warming and nuclear power. Reading University, Reading, UK. Alsever, J., (2008). The green way to dump electronic junk, Retrieved 23 June, 2008, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24163506/ Apple, (2008). Apple and the environment, Retrieved 24 June, 2008, from http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/program/index.html.

Applegate, L.M., Austin, R.D., Soule, D.L. (2009). Corporate Information Strategy and Management: Cases and Texts, 8th Ed., Mc Graw hill.

94

Baah, K.D. and Tawiah K. A (2010). Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana. University of Ghana Business School Department of Organisation & Human Resource Management.

Balaguer, N.S. (1990) "OTISLINE (B)," Harvard Business School Case 9-190-149, Harvard Business School Publishing Division, Boston, MA.

Ball, R. (2006). International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS): pros and cons for investors.

Barney, J.B.(1991) "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage," Journal of Management (17:1).

Basel, R. (2006). Basel Conference Addresses Electronic Wastes Challenge, Press Release 2006, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

DOI=http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=485&Art icleID=5431&l=en (accessed 04/08/10).

Beaumont, J.R., Pedersen, L.M. and Whitaker, B.D. (1993). Managing the Environment: Business Opportunity and Responsibility, Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann Ltd.

Bermdez L.O. (2006) . "The Mineral Industry of Ghana" . Minerals Yearbook.

Bisbal,J., Lawless, D., Wu, B. and Grimson, J. (1999) Legacy Information Systems: Issues and Directions, IEEE Software, September/October 1999.

95

Blackwell

G.

(2009).

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/buyersguide | Published

/article.php/3816716/The-Pros-and-Cons-of-Skype-for-Business.htm. on: 22-Apr-09.

Boateng, R., Craig, J. Mbarika, V. Panford, P. Isabalija, S.R. and Kwadade, N.Y. (2010). Green Information Technology Practices in Firms in A Developing Economy The Case of Ghana, Louisiana Academy of Sciences 84th Annual Meeting, February 27, Alexandria: Louisiana State University at Alexandria. Broadbent, M. and Weill, P. (1997). Management by maxim: How business and IT managers can create IT infrastructures. Sloan Management Review, 38(3), 77-92.

Bucholz, R.A. (1998). Principles of Environmental Management: The Greening Business, N.J.: 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall.

Capra, E., Merlo, F.,(2009). Green IT: Everything Starts from the Software, European Conference on Information Systems. Association for Information Systems, Verona, Italy. pp. 6273

Chwelos, P., Ramirez, R., Kraemer, K.L., Melville, N.P., (2010). Does technological progress alter the nature of information technology as a production Input? New evidence and new results. Information Systems Research 21 (2), 392408.

Clemons, E.K. (1991). "Corporate Strategies tor InformationT echnology: A ResourceBased Approach," Computer (24:11). pp. 23-32.

Couts, A. (2011). Facebook to build massive server farm near the Arctic Circle. Retrieved in June, 2012 from : http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-tobuild-massive-server-farm-near-the-arctic-circle/#ixzz1y0KUvxUN.

96

Darko,

R.

(2010).

Electronic

Waste

Dumping

on

Ghana

Still

Con-

tinues.http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=1889 Brown D.(2012). "Top 10 Gold Producers". Gold Investing News. Retrieved 8 March 2012.

Dedrick, J. (2010). Green IS: concepts and issues for information systems research. Communications of the AIS 27 (11), 173183.

Dell.com June 2012>.

<http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/cr.aspx?~ck=ln&lnki=0,

Accessed

DiMaggio, P. J. and Powell, W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational behaviour, American Sociological Review, 48 (April), 147-160. Dogbevi, E.K.(2010). E-waste in Ghana How many children are dying from lead poisoning? http:// www.ghanabusinessnews.com/e-waste-in-ghana-%E2%80%93- howmany-children-are-dying-from-lead-poisoning. Retrieved June 2012.

Dunlap K. and Rasmussen N. (2006) Advantages of Row and Rack-Oriented Cooling Architectures for Data Centers.

Energy Star "Guidelines for Energy Service and Product Providers". Retrieved 27 March 2012.

Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov.gh/index.php?option=com _content&view=section&id=13&Itemid=77) Accessed in June 2012

97

Esty, D.C., Winston, A.S., (2006). Green to Gold: How Smart Companies use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Hoboken, NJ.

Feeny, D.F. and Ives, B.(1990). "In Search of Sustainability: Reaping Long-Term Advantage from Investments in Information Technology," Journal of Management Information Systems (7:1), pp. 27-46.

Gartner, (2008). Going Green: The CIOs Role in Enterprisewide Environmental Sustainability, Gartner EXP premier, May 2008.

