The Sustainability Imperative in Information Systems Research

Titelangaben

Seidel, Stefan ; Bharati, Pratyush ; Fridgen, Gilbert ; Watson, Richard T. ; Albizri, Abdullah ; Boudreau, Maric ; Kruse, Leona Chandra ; Guzman, Indira ; Toland, Janet ; Karsten, Helena ; Lee, Habin ; Melville, Nigel ; Rush, Daniel ; Butler, Tom ; Watts, Stephanie:
The Sustainability Imperative in Information Systems Research.
In: Communications of the Association for Information Systems. Bd. 40 (2017) . - 3.
ISSN 1529-3181

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Abstract

This paper reports on a panel discussion at the Pre-ICIS 2015 Workshop on Green Information Sys-tems on the current state and future perspectives of SIGGreen, the special interest group of the Association of Information Systems on green information systems. SIGGreen recognizes the central role of information systems (IS) in creating an ecologically sustainable society. Over the past years, IS scholars have made important contributions advancing our knowledge about how information systems can contribute to solving problems associated with the degradation of the natural envi-ronment. Still, it seems that green IS is, by and large, viewed as just another research branch in IS. We put forward the proposition that, to meet our social responsibility, green IS must not be treated as ‘yet another IS research area.’ The problem addressed by green IS is simply too big. While, for instance, the awareness of the potential of information systems to increase productivity has been in our discipline’s DNA for more than five decades, this is clearly not the case for the potential of information systems to achieve a sustainable world. We suggest that the IS community embraces sustainability as a research imperative and integrates sustainability related aspects in research across methods, theories, and areas.