i

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

i

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 DATE

(10359444)

ii

CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify that this long essay was supervised in accordance with procedures laid down

by the University.

………………………………….. …………………………

DR. RICHARD BOATENG DATE

(SUPERVISOR)

iii

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my family, whom I have had to sacrifice my time with them to

spend doing this course.

iv

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.

v

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

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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

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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 budget………………………………………………………………52

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: Printer 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

viii

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

ix

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.

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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 Research Background.............................................................................................. 1

1.2 Research Problem ................................................................................................... 6

1.3 Research Purpose and Objectives ............................................................................ 8

1.4 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 9

1.5 Proposed Methodology ........................................................................................... 9

1.6 Significance of the Research ................................................................................. 10

1.7 Scope and Limitations ........................................................................................... 11

1.8 Chapter Synopsis .................................................................................................. 12

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................... 13

2.0 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 13

2.1 Green Information Technology Defined ................................................................ 13

2.2 Green IT Practices in Organizations ...................................................................... 15

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2.2.1 IT Sourcing Green Practices ........................................................................... 15

2.2.2 IT Operations and Services Green Practices ................................................... 17

2.2.3 IT Equipment End-Of-Life Green Practices ................................................... 20

2.3 Energy efficiency compliance Regulators .............................................................. 22

2.3.1 Energy Star .................................................................................................... 22

2.3.2 European Union Energy Label ....................................................................... 24

2.3.3 Bureau of Energy Efficiency .......................................................................... 24

2.3.4 Energy Commission ....................................................................................... 25

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

2.4.1 Economic drivers ................................................................................................ 26

2.4.2 Regulatory Drivers ......................................................................................... 27

2.4.3 Ethical Drivers ............................................................................................... 28

2.5 The Conceptual Framework .................................................................................. 29

2.5.1 Attitude .......................................................................................................... 30

2.5.2 Policy ............................................................................................................ 30

2.5.3 Practice .......................................................................................................... 31

2.5.4 Technology .................................................................................................... 31

2.5.5 Governance .................................................................................................... 32

2.6 The Green IT Framework explained ...................................................................... 32

2.7 Summary ................................................................................................................. 34

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

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3.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 35

3.1 IT Products Consumption in Organizations ........................................................... 36

3.2 E-Waste in Ghana ................................................................................................. 37

3.2.1 How e-waste gets to Ghana ................................................................................. 38

3.3 Policy and Legislation Concerning Environmental issues Ghana ........................... 39

3.4 Environmental Protection Agency ......................................................................... 41

3.5 Summary .............................................................................................................. 42

CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .......................................................... 43

4.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 43

4.1 Research Design ................................................................................................... 43

4.2 Population and Sample .......................................................................................... 44

4.3 Sampling Procedure ............................................................................................... 44

4.4 Sources of Data ..................................................................................................... 45

4.5 Research Instrument .............................................................................................. 45

4.6 Administration of Research Instrument ................................................................. 46

4.7 Analysis of data .................................................................................................... 46

4.8 Summary .............................................................................................................. 47

CHAPTER FIVE: FINDINGS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ....................................... 48

5.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 48

5.1 Findings ................................................................................................................ 48

5.2 Demographic Data ................................................................................................ 49

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5.2.1 Age of Companies ......................................................................................... 49

5.2.2 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 Educational level of Respondents ................................................................... 53

5.3 Green IT Knowledge ............................................................................................. 53

5.4 Environmental Goals ............................................................................................. 54

5.4.1 General Environmental Goals ........................................................................ 54

5.4.2 IT Environmental Goals ................................................................................. 54

5.5 Environment Measurements .................................................................................. 55

5.5.1 Measurement of Carbon footprint................................................................... 55

5.5.2 Measurement of Energy consumption ............................................................ 55

5.5.3 Contracting 3rd Party Environmental Audits ..................................................... 56

5.6 Environmental Sourcing of IT Products................................................................. 57

5.7 Green IT Services and Operations ......................................................................... 58

5.7.1 Building environmentally friendly server rooms. ............................................ 58

Table 5.7.1: Building environmentally friendly server rooms .............................................. 58

