Paper Number

ICIS2026-4159

Paper Type

Completed

Abstract

Environmental sustainability research often depends on empirical access that is mediated by the very organizations whose practices are being studied. Interviews, surveys, disclosures, audits, and trace data provide valuable evidence, but they can also be selective, retrospective, aggregated, or strategically curated. This paper addresses this problem by developing tracknography, a method artifact for using digital tracking technologies to generate external empirical access to materially enacted, environmental sustainability-related supply chain processes. Drawing on design science research, the problem is established, design objectives and principles are derived, and tracknography is presented as an eight-step process for generating, contextualizing, and interpreting object-centered digital traces. The artifact is evaluated through three empirical instantiations. This study contributes to the IS literature by providing methodological guidance for studying opaque material flows, extending digital trace data research toward researcher-configured trace generation, and strengthening Green IS scholarship on environmental accountability in interorganizational supply chain contexts.

Comments

04_Sustainability_and_environment

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Dec 14th, 12:00 AM

Tracknography: Developing a Method Artifact for Studying Environmental Sustainability in Supply Chains

Environmental sustainability research often depends on empirical access that is mediated by the very organizations whose practices are being studied. Interviews, surveys, disclosures, audits, and trace data provide valuable evidence, but they can also be selective, retrospective, aggregated, or strategically curated. This paper addresses this problem by developing tracknography, a method artifact for using digital tracking technologies to generate external empirical access to materially enacted, environmental sustainability-related supply chain processes. Drawing on design science research, the problem is established, design objectives and principles are derived, and tracknography is presented as an eight-step process for generating, contextualizing, and interpreting object-centered digital traces. The artifact is evaluated through three empirical instantiations. This study contributes to the IS literature by providing methodological guidance for studying opaque material flows, extending digital trace data research toward researcher-configured trace generation, and strengthening Green IS scholarship on environmental accountability in interorganizational supply chain contexts.