Green Energy Technology

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object of this paper, namely, study of how the valuation of firm’s image is influenced by their green energy technology-related activities.

To be ‘socially responsible’ is the current buzz word in the business domain and is being implemented by all types of organizations from fast food giants like Burger King to Oil giants like Shell and British Petroleum. The ways in which the company presents itself as a socially responsible corporation are through philanthropic programs, sponsorships, volunteerism, code of ethics, quality programs, health and safety programs and environmental programs (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001; Porter and Kramer, 2002). These are a part of green movement which is also the current trend of today’s organization where the emphasis is on protecting the environment (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001).

The green movement has become the part of corporate social responsibility of many organization and they are now targeting to become a socially responsible corporation (Watts and Holmes, 2004). It was generally believed that only those organizations need to incorporate social responsible initiatives that do maximum damage to the environment and these damages are visible and measurable i.e. tangible. However, software firms do damage the environment intangibly through their data centre as they consume lots of energy for their data servers and information technology equipments to function (EPA, 2007). Information technology devices consume lots of energy and they have green house emissions. For example, power adaptors wastes significant amounts of energy. Apart from that it is very hazardous and difficult to dispose of information technology equipments as they fill the landforms and emits poisonous gas to the atmosphere. To address such

issues, terms like green information technology (IT) or sustainable information technology have become very popular. These terms have become a part of corporate social responsibility and software organizations are actively engaged in implementing sustainable information technology to become a green organization.

Green energy corporate image

The idea of corporate image is tightly related to the ecological awareness of the company. As ecological awareness is started on ecological thinking (Hunter and Bansal, 2006), firm managers have the chance to strength their company’s awareness by playing on the thinking of the company’s ecological results by enhancing its environmental friendly image. The significance of environmental friendly company image management will relate the sector in which the company functions (Frooman, 1999); thus, the making of a good environmental friendly image in the J. Amores-Salvado et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 83 (2014) 356   e365 357 minds of the interested part will be an inevitable essential for companies functioning in ecologically responsive sectors where commerce events have vital community and unhelpful ecological externalities, such as travelling, energy making, and polluting sectors, such as metal or paper making. It is in these sectors that the coherence between a company’s outer interaction and outer movement is highly valued (Russo and Fouts, 1997; Walker and Wan, 2012) and ecological interaction acts as a vital part, playing one of the important methods to increase a company’s public image (Saha and Darnton, 2005).

The other reasons why a corporate should adopt the green marketing to implement the environmental communications(Hillestad et al., 2010)are that the corporate tries to establish a green corporate image in front of the public and show the prospective customers that the decision makers of the corporate are taking seriously the environmental issues into the operation of their business. All the efforts to create a green corporate image serve to strengthen collective link with interested parties(Nair and Menon, 2008), which is in line with reducing the risk in financial market(Bansal and Roth, 2000). Namely, building a green corporate image is beneficial for the corporate both in financial market and in the mind of its stakeholders. The inspection from customer pressure groups and government’s official department and other non-profit regulatory groups is another important aspect the corporate needs to take into consideration when make decisions that involves green issues (Delmas, 2001). The previous discussion suggest that the creation of the green energy corporate image plays a vital role in the management of the corporate. For this matter, an outstanding green corporate image can be interpreted as an indication of a business’ environmental obligation towards its important interested parties and as a way to improve its environmental validity, repute and cost-effectiveness.

Corporate image and corporate performance

According to Vardan(2010), he conduct a research on two aspects of business’s practices. One aspect is about the adopting of the green energy technology, which is less noticeable by external stakeholders. The other aspect is about the green marketing practices, is assumed to stand for the work one firm does to communicated with the the outsiders. Vardan’s research show that the financial performance is positively related with the green energy technology adoption and green marketing. The more one firm invest on the development of green energy technology, the better its performance in the financial markets and sales.In other words, investing on the green energy technology helps one firm gain certain advantage in the financial markets and consumption markets. Firms who adopting green marketing strategies also achieve good performance. Thus, result of Vardan’s empirical research suggests that the strategies of investing in and pursing the green energy technologies is obviously beneficial for the firm.

British Telecom, The Co-Operative Group, SE-Banken, and other European firrms are buying wind-generated electricity from their retail power providers.

There are numerous academic review about the corporate image. Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of corporate image to achieve their goals and stay competitive (Kim and Lee, 2010).According to Van Riel and Fombrun (2007), corporate image is the characteristics of a corporate that its interested parties come to recognize, and the corporate image can generate a certain impression on its customers ,prospective customers and interested parties((Dowling, 2004). Therefore, compared with other business