A Study of the Parameters Impacting Sustainability in Information Technology Organizations

Related Work

There is a limited amount of past research documented in investigating the sustainability dimensions of software businesses. The four main observable categories of literature in this space has been product sustainability, process sustainability, service sustainability and green IT. There are only very limited number of researches documented in terms of product, process and service sustainability. However, quite a few numbers of studies are directed on investigating the green dimension of IT which is a part of the triple bottom lines of sustainability. Arguably, the environmental bottom line is more clearly documented than the other dimensions in business sustainability literature. For example, green product innovation has been discussed as a method for achieving sustainability in software businesses (Dangelico & Pujari, 2010). The result of interaction between innovation and sustainability has been depicted as the waves which cause green product innovation. In fact, the degree of greening has a potential influence over the product innovation. On the other hand, (Tukker & Tischner, 2006) discusses about a product- service system that are used by companies as a specific type of value proposition that a business offers to its clients. Product-service systems could be possible avenues towards value creation - which is an integral part of sustainability. On the other hand, (Fermeglia et al., 2008) investigated on a software module for the evaluation of process sustainability in chemical engineering process. However, it is a question as to how this could be tailored to the process sustainability involved in the software development business. On the other hand, a number of researches explores about Green IT - which is a well-documented aspect in the software business sustainability domain. The next paragraph will summarise the four main available frameworks in the literature which looks at ICT business sustainability.