"Ghana Market Introduction". britishcouncil.org. British Council. Retrieved 8 March 2012. (http://www.britishcouncil.org/eumd-information-background-ghana.htm) Ghana Statistical Service, 2010 Census Summary Report

http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/docfiles/2010phc/2010_population_and_housing_census %28view_summary_of_final_results%29.pdf. Retrieved June, 2012.

Ghanaweb.com ; Nigeria leads African investments in Ghana, 25-05-2011. Accessed June, 2012.

Ghanaweb.com :The Country Ghana; http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/ country_information/. Accessed on June 2012. Graff, C. D. (2008). In search of Green IT Governance, Retrieved 05 June, 2012, from http://www.greenercomputing.com/print/13

Gore, A. (1993), Earth in Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, Plume, New York, NY.

98

Greiner, L. (2008). The truth about tech recycling: it's green or it's mean. netWorker. 12, (2), 9-11. Hamner, B. (2006), Effects of green purchasing strategies on supplier behavior, in Sarkis, J. (Ed.), Greening the Supply Chain, Chapter 2, Springer, London, pp. 25-37.

Hanselman, S., and P. Mahmoud. (2007). The wild wild waste: e-waste. SIGUCCS '07: Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services.157-162.

Huang, R, (2010) ENERGY STAR Green IT : Power Management and Beyond Una Song, EPA. The Cadmus Group, Inc. February 2010.

IPCC (1992), Climate Change: IPCC First Assessment Report and 1992 IPCC Supplement, WMO/UNEP. Info~Tech (2007a). PC Power Saving Plans Reduce Costs and Environmental Impact ,

Info~Tech Research Group, December 19, , pp1-10.

Info~Tech (2007b). Exercise Environmentally Preferable Purchasing for a Healthier Plant and Pocketbook, Info~Tech Research Group, October 22, pp 1-9. Info~Tech (2007c). : Green Initiatives Your Peers are Cultivating, Info~Tech Research Group, July 30, pp 1-14. Info~Tech (2007d). Top 10 Energy-Saving Tips For a Greener Data Centre, Info~Tech Research Group, April 11, 1-11. Info~Tech (2008a), North America Underperforms in Green IT Attitudes and Actions , Info~Tech Research Group, January, pp. 1-15.

99

Info~Tech (2008b). Use EPEAT to Decrease Equipment Costs and Help the Environment, Info~Tech Research Group, February, pp.1-3. Info~Tech (2009). Gren IT: Why Mid-size Companies Are Investing Now, Info~Tech Research Group, January. Jenkin, T., Webster J. and McShane, L., (2010). An agenda for Green information technology and systems research. Queen's University, School of Business, 143 Union Street, Kingston, Canada ON K7L 3N6. Landale, K.,Nguyen, P., Romen .R , Kwan L. S. Shin, H.K.(2004), What UTS Does With Its Old Computers and What They Should Do . University of Technology Sydney.

Lebech, A, (2008). Action plan for Green IT in Denmark, (OECD Workshop, May 2008.) Luo, X., Bose, R. (2011) Integrative framework for assessing firms potential to undertake Green IT initiatives via virtualization A theoretical perspective. J. Strategic. Inform. System. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.jsis.2011.01.003.

McKinney, M.L. and Schoch, R.M. (1998), Environment Science: Systems and Solutions-Web Enhanced Edition, London: Jones and Bartlett.

McLure, J. (2010) Ghana Oil Reserves to Be 5 billion barrels (790,000,000 m3) in 5 years as fields develop. Bloomberg Television. Wednesday, 1 December 2010.

100

Meyer M. ,Ella, W., Young, R. M. (2009) Disposal of Old Computer Equipment: A Mounting Environmental Problem Retrieved on June, 2012

(http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2004/704/essentials/p70.htm).

Minas M. (2012), The Dark side of Technology. http://matthewminas.wordpress.com/tag/e-waste/. Accessed June, 2012.

Mines, C. and Davis, E. (2007). Topic Overview: Green IT, Forrester Research, retrieved on 23 June 2008 from

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,43494,00.html.

Mines C. (2008). The Dawn of Green IT Services: For Vendor strategy professionals Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction.

Mohamad, R. (2003). The environmental effect and waste management of computer manufacturing. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 19, (2), 95-100. Molla, A. (2008), E-Readiness to G-Readiness: Developing a Green Information Technology Readiness Framework.

Molla, A. Cooper, V. & Pittayachawan, S. (2009). IT and Eco-Sustainability: Developing and Validating a Green IT Readiness Model, Thirtieth International Conference on Information Systems, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Dec. 15- 18.

