What IS Can Do for Environmental Sustainability: A Report from CAiSE’11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS

The panel on Green and Sustainable Information Systems at the 21st International Conference on Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11), held in London in June 2011, was held to discuss issues in Environmental Sustainability and Information Systems within the Information Systems Engineering research community. This panel report describes the panelists’ views on using information systems for improving sustainability and on improving the energy efficiency of the data centres on which information systems are based. The current topics of research, possible contributions of the IS community, and future directions are discussed

What IS can do for Environmental Sustainability: A Report from the CAiSE´11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS

The panel on Green and Sustainable Information Systems at the 21st International Conference on Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11), held in London in June 2011, was intended to discuss issues in Environmental Sustainability and Information Systems within the Information Systems Engineering research community. Information systems, which have become pervasive and hence impact on most aspects of human activity, can help to reduce the negative impact of human activities on the environment in two main areas

ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT – DEVELOPING A GREEN BPM READINESS MODEL

During the last half decade, various theories, concepts, and models have been established to make organizations more environmentally sustainable. The IS community had their share with the Green IS/IT domain. As it turned out most of these concepts took a very functional approach, not making a good fit for business process oriented organizations. To fill this gap the research stream of Green Business Process Management (GBPM) arose. In this paper we develop and discuss various capabilities that organizations should have in order to actually take advantage of GBPM. We call these capabilities GBPM readiness

Exploratory study of Responsible Innovation: Toward a Holistic Approach to Sustainability

The Information Systems (IS) community has been called to address the important challenge of sustainable development, but progress continues to be slow. Elsewhere, responsible innovation (RI) has emerged as a framework to support the integration of sustainability considerations into the innovation process. The aim of this paper is to explore how organizations operationalize the main RI principles – anticipation, inclusion, responsiveness, and reflexivity. Based on a qualitative exploratory study, this paper develops insights into practices taken by organizations to address sustainability issues through their IS innovation processes. Our findings suggest that organizations operationalize RI principles highly or partially under the influence of five factors. A new understanding of the RI principles operationalization and its applicability to IS innovations is developed, which can serve to direct further research and guide organizations aiming to enhance their sustainability performance

Applying King et al.\u27s taxonomy to frame the IS discipline\u27s engagement in green IS discourse

This paper considers how the IS discipline can engage with discourse on the institutions and their interventions which influence and regulate green IS innovation. To consider possible responses, we apply King et al.&rsquo;s (1994) taxonomy, based on Institutional Theory, to frame a research agenda to guide future exploration and debate on the interventions to facilitate green IS innovation. Through the application of the taxonomy, we derive several pertinent questions for the discipline to consider as part of this debate. We conclude that the IS discipline can, and indeed should, play a more prominent role both through traditional responses (e.g., descriptive studies of green IS methodologies, organisational best practice, maturity models, etc.), but also through more active engagement in the form of participation and advocacy in shaping future green policy and regulation.<br /

Applying King et al.’s taxonomy to frame the IS discipline’s engagement in green IS discourse

This paper considers how the IS discipline can engage with discourse on the institutions and their interventions which influence and regulate green IS innovation. To consider possible responses, we apply King et al.’s (1994) taxonomy, based on Institutional Theory, to frame a research agenda to guide future exploration and debate on the interventions to facilitate green IS innovation. Through the application of the taxonomy, we derive several pertinent questions for the discipline to consider as part of this debate. We conclude that the IS discipline can, and indeed should, play a more prominent role both through traditional responses (e.g., descriptive studies of green IS methodologies, organisational best practice, maturity models, etc.), but also through more active engagement in the form of participation and advocacy in shaping future green policy and regulation

Green Information Systems: Directives for the IS Discipline

Green IS offers the promise for IS scholars to make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the effects of global climate change and other environmental problems. While significant achievements have been made in shaping Green IS as a subfield in the IS discipline, the emergence of Green IS is still by far too slow, given the magnitude of the problem. Against this background a panel was organized at ICIS 2012 in order to discuss future directives for the IS discipline. This article, co-authored by the panelists, reports on the major issues raised by this panel. First, the article gives an account of major achievements in the field of Green IS. Second, it presents five specific directives which we agree are important for the future of our discipline

AN INFORMATION SYSTEM DESIGN THEORY FOR GREEN INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING - INTEGRATING THEORY WITH EVIDENCE FROM MULTIPLE CASE STUDIES

Du to increasingly noticeable environmental impacts of business activities and consequntly rising demands for environmental information by organizational stakeholders, reliable sustainability reporting (SR) is ever more important for firms. As the task of detailed sustainability reporting is complex and involves gathering and processing of a considerable amount of data, green information systems (Green IS) are seen as suitable to support this task. While some Green IS for SR are commercially available, their adoption is low. One reason is that there is a lack of knowledge of how to design these IS. This paper seeks to provide guidance for the design of Green IS for SR by suggesting an information system design theory (ISDT), which is a set of primarily prescriptive statements describing how to construct the class of Green IS for SR. Therefore, we synthesize knowledge gained from organizational and management theories with insights from 29 case studies conducted in a variety of industries. In result we derived a specific ISDT for Green IS for SR, that contributes to solve the trade-offs between environmental data transparency, complexity and data collection effort. Thus, the proposed ISDT paves the way for future improved Green IS for SR and sustainable development