The Social Sustainability of Digital Information Services in Sub-Saharan Africa

Nowadays, mobile phone-enabled services are reaching the rural poor farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with digital information for agricultural development. These digital services consist of access to social networks and customised information that are expected to enhance farm management due to knowledge exchange and learning. This thesis aimed to analyse the farmers’ use of digital services and discuss its implications for social sustainability in agriculture by looking at how digital information merges, coexists or competes with other bodies of local knowledge. The analysis was based on participant observation with eleven farmers that use iShamba, a digital platform providing agricultural information services to smallholder farmers in rural Kenya. A social practice perspective implies that digital information must consider the contextual realities of farmers in terms of material, competence and meaning. Considering that access to inputs is constrained in the context of the study, this thesis suggests that digital services could contribute to social sustainability by promoting biological-based innovations that are locally applicable in terms of the materials available to farmers. Moreover, digital services could complement their service with field advisory visits or training courses, where the role of human intermediation appeared to be fundamental. Social sustainability in agriculture is that associated with the generation of knowledge and meaning that legitimises a particular model of agricultural development. This thesis found that digital services increase the diversity of knowledge by offering several options to farmers which contributes to social sustainability in agriculture. However, digital services do not encourage innovation, directing research toward attending to the demands of poor rural farmers but rather provide farmers with the available innovations. Additionally, a key point is the potential of digital services to co-construct the meaning associated with agricultural development. But since digital information integrates diverse trajectories of agricultural development, social sustainability requires that the institutional arrangement promote and support models of sustainable agriculture at the landscape leve

Too Much of a Good Thing? An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Digital Technology-enabled Business Models on Individual Stress and Future Adoption of Sustainable Services

The pervasive diffusion of digital technologies affords the development of innovative and sustainable business models. With increased connectivity, options arise for enabling sharing-based services with pay-per-use pricing. Besides the merits that these services gather, e.g., concerning sustainability, flexibility and economics, less is known about the potential adverse impacts on individuals. Thus, we employed an experimental research design to examine how digital technology-enabled business models affect individual stress and perception concerning the future usage of these services. Specifically, we investigated the context of car sharing, a service that has recently been advanced by the use of digital technologies and received increasing adoption rates. The empirical results indicate that digital technology-enabled business model designs significantly influence psychological stress in an unfavorable manner, and hence, negatively affect the willingness to use car sharing. Thus, our investigation points to the importance of accounting for potential dysfunctional societal effects of information systems in sustainability transformation

Towards an Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories: A National Infrastructure Development Proposal

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) responds to the call to develop the national research information infrastructure through a broad, repository-based architecture. First, the proposal has an overall focus on the critical issues of the access continuity and the sustainability of digital collections. Second, it will build on a base of demonstrators for digital continuity and sustainability, embedded in developmental repository facilities within partner institutions. Third, it will contribute to national strength in this area by encouraging the development of skills and expertise and providing coordination throughout the sector. APSR will actively provide international linkages and national services

RETHINKING SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS BY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Public organizations should contribute to value creation moving towards sustainability as a vision for change, strategy and action by developing the potential of information technology in order to redesign trust-based relationships and support communities to create value within ecosystems, promoting co-production of public services, strengthening the agile working as a means to empower the employees and develop smart and digital platforms within ecosystems. As organizations seeking sustainability, public organizations should evolve as communities that develop human and technological sources to facilitate value creation within society. Public organizations should achieve sustainability and develop the community adopting a service logic view using technology in order to drive the transition from using technology in government to develop digital, smart, lean and open platforms that enable value creation, innovation and networking as source that help drive public organizations to design a sustainable pathway for future and wealth of communities