5.7.2 Printer Consolidation and Reduction. ............................................................. 59

5.7.3 End user device power management............................................................... 60

5.7.4 Telecommuting Capabilities ........................................................................... 60

xiv

5.7.5 Remote and Video conferencing .................................................................... 61

5.7.6 Storage Consolidation .................................................................................... 62

5.7.7 Server Virtualization ...................................................................................... 62

5.8 IT End of Life practices ........................................................................................ 63

5.9 Green IT Funding .............................................................................................. 64

5.10 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 Summary of Descriptive Findings .................................................................. 74

5.12 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

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6.0 Summary .............................................................................................................. 85

6.1 Key Findings ............................................................................................................. 86

6.2 Implication of the Research ................................................................................... 88

6.2.1 Implication for Research ................................................................................ 88

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

1

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

2

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

3

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 1992

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

4

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

5

Goldfields Ghana) to build a plant at Tema at a cost of 40 million dollars to supply 80

megawatts of power to supplement the country‘s 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

6

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;

7

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.

8

Thirdly Molla‘s 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

country‘s 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.

9

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

10

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

11

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 Ghana‘s 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.

12

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.

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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

14

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 systems—efficiently 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.

15

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 environmental

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 firm‘s 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

16

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 re-

examining 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

17

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

18

reduce a firm‘s 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 there‘s 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

19

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. It‘s not the only phone service they

use, but it‘s vital. Brightstorm recruits charismatic, 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.‖

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―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 end-

of-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 customer‘s 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

21

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 by-

products 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 don‘t 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 won‘t harm the environment and all remaining recyclable parts are shipped out

manufacturers so they can be used again (Greiner, 2008).

22

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 America‘s 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

23

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).

24

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 (bee-

india.nic.in).The government has proposed to make it mandatory for all appliances in India

25

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.

26

The Energy Commission‘s 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

27

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

America‘s Environmental Protection Agency initiative to study energy use in data centres

(Mullins, 2006); Australian Computer Society‘s (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

28

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, IT‘s

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 business‘s 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, we‘re 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

29

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 business‘s 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.

30

Within the g-readiness framework we conceptualise g-readiness as an organisation‘s

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 company‘s 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.).

31

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 business‘s 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).

32

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. Gartner‘s (2008)

case study reveals that Green IT requires ―sound management infrastructure to understand

impacts, prioritise actions and manage the enterprise‘s 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 CIO‘s, 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.

Legend

Figure 1: Green IT Framework

End-of-life

Management

Service and

Operating

Sourcing

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

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

Appropriate Disposal of Computing

Equipment

Refurbishment for reuse/resell or donation

Waste Paper Recycling

Refills and Recycling of Printer Ink

GREEN IT

Awareness/

Attitude

Policy/

Governance

Practice/

Technology

33

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.

34

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.

35

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 d‘Ivoire, 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 (Bermúdez, 2006). Another uncontrolled business is the imports of metal scraps

36

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 e-

waste 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

37

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 e-

waste 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

38

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)

39

3.3 Policy and Legislation Concerning Environmental issues Ghana

There are currently no specific laws relating to IT‘s 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.

40

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. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development - Agenda 21; and

j. The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).

41

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 today‘s 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 country‘s desire for effective, long-term maintenance of

environmental quality;

3. Ensure environmentally sound and efficient use of both renewable and non-

renewable 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 EPA‘s 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

42

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.

43

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

44

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 non-

probability 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)

45

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

46

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.

47

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.

48

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.

49

5.2 Demographic Data

5.2.1 Age of Companies

Table 5.2.1 : Age of Company

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid 1-5 years 8 13 13.6 13.6

6-10 years 10 17 16.9 30.5

11-15 years 5 8 8.5 39.0

16-20 years 5 8 8.5 47.5

Above 20 years 31 52 52.5 100.0

Total 59 98 100.0

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Communications 14 23 24.6 24.6

Manufacturing 12 20 21.1 45.6

Finance/Insurance 16 27 28.1 73.7

Education 2 3 3.5 77.2

Trading/Retail 1 2 1.8 78.9

IT 4 7 7.0 86.0

Health and Pharmaceutical

1 2 1.8 87.7

Others 7 12 12.3 100.0

Total 57 95 100.0

Missing System 3 5

Total 60 100

N = 57

50

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

5.2.3 Company Turnover

Table 5.2.3: Company Turnover

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid Below 200,000 8 13 16.0 16.0

