E-Organization and the Sustainable Information Society

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have direct and indirect effects on sustainability. The direct effects are linked to the material and energy flows caused by the application of ICT. Indirect effects are caused by organizational and institutional changes driven by the new technologies. These latter changes can be summarized using the term “e-organization”. E-organization describes organizational and institutional patterns enabled by ICT. Important examples are new forms of network coordination between firms (also between NGOs), virtual factories or virtual communities. This chapter proposes a normative framework for judging the sustainability effects of these organizational designs and makes suggestions on how to create e-organizations capable of offering a sustainability contribution.