Adoption of Non-Certifiable Green Data Center Standards: Role of Knowledge and Organizational Factors

This study explains the role of organizational and knowledge factors on the adoption of Non-certifiable Green Data Center (NGDC) standards. The extant literature on data center energy efficiency and environmental impacts does not offer a close examination of how the knowledge about NGDC standards coalesce with data center organizational elements and whether such interactions are consequential for adoption of NGDC standards. Thus, this study addresses the questions: 1) What is the diffusion extent of NGDC standards among existing data centers? And 2) Why would data centers adopt NGDC standards? The survey result from 112 data centers reveals that the adoption of NGDC is selective with slightly more than 50% adopting them to a moderate and great extent. It shows that NGDC are adopted in relatively large data centers with commitment to environmental performance and well-developed absorptive capacity for NGDC knowledge. The paper concludes with recommendations for research and practice