Environmentally Sustainable ICT: Developing Corporate Capabilities and an Industry-Relevant is Research Agenda

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have made significant contributions to business innovation and wealth generation for organisations, societies and nations. ICT have also made significant contributions to environmental degradation. Confronted by the necessity to respond to growing environmental concerns in society, regulatory imperatives and market pressure, many executives express uncertainty about how best to proceed. IS researchers have investigated diverse aspects of ICT applications and practices in organizations over the last 30 years but IS research literature, to date, has provided little assistance to those organizations unsure about how, where and when to respond to imperatives for their ICT applications and practices to become ‘Green’. This paper aims to facilitate the development of corporate practice in the environmental sustainability of ICT and to promote an industry-relevant Information Systems research agenda. Its contributions are: an overview of the topic from a diversity of literature sources; proposal of a stages of development framework for corporate capabilities in ICT environmental sustainability based on the literature and on the experiences of a global ICT services corporation recognised as a leader in its environmental sustainability activities; and proposal of an industry-relevant IS research agenda. Implications of the framework for corporate practice and for IS research are discussed.