•  
  •  
 
Journal of the Association for Information Systems

Abstract

As digital technologies increasingly shape efforts to address the planet’s most pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges, information systems (IS) scholars are well positioned to advance a holistic sustainability agenda. This special issue editorial revisits the digital sustainability research landscape two years after the original call for papers, reviewing recent contributions in leading IS journals and finding that, despite growing interest, the literature has not evolved much thematically beyond an environmental focus. To build an integrative conceptualization of digital sustainability, we draw on two salient developments in the IS field: the rapid reconfiguration of IS through emerging technologies and the expanding scale and time horizon of sustainability challenges. These two developments define the two dimensions of the digital sustainability research framework—the ontological role played by digital technologies in relation to physical and social realities, and the temporal scope encompassed by the sustainability concern at hand—and give rise to four domains of digital sustainability research: optimizing for the present, adapting for the future, transforming the present, and reimagining the future. The framework is illustrated with examples from the healthcare, energy, and culture and heritage sectors. Then, the four papers of this special issue are situated within the four domains, exposing an important gap in the reimagining the future domain. The editorial concludes by suggesting that IS research needs to shift its focus from how digital technologies can make existing systems more sustainable towards how societies can collectively imagine and build futures that remain viable across generations.

DOI

10.17705/1jais.01014

Download

Share

COinS
 

When commenting on articles, please be friendly, welcoming, respectful and abide by the AIS eLibrary Discussion Thread Code of Conduct posted here.