Invited Paper: Teaching Information Systems in the Age of Digital Disruption

The Information Systems discipline has long suffered an identity crisis. It has also been prone to program sustainability issues as a technology focus has waxed and waned over the last 50 years. This paper suggests a new approach to teaching Information Systems, utilizing the notion of “fundamental and powerful concepts.” Using digital disruption as a fundamental and powerful concept, the authors argue for the core IS course and the courses that make up the major to be developed and centered around the transformation of business models, products, and services caused by emerging digital technologies. The paper includes an outline for the core IS course and the other courses in the major and concludes with a suggestion that the fundamental and powerful concept of digital disruption be used as an approach to teaching Information Systems

Digital Pollution: Going Beyond The Limits Of Virtual

Digital environment and digital pollution approach requires overcoming an alleged duality between the natural and virtual environments. The digital environment produces risks of impacts on the natural environment, it presents itself as a source of environmental pollution. Environmental protection should promote socialenvironmental measures in order to explicit the effects of degradation originated from digital environment and, thus, try to measure levels of pollution produced by digital data storage, electronic information generation, internet services and cumulative storage of data at electronic servers. It’s necessary to articulate and apply the principle of sustainability to information technology. On that purpose, the preparation and development of this article are based on Spinoza’s philosophical method combined with the critical propositional method in order to face the theme. In conclusion, the article supports that the digital environment is inseparably connected to the (natural and social) physical environment, understood as a specific object of environmental law.

Using visual and linguistic framing to support sustainable decisions in an online store

Companies face several digital communication challenges when it comes to promoting green products or services. The framing effect, which refers to the presentation of information, can significantly influence decision-making in digital interfaces. This research explores the impact of information framing through text and visuals on purchase decisions for sustainable fashion products. An online evaluation study (𝑁 = 84) of an e-commerce environment was conducted. We found that visual framing significantly affected user product choices, supporting more sustainability decisions. In contrast, little evidence was found that supported the effectiveness of linguistic (i.e., message) framing on user product choices. We discuss implications on how product pages should be designed to encourage sustainable decision-making

Using visual and linguistic framing to support sustainable decisions in an online store

Companies face several digital communication challenges when it comes to promoting green products or services. The framing effect, which refers to the presentation of information, can significantly influence decision-making in digital interfaces. This research explores the impact of information framing through text and visuals on purchase decisions for sustainable fashion products. An online evaluation study (𝑁 = 84) of an e-commerce environment was conducted. We found that visual framing significantly affected user product choices, supporting more sustainability decisions. In contrast, little evidence was found that supported the effectiveness of linguistic (i.e., message) framing on user product choices. We discuss implications on how product pages should be designed to encourage sustainable decision-making

Creating a sustainable digital infrastructure: The role of service-oriented architecture

The United Nations’ goal of generating sustainable industry, innovation, and infrastructure is the point of departure for our reflective paper. The paper elaborates on the concepts of digital infrastructure, service-oriented architecture, and microservices. It emphasizes the benefits and challenges of creating a sustainable infrastructure based on a service-oriented environment, in which cloud services constitute an important part. We outline the prerequisites for obtaining a sustainable digital infrastructure based on services. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and recently, microservice architecture, and cloud services, can provide organizations with the improved agility and flexibility essential for generating sustainability in a market focusing on digitalization. The reuse capability of SOA provides a common pool of information technology (IT) resources and qualifies as a green IT approach that impacts environmental protection. Previous research has identified IT and business alignment together with SOA governance as the most critical criteria when implementing SOA. This paper discusses these issues in-depth to explain sustainability.publishedVersio

Systematic analysis of digitally enabled services for Sustainable Connected Cities

The investigation on the relationships between digital technologies and the city is more and more acknowledged as a research challenge among Information Systems researchers. As part of an Action Design Research project aiming at the development of a Capability Maturity Framework for Sustainable Connected Cities, this research in progress paper presents a systematic analysis of digitally-enabled services in this context. A taxonomy of services that have a potential positive impact on cities’ socio-economical and environmental sustainability is proposed. The KJ (Kawakita Jiro) method, which ingrains Grounded Theory’s and Affinity Diagrams’ principles, was applied to reach this scope. This project is being conducted by a consortium that involves representatives from academia, industry, and public authority