The Strategic Role of Information Systems in Supporting Sustainability

As sustainability becomes more mainstream, companies face increasing demands to address environmental and social factors as part of their daily operations. The result is that companies need to attend to an ever increasing set of regulations that vary by jurisdiction and often overlap along with demands for more transparency and reporting on how they are meeting these requirements. Delivering on these commitments, which is a first step towards embedding sustainability into the fabric of the company, comes with a high cognitive load. It is natural under these circumstances to turn to information systems (IS) to help manage the task. Our study examines how one large integrated energy company is attempting to use IS to support these foundational sustainability efforts and asks to what extent IS can successfully meet the challenge.