200,000-500,000 4 7 8.0 24.0

500,001-1,000,000 4 7 8.0 32.0

1,000,001-2,000,000 7 12 14.0 46.0

Above 2,000,000 27 45 54.0 100.0

Total 50 83 100.0

Missing System 10 17

Total 60 100

N=50

25%

21%

28%

3%

2% 7%

2% 12%

Industries

Communications

Manufacturing

Finance/Insurance

Education

Trading/Retail

IT

Health and Pharmaceutical

Others

51

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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Below 20,000 8 13 15.7 15.7

20,000-50,000 8 13 15.7 31.4

50,001-100,000 13 22 25.5 56.9

100,001-500,000 12 20 23.5 80.4

Above 500,000 10 17 19.6 100.0

Total 51 85 100.0

Missing System 9 15

Total 60 100

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.

52

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

IT Budget

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Company Turnover

Figure 5.2.3: Company Turnover Figure 5.2.4: Annual IT budget

5.2.5 Length of Service of Respondents

Table 5.2.5 : Length of Service of respondent

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid 1-5 years 42 70 72.4 72.4

6-10 years 11 18 19.0 91.4

11-15 years 4 7 6.9 98.3

16-20 years 1 2 1.7 100.0

Total 58 97 100.0

Missing System 2 3

Total 60 100

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.

53

5.2.6 Educational level of Respondents

Table 5.2.6 : Educational Level of Respondent

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Diploma 5 8 8.5 8.5

First Degree 27 45 45.8 54.2

Masters 17 28 28.8 83.1

Professional 9 15 15.3 98.3

Doctorate 1 2 1.7 100.0

Total 59 98 100.0

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid No knowledge 4 7 6.9 6.9

Heard of it but no understanding

14 23 24.1 31.0

Adequate knowledge 40 67 69.0 100.0

Total 58 97 100.0

Missing System 2 3

Total 60 100

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.

54

5.4 Environmental Goals

5.4.1 General Environmental Goals

Table 5.4.1: General Environmental Goals

Frequency Percent

Valid Not planned 36 60.0

Currently planning 19 22.0

Completed 5 8.0

Total 60 100.0

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 Percent

Valid Not planned 39 65.0

Currently planning 16 27.0

Completed 5 8.0

Total 60 100.0

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.

55

5.5 Environment Measurements

5.5.1 Measurement of Carbon footprint

Table 5.5.1 : Measurement of Carbon footprint

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Not planned 45 75 75.0 75.0

Currently exploring 7 12 11.7 86.7

Currently planning 3 5 5.0 91.7

Implementing 2 3 3.3 95.0

Completed 3 5 5.0 100.0

Total 60 100 100.0

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 didn‘t

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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Not planned 22 37 36.7 36.7

Currently exploring 8 13 13.3 50.0

Currently planning 4 7 6.7 56.7

Implementing 20 33 33.3 90.0

Completed 6 10 10.0 100.0

Total 60 100 100.0

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

56

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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Not planned 37 62 62.7 62.7

Currently exploring 6 10 10.2 72.9

Currently planning 11 18 18.6 91.5

Implementing 2 3 3.4 94.9

Completed 3 5 5.1 100.0

Total 59 98 100.0

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

N = 59

Contracting environmental auditors to perform environmental audits on organisations is a

good way of testing one‘s 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.

57

5.6 Environmental Sourcing of IT Products

Table 5.6: Sourcing of IT products

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Not planned 23 38 38.3 38.3

Currently exploring 10 17 16.7 55.0

Currently planning 7 12 11.7 66.7

Implementing 14 23 23.3 90.0

Completed 6 10 10.0 100.0

Total 60 100 100.0

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 you‘re 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:

58

“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

Frequency Percent

Valid Not planned 30 50

Implementing less than 12 months 2 3

Implementing in more than 12 months 4 7

Piloting or implementing now 13 22

Fully implemented/Completed 7 12

Total 56 93

Missing System 4 7

Total 60 100

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

59

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

didn‘t answer the question.

