Sustainable IS Initialization Through Outsourcing: A Theory-Based Approach

Environmentally friendly and sustainable initiatives have emerged as important topics in IS research over the last few years. However the existing discussions and scientific contributions in this field are mainly based on case studies and empirical surveys. Less research is firmly based on existing IS theories. Furthermore, little research has been undertaken to analyze the contribution of outsourcing to environmental sustainability. This paper takes a theory-based approach to link outsourcing with sustainable IS to examine the possibilities of organizations engaging in green and sustainable initiatives. To ensure a broad scope the model is built on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework. This framework is extended with the diffusion of innovation (DoI) theory to incorporate implementation success, technology acceptance and the transaction cost theory (TCT) to integrate outsourcing success into the model.