Company Characteristics and Consumer Preferences – Prerequisites for Adopting Decisions Involving Organizations in Green ICT Innovation

Abstract:

This paper deals with the influence of the companies’ characteristics and the implicit or explicit consumers’ preferences for the environmentally-friendly ICT products. The interest of organizations in the innovation of green ICTs is conditioned by a range of subjective or objective factors, prevalently of financial as well as social nature. Beyond the financial aspect aiming at increasing incomes either through the products/services provided that do not affect the environment or through the reduction of expenses as a result of the use of alternative resources against the traditional ones, the ecologic innovations have various premises being conditioned by a series of internal or external factors. The characteristics of the organization, the consumers’ behavior, the amount of investments in research and development, the existence of leaders’ vision and the competition are only some of the motivations and triggers of the innovative process with a varied weight in the strategic decisions of organizations. This paper studies only the first two premises. The green ICT is an important direction for technological innovation aspect reflected in their place in the concerns of the international organizations like Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development or World Economic Forum, but in the literature also. The research methods were observation and analysis in this study that reflects the intersection of three economic areas, important for research: management, eco-innovation and ICT.