Environmental Sustainability Initiatives of Top Green IT Firms: IBM, HP, and Dell

This paper focuses on the findings of a qualitative content analysis study of the corporate sustainability reports of IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Dell with the purpose of exploring the sustainability initiatives in these firms using a number of theoretical frameworks. These three firms were among those highly rated in the information technology industry according to the annual Newsweek Green rankings, currently evaluated by Corporate Knights Capital. While all firms in all industries are expected to undertake their own sustainability efforts, firms that belong to the IT industry have a special role to play in terms of providing the tools and technologies their customer firms can use to promote the sustainability of their own business operations. The hypotheses tested in this study encompass the following theories: institutional theory, dynamic capabilities theory, and resource-based view of the firm theory. This study findings present positive support for all hypotheses proposed for these three firms.