The same Assets, but New Impacts: IT-Enabled Coordination and Environmental Performance

In this paper we analyze the effect of information technologies (IT) on the environmental performance of firms. In particular, we study the moderating effect of IT on the relationship between a firm’s environmental practices and its environmental performance. The paper considers two moderating effects –namely, IT-enabled coordination and IT-enabled control. IT-enabled coordination refers to the integration of processes and the sharing of information between a firm and its suppliers in design and manufacturing. IT-enabled control refers to the use of IT to monitor the environmental practices that a firm implements in production and logistics. The data used were obtained from the fifth (2009) round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) which includes responses from manufacturing plants within the assembly industry. Our findings suggest that IT-enabled coordination strengthens the impact of the implementation of environmental practices on the environmental performance of firms. A relevant contribution for practice is derived from this study: firms can use the same technologies (ERP, shared databases) that they once implemented to improve their operational performance to improve the environmental performance.