Shaping Green IT through procurement

Abstract

Workplace IT (such as laptops, smartphones, servers, and cloud services) forms the digital backbone of modern organisations but also generates significant environmental impacts through energy use, raw material extraction, and electronic waste. Because these technologies are procured at scale, procurement represents a strategic leverage point for improving the sustainability of organisational IT. However, it remains unclear how procurement can effectively stimulate supplier innovation rather than merely enforce compliance.

This thesis addresses the question: how can large Dutch organisations use supplier interaction mechanisms in workplace IT procurement to stimulate supplier innovation and thereby improve environmental sustainability? The study applies Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT) to conceptualise procurement as an interaction process shaped by actors’ motivations, perceptions, resources, and institutional context. A structured literature review and expert interviews identified seventeen supplier interaction mechanisms, grouped into four categories: control-oriented, competition-based, exploratory collaboration, and capability-building collaboration.

To explain variation in mechanism use, six propositions were developed linking interaction patterns to institutional context (public versus private) and procurement maturity (low, medium, high). These propositions were tested through in-depth case studies with eleven large Dutch organisations. The findings show that procurement maturity is the primary differentiating factor. Low-maturity organisations rely predominantly on control-oriented mechanisms, while high-maturity organisations combine competition-based approaches with selective collaboration, supported by a control-oriented backbone. Medium-maturity organisations display hybrid and inconsistent patterns. Across cases, procurement primarily stimulates incremental, demand-pull innovation rather than transformative change.
The study also identifies structural challenges that constrain more advanced interaction. Legacy systems, long-term contracts, limited sustainability metrics, competing priorities (such as cost and security), and concentrated supplier markets reduce buyer leverage and limit room for experimentation. These conditions help explain the persistent gap between sustainability ambitions and practical outcomes.

Building on these findings, the thesis develops a thematic roadmap that clusters interventions into four enabling themes: making sustainability visible, enforceable, structurally feasible, and acceptable. The roadmap positions short-term improvements (such as clearer criteria and improved data) alongside longer-term organisational and behavioural change. Validation discussions indicate that visibility and enforceability measures are most feasible in the short term, while more transformative interventions require gradual capability development and stronger alignment between data, governance, and routines.

The study contributes to Green IT and procurement-for-innovation literature by reframing workplace IT sustainability as a market-oriented and interaction-driven challenge. It demonstrates how procurement maturity and organisational context shape the balance between control, competition, and collaboration, and explains why innovation outcomes are often incremental. While limited to large Dutch organisations and primarily based on procurer perspectives, the research provides a structured framework for analysing procurement-supplier interaction and offers practical guidance for strengthening procurement’s role in advancing sustainable IT.