Views on the Past, Present, and Future of Business and Information Systems Engineering

‘‘The times they are a-changin,’’ a famous song title by Bob Dylan, also applies to our profession and our subject of study. Information technology has always been a driver for innovation. The recent years, however, have seen IT-based innovations that truly impact everybody’s lives. Everything that can be digitized will be digitized, and this trend is continuing at an amazing speed. For a discipline that looks at the design and utilization of information systems these are exciting times. Yet, it is also a time full of challenges. While our discipline has much to contribute, it competes with other disciplines for topics and ideas. Also, the scope of topics studied has become broader and broader, and so have our methods. While initial work in Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) was often rooted in artificial intelligence, database systems, or operations research, the community has adopted new approaches to address new types of problems. Nowadays, we also have a strong group of academics working primarily with empirical methods or methods from microeconomics, to name just a few. This development towards a more multiparadigmatic discipline also had its challenges and there were controversial discussions along the way

Green IS – Information Systems for Environmental Sustainability

While in the past information technol- ogy was mostly seen as a contributor to environmental degradation, recent stud- ies suggest that information systems (IS) can indeed enable sustainable processes, products, and services. Specifically, infor- mation systems are expected to create an impact on individual beliefs about en- vironmental sustainability, enable more sustainable work practices through virtu- alization and remote work, enable orga- nizations to meet compliance imperatives and social norms, or increase resource ef- ficiency. In this context, notions such as energy informatics or green business pro- cess management have emerged. The IS discipline is thus challenged to explore the potential of information systems to contribute to the betterment of the nat- ural environment by enabling more sus- tainable work practices at individual, or- ganizational, and societal levels

Theories in Business and Information Systems Engineering

Even though the idea of science enjoys an impressive reputation, there seems to be no precise conception of science. On the one hand, there is no unified definition of the extension of activities subsumed under the notion of science. According to the narrow conception that is common in Anglo-Saxon countries, science is restricted to those disciplines that investigate nature and aim at explanation and prediction of natural phenomena. A wider conception that can be found in various European countries includes social sciences, the humanities and engineering. On the other hand and related to the first aspect, there is still no general consensus on the specific characteristics of scientific discoveries and scientific knowledge

Green IT and Green IS: Definition of Constructs and Overview of Current Practices

In this paper, the evolution of environmentally sustainable information systems management, addressed through the terms Green IT and Green IS, is analyzed from an IS research perspective. The theoretical foundations of this research area are examined through a literature review and revised in the scope of a content analysis. The characteristics of Green IT and Green IS are contrasted, and impact areas are identified. Based on these findings, the concepts of Green IT and Green IS are thoroughly defined. Next, a wide range of prevalent Green IT practices is assigned to specific value creation processes of IT departments and presented in a catalogue of Green IT measures. Greens IS initiatives, which enable environmentally sustainable business processes and end products, are categorized and consolidated in a comprehensive list of relevant practices. This paper provides an overview of theoretical constructs and practice-oriented implementation measures, thus facilitating insights to both, academics and practitioners