Green IS

Excerpt

The environment is deteriorating because of human activity and disturbance, and there is a very real need to address this problem, because it puts at serious risk the basis of human civilization (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Information systems (IS) have been identified as a key enabler for transforming organizations and society towards more environmental sustainability (Elliot 2011), and many IS researchers would agree that the IS discipline should contribute something to the betterment of our environmental footprint. While in the past, information technology (IT) was mostly seen as a contributor to environmental degradation throughout its lifecycle as it consumes resources and causes waste and emissions, there has been a growing awareness that IS as socio-technical systems using IT to transmit, process, or store information (Piccoli 2008) can also be an enabler for sustainable processes, services, and products (Melville 2010; Watson et al. 2010; Seidel et al. 2013; vom Brocke et al. 2013). For instance, Green IS are expected to create an impact on individual beliefs about environmental sustainability (Melville 2010), enable more sustainable work practices through virtualization and remote work (Bose and Luo 2011), enable organizations to meet compliance imperatives and social norms (Butler 2011), or increase resource efficiency (Watson et al. 2008), amongst others. There are also many examples, where existent IS are re-interpreted in the light of new environmental goals, for instance, the reduction of carbon emissions – just think of the use of business intelligence systems in order to provide environmental data so as to support sense-making or decision-making processes (Seidel et al. 2013). The key question is: How can the transformative power of IS be leveraged in order to contribute to the creation of an environmentally sustainable society? …