Mullins, R. (2006) Bush signs law to study data center energy usage, Computer World, Accessed on June 30, 2008 from

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleI d=9006698

101

Nunn, S. (2007) Green IT: Beyond the data centre how IT can contribute to the environmental agenda across and beyond the business, Accenture, 1- 7.

Osei Y.A, Agyekum O.O., Pwamang ,J.A., Mueller E., Fasko R., Schluep M. (2011) Ghana E-waste Country Assessment; SBC eWaste Afria project.

Ozturk, A., Umit, K., Medeni, I.T., Ucuncu, B., Caylan, M., Akba, F., Medeni, T.D. (2011) green ict (information and communication technologies): a review of academic and practitioner perspectives. International journal of ebusiness and egovernment studies. Vol 3, No 1, 2011 ISSN: 2146-0744 (Online)

Pierre, M. and Prothero, A. (1997), Green management: A Reader, London: The Dryden Press. Rao, P. (2004). Greening production: A South East Asian experience, International Journal of Operations &Production Management, (24:3), pp 289-320. Rao, P. & Holt, D. (2005). Do green supply chains lead to competitiveness and economic performance?, International Journal of Operations & Production

Management, (25:9), pp 898-916. Rasmussen, N. (2006). Electrical Efficiency Modeling for Data Centers, Retrieved 23 Jun, 2008, from http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/NRAN-66CK3D_R1_EN.pdf. Samson, T. (2008), The ROI of Green IT, Retrieved 5 June, 2008, from http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/03/recession_green.html?sourc e=rss

102

Murugesan S. (2008), Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, IEEE IT Professional, JanuaryFebruary 2008, pp 24-33.

Murugesan S.

(2007),"Going Green with IT:

Your

Responsibility Toward

Environmental Sustainability." Cutter Consortium Business-IT Strategies Executive Report, Vol. 10, No. 8, August 2007.

Porter, M.E. and Millar, V.E.(1985). "How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage," Harvard Business Review (63:4).

Pearlman, E. (n.d.) Should CIOs take lead in going green?, Retrieved 02 June, 2012, from<http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Editorial-Research/Should-CIOs-Take-LeadIn-Going-Greenu.html>.

Sen, S. Bhattacharya, C. B. and Korschun, D. (2006) The role of corporate social responsibility in strengthening multiple stakeholder relationships: A Field experiment, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Spring, (34), 158-166.

Siegler, K., & Gaughan, B. (2008). A practical approach to Green IT. Webinar, Retrieved July 14, 2008 from the World Wide Web

http://www.itmanagement.com/land/green-it-webinar/?tfso=2058. Sifty "Mandatory energy efficiency ratings in the offing". Sify.com. 2009-07-31. pp. 1. Retrieved 2009-08-19. Tantawi P, OShaughnessy N., Gad K. (2006), Obstacles of Going Green in Egypt, Brunel University, Business School.

Tebbutt, D., Atherton, N, Lock, T (2009), Green IT for dummies , John Wiley and Sons, South Sussex, England. 103

"The Action plan for Energy efficiency". The Day After. 1 August 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-17

"The Clinton Presidency: Protecting Our Environment and Public Health". Retrieved 26 March 2012.

Tugend A.(2008). "If Your Appliances Are Avocado, They're Probably not Green". New York Times. Retrieved 29 June 2008.

VanGilder, J. and Wendy Torell, W., (2011) Cooling Entire Data Centres using only in Row cooling. White Paper 139.

Velte, T.J., Velte, A.T., Elsenpeter, R, 2008. Green IT: Reduce Your Information Systems Environmental Impact while Adding to the Bottom Line, first ed.,McGraw Hill. Walley, N. and Whitehead, B. (1994), Its not Easy Being Green, Harvard Business Review, May-June, pp.46-52. Watson, R.T., Boudreau, M.C., Chen, A.J., 2010. Information systems and environmentally sustainable development: energy informatics and new directions for the IS community. MIS Quarterly 34 (1), 2339. Ward, J., and Peppard, J. (2009). Strategic Planning for Information Systems. 3 Rd Edition, John Wiley and Sons. Whitby, P.( 2007). The benefits of Green IT: The reasons for adopting a greener IT policy have become too good to ignore, Retrieved 5 June, 2008, from http://www.computing.co.uk/computingbusiness/analysis/2199135/benefits-green3420872. 104

Zendergroup, (http://www.zendergroup.org/docs/Recycling_toner.pdf) Retrieved June, 2012. Zhenqiu R., Yi L., (2001) "Global warming and its astro-causes", Kybernetes, Vol. 30 Iss: 4, pp.411 433 http://globaldisasterwatch.blogspot.com/

105