[AISWorld] ECIS 2013 Track: Green Information Systems

[Gilbert Fridgen]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Track: Green Information Systems

21st European Conference on Information Systems
June 5-8, Utrecht University, Utrecht Science Park 'de Uithof'
https://sites.google.com/site/ecis2013nl/

Paper submission deadline: December 7, 2012 

Due to the growing awareness that business organizations are a major contributor to the exploitation of scarce natural resources, the increasing pollution of the environment, and the looming threat of climate change, several questions surrounding the concept of environmental sustainability have attracted the interest of management scholars worldwide. This especially holds within the context of IS research given the cross-functional role the technology plays in organizations as well as the wide influence of IS on virtually all steps of an industries’ value chain. Alongside the growing interest of academia and practice, a research stream emerged under the umbrella of “Green IT”, which focuses on information and communication technologies as the causes of environmental concerns, especially those related to energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Beyond this narrow view of IT as a part of the problem and not the solution, researchers have begun to explore the opportunities that technology offers in support of sustainability under the more expansive term “Green IS”. As IS has been a major facilitator of productivity growth and efficiency gains over the past decades, its role in the development of sustainable business practices deserves our attention. Notably, technology has been identified as occupying a unique role, as it can be both a contributor and a potential solution to the problem.

The IS discipline is hence challenged to think “beyond borders” and to provide innovative insights into how organizations can leverage their IS capabilities to effectively address environmental issues while simultaneously considering economic imperatives such as risk, cost, and competitive advantage. Decisions related to sustainable business practices, inevitably, will be strategic in nature, with fundamental changes across organizations. This playground opens numerous research opportunities for IS researchers, who are challenged to investigate how the transformative power of IS can be used by organizations to create more environmentally sustainable entities. A window of opportunity has opened for IS researchers and organizations, particularly with respect to applications that combine technological expertise with economic and socio-psychological theory as well as insights from a variety of other fields.

While the topic is still considerably new to our discipline, some significant progress has been made over the past few years. There are now regular conference tracks at the major national and international IS conferences as well as special issues or calls for papers in our discipline’s leading journals. Moreover a Special Interest Group (SIG Green) has been founded that meets regularly (both physically and virtually) and promotes the topic in our discipline and beyond.

The aim of this track is to further the discussion of the role and relevance of IS in the context of environmental sustainability. It intends to provide thought leaders with a forum that accounts for the breadth of sustainability research in IS and thus contributes to defining and further developing an important and emergent IS research domain. Potential topics range from the design of systems and digital services for environmental sustainability to the application of existing theories on change at the individual, group, and organizational level, as well as the development of new theory.

We invite rigorous and relevant studies employing a wide variety of methods. Empirical (qualitative and quantitative) studies as well as design-oriented research and conceptual papers on theory development will be considered. In order to fully incorporate technical and business aspects, we welcome contributions from a broad spectrum of disciplines including business and information systems engineering, management, operations management, applied computer science, marketing, and economics.

Topics of interest

Energy informatics
	• Information systems supporting the generation and distribution of renewable energy
	• IS-based behavioral intervention techniques for energy saving
	• IS for the management of energy grids
	• Business opportunities of smart meter data streams

Green supply chain management and metals & minerals informatics
	• Reuse, recycling, remanufacturing
	• Green supply chain management & logistics
	• Tracking and monitoring of environmental information

Organizational adoption of sustainable business practices
	• Motivations for greening within organizations
	• Organizational adoption of sustainable business practices
	• Information systems for raising environmental awareness
	• Green awareness and communication for formulating organizational strategy
	• Information systems for the encouragement of green choices by consumers
	• The role of information systems in energy policy
	• Consumer and practitioner awareness and response to green computing

Implementation of sustainable business practices
	• Decision support systems highlighting sustainability issues
	• Design and implementation of processes for lower energy consumption and emissions
	• Design principles for Green IS
	• Case studies of companies and organizations using Green IS
	• Technologies for greening organizations (e.g. mobile systems, cloud computing, remote sensing; virtual team work and meetings)
	• Carbon reduction and emission trading

Green IS in research and teaching
	• Theories and methods applied in Green IS research
	• Sustainability and Green IS themes in the IS curriculum

We are primarily searching for full research papers. However, to foster the timely dissemination of innovative ideas, we also welcome groundbreaking research in progress.


Track Chairs

Gilbert Fridgen, University of Augsburg, Germany, gilbert.fridgen at wiwi.uni-augsburg.de
Stefan Seidel, University of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein, stefan.seidel at uni.li
Thorsten Staake, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, tstaake at ethz.ch
Frédéric Thiesse, University of Würzburg, Germany, frederic.thiesse at uni-wuerzburg.de
Richard Watson, University of Georgia, USA, rwatson at terry.uga.edu