As the future of our ecosystem and society is dependent on our ability to reverse or limit the effects of global climate change, sustainability issues have come to the societal and governmental forefront. Organizations, governments, and cross-national bodies are turning their attention to the question of how we can create a sustainable society. Sustainability is a complex term that can encompass environmental, economic, and societal issues. In essence, sustainability is conservation, deployment, and reuse of resources in responsible ways—a responsibility that is geared toward the triple bottom line. The triple bottom line—people, planet, and profit—view of value creation balances commercial and societal goals in a way that all three Ps are addressed simultaneously rather than being seen as trade-offs or with one goal overriding the other two. Although consultants, vendors, and others have posited that information systems can play a significant role in sustainability, there is a dearth of rigorous research into these issues, which also motivates this special issue. Several perspectives might be adopted by researchers in guiding their work. First, there is the viewpoint that sustainability issues can be prioritized into three categories: generic, value chain, and competitive context (Porter and Kramer 2006). For example, the competitive context calls for a proactive strategic approach and may offer opportunities to illustrate the transformative power of IS. Second, the four dimensions of the sustainability portfolio (pollution prevention, product stewardship, clean technology, and sustainability vision) (Hart 1997) provide another angle for investigating the role of IS in sustainability. A third approach could be to examine the role of IS in achieving the three eco-goals: eco-efficiency (DeSimone et al. 1997), eco-equity (Gray and

I am sure you’ve heard it too: Green is the new Black. While this was true back in the days when Henry Ford introduced process standardization with his assembly line for the Ford Model T (over 15 million of these were sold!), Green is also the color of choice for many business organizations, private and public. I am not talking about the actual color of their business shirts or their logo 2.0.; I am referring to the eco-aware movement that has pushed sustainability into the top ten list of business buzz-words. What used to be a boutique market for tourism and political activists has become the biggest business revolution since the e-commerce boom. Public and private organizations alike push towards “sustainable ” solutions and practices. That push is partly triggered by the immense reputational gains associated with branding your organization as “green”, and partly by emerging societal, legal and constitutional regulations that force organizations to become more ecologically aware and sustainable. But the boom goes beyond organizational reality. Even in academia, sustainability has become a research “fashion wave ” (see [1] if you are interested in research fashion waves) similar to the hype around Neuroscience that our colleagues in the natural sciences are witnessing these days.

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Environmental technologies are becoming increasingly important for business firms to reduce environmental impacts and differentiate from competitors. In this paper, fundamental approaches of strategic management are presented and the strategic significance of sustainability initiatives and Green Information Technology (Green IT) is analyzed. Environmental strategies are introduced and the importance of strategically aligning the business, sustainability, and IT domain is highlighted. We argue that there is no consistent approach for aligning Green IT with sustainability goals and business objectives so far. To

While the aspiration for the IS discipline's bright future is a shared objective, there is a controversy about what are the fundamental challenges ahead let alone how to approach them. This panel addresses the question of what should we do to nurture a thriving IS discipline? Opinions regarding how to solidify the position of the IS discipline can be classified into five interrelated clusters: research-oriented approaches, teaching-oriented approaches, practice-oriented approaches, scholarship-oriented approaches, and organization-oriented approaches. Building on crowdsourcing within the IS community to inform a panel of senior scholars, we will engage in a debate about possible approaches to nurture and invigorate the IS discipline in the coming decade. Overall, we aim to inspire and spark grassroots-based collective action in pursuit of thriving IS scholarship. At minimum, we hope to stimulate new insights about the desired and possible futures of the IS discipline, and the instrumental steps to realize them.

Green Information Technology (IT) has become an important topic in IT management research and practice in the last years due to economic opportunities and increasing pressure from stakeholders. However, many IT organisations fail to manage their environmental efforts in an adequate manner since they neglect the strategic aspects of this topic. This paper reveals the strategic relevance of

Although practitioners have begun to implement Green IT into their companies, the governance of Green IT varies significantly. No research has been done to explain these differences in Green IT governance. Building upon contingency theory and IT governance, we develop a contingency model for Green IT governance which demonstrates the fit between contingencies and the company-specific configuration of Green IT. In the first step, three archetypes of Green IT governance reaching from centralized over federal to decentralized are presented. In the second step, we identify from literature competitive strategy, firm size, organization structure, performance strategy, environmental impact of industry, environmental strategy, IT infusion, and IT diffusion as contingency factors determining the ideal type of Green IT governance. The contingency model for Green IT governance is validated based on insights from five case studies. With the enhanced understanding of how Green IT governance is shaped by contingency factors, organizations are able to select the most successful Green IT

Using the Source-Position-Performance (SPP) framework and the literature on information and communication technology (ICT) impact, we posit that the IS capabilities owned by citizens (i.e., source of advantage) lead to ICT penetration among them (i.e., positional advantage), which in turn affects the sustainability of the country (i.e., national performance). Based on secondary data from 120 countries, our results supported the hypothesized model. Specifically, IS capabilities owned by citizens in a country appears to be a significant enabler of ICT penetration among them, which in turn lead to the management of national performance in terms of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Post hoc analysis indicates that ICT penetration among citizens partially mediated the relationships of IS capabilities owned by citizens with economic and social sustainability. In addition,

The integration of sustainable thinking and performance within day-to-day business activities has become an important business need. Sustainable business requires information on the use, flows and destinies of energy, water, and materials including waste, along with monetary information on environment-related costs, earnings, and savings. Creating this holistic view of economic, social and environmental information is not a straightforward mission from an IT perspective, and implies tackling several challenges such as information granularity and overload, the different projections of the same factual information, and the heterogeneity of information systems. In this paper, we propose an entity-centric approach to Green Information Systems to assist organisations in forming a cohesive representation of the environmental impact of their business operations at both micro- and macrolevels. Initial results from a Small Medium-size Enterprise case study are discussed along with future research directions. Sustainable development is an important business issue, affecting new products and services, compliance, cost reduction opportunities, reputation, and revenue generation. Information Technology

All too often, valuable knowledge is lost from organisations when experts leave — both the experts and their expertise represent valuable assets (Huber, 1999). When older experts leave the workforce, they take with them significant experience and critical knowledge essential to the smooth management of organisations (Hylko, 2005). Employers, however, are often unaware of who possesses expertise, or the nature of that expertise. The loss will be accentuated as members of the post-World War II baby boom cohort retire. Approaches to recover or recreate knowledge after it is lost are not sustainable in terms of prudent knowledge management. Organisations need to develop a deeper understanding of where expertise resides and how it is retained. This paper, presenting a limited set of results from a larger study, addresses the knowledge retention processes of an individual expert providing technical advice on a New Zealand construction industry helpline, in a leading scientific research organisation. Within the organisation, a single expert who possessed much personally-held undocumented knowledge was identified. Through detailed observations and peer interviews, the researchers learned much about the elements of his expertise, problem-solving processes and knowledge retention behaviour.