Exploring the roles of ICT in supporting sustainability practices

📝 Abstract

The concern about sustainability has arisen due to the overuse of natural resources and the increased use of energy consumption over the last decades. Information communication technologies (ICT) has the potential to address the three main aspects of sustainability (people, planet, profit) and therefore, several organizations have initiated a sustainable development by integrating ICT within their business activities. However, the roles of ICT in supporting sustainability initiatives have only been discussed in a limited number of studies and there is a lack of practical examples that demonstrate how the different roles of ICT are played out in an organization’s environment. Therefore, this research aims to explore how ICT can be used by organizations to support sustainability initiatives. In particular, in this research-in-progress paper, we examine how a leading organization deploys Internet-of-Things as an example of an ICT application to support various sustainability initiatives. The study findings enhance the current understanding of how ICT can support sustainability practices of organizations.

💡 Analysis

The concern about sustainability has arisen due to the overuse of natural resources and the increased use of energy consumption over the last decades. Information communication technologies (ICT) has the potential to address the three main aspects of sustainability (people, planet, profit) and therefore, several organizations have initiated a sustainable development by integrating ICT within their business activities. However, the roles of ICT in supporting sustainability initiatives have only been discussed in a limited number of studies and there is a lack of practical examples that demonstrate how the different roles of ICT are played out in an organization’s environment. Therefore, this research aims to explore how ICT can be used by organizations to support sustainability initiatives. In particular, in this research-in-progress paper, we examine how a leading organization deploys Internet-of-Things as an example of an ICT application to support various sustainability initiatives. The study findings enhance the current understanding of how ICT can support sustainability practices of organizations.

📄 Content

Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Carrera and Kurnia 2015, Adelaide, Australia

ICT and sustainability practices

1 Exploring the roles of ICT in supporting sustainability practices Abdon Carrera Rivera Melbourne School of Information Systems The University of Melbourne, Australia Email: acarrera@unimelb.edu.au
Sherah Kurnia Department of Computing and Information Systems The University of Melbourne, Australia Email: sherahk@unimelb.edu.au Abstract The concern about sustainability has arisen due to the overuse of natural resources and the increased use of energy consumption over the last decades. Information communication technologies (ICT) has the potential to address the three main aspects of sustainability (people, planet, profit) and therefore, several organizations have initiated a sustainable development by integrating ICT within their business activities. However, the roles of ICT in supporting sustainability initiatives have only been discussed in a limited number of studies and there is a lack of practical examples that demonstrate how the different roles of ICT are played out in an organization’s environment. Therefore, this research aims to explore how ICT can be used by organizations to support sustainability initiatives. In particular, in this research- in-progress paper, we examine how a leading organization deploys Internet-of-Things as an example of an ICT application to support various sustainability initiatives. The study findings enhance the current understanding of how ICT can support sustainability practices of organizations. Keywords: Information Systems, Information Technology, Sustainability, Internet of Things. 1 Introduction
The rapid growth of business enterprises has contributed to the degradation of the natural environment due to the increased use of power consumption and overuse of scarce resources in the last decade (Elliot and Binney, 2008; Hedwig et al., 2009). The main sustainable development challenge comes from unsustainable consumption and production that have evolved over time. For example, human daily activities and needs such as demand for food, energy, increased human populations, production and consumption of materials and products in our daily lives have increased the amount of greenhouse gas concentrations by 20-40% in our atmosphere (Economic and Social Survey, 2013). This issue results in huge economic and social costs that could affect the welfare of the environment.

The environmental awareness has inspired companies to change their daily activities into more environmental friendly practices focusing on the sustainable development. The concept of sustainable development is based on a long term optimization of economical, ecological and social objectives to generate a lasting performance on the organization activities. These three aspects (economical, ecological and social) are known as the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) (Elkington, 1997). Some organizations have planned sustainable strategies that not only minimize the environmental impact but also increase their business competitiveness (Porter and Kramer, 2011). One strategy is to find innovative ways to integrate/introduce information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the business processes in order to deliver sustainable benefits (Donnellan, Sheridan and Curry, 2011). ICTs include hardware, software, communication devices, network and so on, which enable users and organizations to capture, process, manipulate and share data and information. Over the years, ICT has provided organizations with capabilities to improve their profitability, efficiency, productivity and increase their competitive advantage. Thus, ICT has become a major supporter to business innovation, wealth generation and an important tool for organizations to develop sustainability capabilities (Elliot and Binney, 2008). From a sustainability view point, ICT enables firms to standardize, capture, analyse, monitor and utilize data (or information) that helps identify and change actions for the welfare of the community and planet through the development of new applications and systems. In addition, it helps reduce the energy use by dematerialization such as replacing physical data centres with Cloud computing (Melville, 2010; Erdmann et al., 2004). Enkvist, Naucler, and Rosander (2007) also estimate that ICT can provide business solutions to minimize its global greenhouse gas footprint impact. Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Carrera and Kurnia 2015, Adelaide, Australia

ICT and sustainability practices

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Consequently, ICT can play significant roles in addressing sustainability (Melville, 2010; Rahim et al., 2014). Therefore, leading companies have implemented information communication technologies to fight against the negative environmental effect of the business processes and activities (Erek et al., 2009), improve their own econom

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