Enablers and Barriers to the Organizational Adoption of Sustainable Business Practices

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External Documents

Reference

Seidel, S., Recker, J., & vom Brocke, J. (2010). Enablers and Barriers to the Organizational Adoption of Sustainable Business Practices. Paper presented at the 16th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2010), Lima, Peru. (VHB_3: D)

Publication type

Paper in Conference Proceedings

Abstract

Individuals, organizations, and governments are increasingly becoming aware of the necessity of sustainability in living, organizing, performing, and managing work. In this context, “green IS” has become an established colloquial term, acknowledging that information technology, corporate information systems, and the surrounding practices are both a contributor to the sustainability challenge and a potential enabler for green and sustainable practices. To date, however, there are few reported studies on the role of information systems for the challenge, and solution, of sustainability. This paper presents results from a case study of a world-wide operating IT software solution provider that is engaged in the development and adoption of sustainable practices. Our study suggests that the adoption of sustainable practices comes along with a number of particularities. We found information technology to be a key enabler of transparency about the progress of sustainability operations. We further found personal, motivator factors as well as organizational factors such as business inclusion, strategy definition, and a dialectic top-management and bottom-up support, to play a role in enabling a company to manage their sustainability. We describe a set of conjectures forthcoming from our case analysis, and detail some implications for further research in this area.

Persons

Organizational Units

  • Institute of Information Systems
  • Hilti Chair of Business Process Management
  • Chair of Information Systems and Innovation