Investing in Sustainability: A Practice-Oriented Approach to Analyze IT-Investments in Sustainability Reporting Systems

Given the increased stakeholder focus on sustainability, companies are facing the challenge of systematically collecting and processing sustainability information. Identifying sustainability indicators will become imperative for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), especially in the extremely s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of social ecology and sustainable development Vol. 4; no. 2; pp. 99 - 120
Main Authors Beckers, Christoph, Marz, Oliver, Kolbe, Lutz M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hershey IGI Global 01.04.2013
Subjects
Case studies
Data processing
Enterprise resource planning
Environmental information
Food industry
Information processing
Information technology
Investments
Meat industry
Meat processing industry
Small and medium sized companies
Small business
Sustainability
Sustainability reporting
Sustainable development
United Kingdom
Germany
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Summary:Given the increased stakeholder focus on sustainability, companies are facing the challenge of systematically collecting and processing sustainability information. Identifying sustainability indicators will become imperative for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), especially in the extremely segmented and highly specialized food industry – entailing opportunities, but also costs and risks. This article is a management approach and a basis for discussing the classification of sustainability reporting systems in existing Information Technology (IT) infrastructures from an economical point of view. Supported by a case study from the meat industry, the authors discuss to what extent sustainability information is reflected by an existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System, or which investments would be required for companies to facilitate the communication of sustainability data. Additionally and as a result, the article gives a schematic explanation how process changes can be evaluated economically by capturing and processing sustainability information, and thus how to decide in favor of or against a certain level of IT-based environmental information processing functionality.
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ISSN:1947-8402
1947-8410
DOI:10.4018/jsesd.2013040106