5.7.2 Printer Consolidation and Reduction.

Table 5.7.2 : Printer Consolidation

Frequency Percent

Valid Not planned 4 7

Implementing less than 12 months 1 2

Implementing in more than 12 months 5 8

Piloting or implementing now 14 23

Fully implemented/Completed 35 58

Total 59 98

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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.

60

5.7.3 End user device power management

Table 5.7.3 : End user device power management

Frequency Percent

Valid Not planned 7 12

Implementing less than 12 months 9 15

Implementing in more than 12 months 5 8

Piloting or implementing now 12 20

Fully implemented/Completed 27 45

Total 60 100

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 Percent

Valid Not planned 16 27

Implementing less than 12 months 2 3

Implementing in more than 12 months 5 8

Piloting or implementing now 12 20

Fully implemented/Completed 25 42

Total 60 100

N = 60

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Telecommuting allowed workers to perform duties they would have done in the office

outside the office environs by logging into the company‘s 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 Percent

Valid Not planned 13 22

Implementing less than 12 months 10 17

Implementing in more than 12 months 4 7

Piloting or implementing now 12 20

Fully implemented/Completed 20 33

Total 59 98

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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.

62

5.7.6 Storage Consolidation

Table 5.7.6: Storage Consolidation

Frequency Percent

Valid Not planned 5 8

Implementing less than 12 months 7 12

Implementing in more than 12 months 8 13

Piloting or implementing now 15 25

Fully implemented/Completed 24 40

Total 59 98

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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 Percent Valid Percent

Valid Not planned 11 18 18.6

Implementing less than 12 months 7 12 11.9

Implementing in more than 12 months 3 5 5.1

Piloting or implementing now 21 35 35.6

Fully implemented/Completed 17 28 28.8

Total 59 98 100.0

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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

63

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 Percent

Valid Not planned 27 45

Implementing less than 12 months 5 8

Implementing in more than 12 months 4 7

Piloting or implementing now 7 12

Fully implemented/Completed 16 27

Total 59 98

Missing System 1 2

Total 60 100

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:

64

“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 company‘s 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

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Very easy 5 8 8.6 8.6

Quiet Easy 7 12 12.1 20.7

Not sure 25 42 43.1 63.8

Quiet difficult 10 17 17.2 81.0

Very difficult 11 18 19.0 100.0

Total 58 97 100.0

Missing System 2 3

Total 60 100

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!”.

65

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

No knowledge

Adequate knowledge

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

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

66

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

N = 58

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

N= 57

02468

101214161820

No knowledge

Adequate knowledge

0 5 10 15 20

1-5 years

6-10 years

11-15 years

16-20 years

Above 20 years

Adequate knowledge

No understanding

67

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

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.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

1-5 years

6-10 years

11-15 years

16-20 years

Adequate knowledge

No knowledge

68

Figure 5.10.2a: Organisational Policy on Environment

Figure 5.10.2b: IT Environmental Policy of organisations

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

0 5 10 15 20

Communications/IT

Manufacturing

Finance/Insurance

Education

Trading/Retail

Others

Completed

Currently planning

Not planned

0 5 10 15

Communications/IT

Manufacturing

Finance/Insurance

Education

Trading/Retail

Others

Completed

Currently planning

Not planned

69

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 didn‘t 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

70

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).

71

0123456789

10

Not planned

Piloting

Completed0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Not planned

piloting

complete

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Not planned

piloting

completed0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Not planned

piloting

completed

Figure 5.10.3a: Server room build Figure 5.10.3b: Printer Consolidation

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 Figure 5.10.3d: Telecommuting

72

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Not planned

piloting

completed0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Not planned

piloting

completed

Figure 5.10.3e : Remote conferencing Figure 5.10.3f : Storage Consolidation

Figure 5.10.3f : Server virtualisation and Consolidation

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Not planned

piloting

complete

73

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 Molla‘s (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”.

74

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.

75

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 company‘s

Wide Area Network (WAN).

Fidelity Bank‘s 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.

76

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 IBM‘s 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.

77

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

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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 company‘s 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

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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 Bank‘s 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

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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

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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

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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 state-

of-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:

83

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

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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.

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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

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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 IT‘s 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

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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 didn‘t 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 afore-

mentioned 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.

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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.

89

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

organisation‘s 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.

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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

91

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

government‘s 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

government‘s 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

92

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

93

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

94

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