Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
In response to growing concerns about environmental degradation, firms increasingly aim to reduce their environmental footprint. On an operational level, green information systems (IS) are recognized as an important driver of eco-sustainable practices. The impact of Green IS on a strategic level is less understood. Our study seeks to fill this void by investigating the role of Green IS on organization’s sustainability strategy. Using a single case study design, we aim to identify if and how affordances of Green IS contribute to firms’ sustainable strategy. Our results indicate that Green IS affordances supported the strategic shift of our case company towards more sustainability. Moreover, we found that these affordances existed on an intra- and inter-organizational level, thus impacting sustainability processes beyond the focal organization’s boundaries. Our study contributes to research on Green IS by extending our understanding of how and why affordances can trigger and enable an organizational sustainability strategy.
Recommended Citation
Henkel, Christopher; Seidler, Anna-Raissa; Kranz, Johann Joachim; and Fiedler, Marina, "How to become a Sustainability Leader? The Role of IS Affordances in Enabling and Triggering Sustainability Transformations" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 15.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/IT-and-Social/Presentations/15
How to become a Sustainability Leader? The Role of IS Affordances in Enabling and Triggering Sustainability Transformations
In response to growing concerns about environmental degradation, firms increasingly aim to reduce their environmental footprint. On an operational level, green information systems (IS) are recognized as an important driver of eco-sustainable practices. The impact of Green IS on a strategic level is less understood. Our study seeks to fill this void by investigating the role of Green IS on organization’s sustainability strategy. Using a single case study design, we aim to identify if and how affordances of Green IS contribute to firms’ sustainable strategy. Our results indicate that Green IS affordances supported the strategic shift of our case company towards more sustainability. Moreover, we found that these affordances existed on an intra- and inter-organizational level, thus impacting sustainability processes beyond the focal organization’s boundaries. Our study contributes to research on Green IS by extending our understanding of how and why affordances can trigger and enable an organizational sustainability strategy.