This mini-track focuses on the role of Information Systems in enabling the development and promotion of sustainability strategy and sustainable business practices that focus on all aspects of the triple bottom line: Profit, People, and Planet. More particularly, this mini-track is interested in research regarding the role of IS in enabling sustainable business practices that not only address sustainability within individual firms but also reach beyond firm boundary to examine the role of IS in enabling coordination among supply chain partners to develop more sustainable business practices across supply chains.

Description of Main Theme and Potential Topics:
Sustainability has increasingly become important to business research and practice over the past decades as a result of rapid depletion of natural resources and concerns over wealth disparity and corporate social responsibility. Sustainability research and practices have recognized that business performance should be evaluated based on its impacts on the environment and interested stakeholders besides profitability, known as the triple bottom line (TBL). Companies have increasingly recognized that business strategy that boldly embrace sustainability have resulted in companies’ being successful in delivering financial, environmental, and social values to themselves as well as related stakeholders (MIT Sloan Management Review report, 2011).
In order to develop capabilities to address TBL issues, businesses need to engage in wide ranging activities such as changing business culture, redesigning business processes, etc. (Hart & Milstein, 2003; Porter & Kramer, 2006). More importantly, research as well as management practice have illustrated that to be truly sustainable, companies should not only just focus on their own business operations but also focus on improving sustainable business practices across the supply chain (Kleindorfer, Singhal, & Van Wassenhove, 2005; Dao, Langella, & Carbo, 2011).
Given the recognized role of IT resources in enabling business capabilities within and across supply chain partners (Rai, Patnayakuni, & Seth, 2006; Jain, Wadhwa, & Deshmukh, 2009), it is arguable that IT resources should be critical in enabling firms to develop capabilities to address sustainability issues both within firms and across their supply chain through coordination with supply chain partners (Melville, 2010; Dao et al., 2011). We invite research from different business areas, including MIS, management, supply chain and operation management, and particularly inter-disciplinary research that examines the role of IT resources in conjunction with other business resources in enabling firms to develop sustainability strategy that address all aspects of the triple bottom line, both within firms and across supply chain partners. Topics of interest include, but not limited to:
- IS in enabling sustainable innovation
- Intertwining of environmentally and socially sustainable practices
- IS in enabling environmentally and socially sustainable operations (including direct environmental impact of data centers, power consumption and conservation, etc.)
- IS in supply chain partners’ coordination for sustainability
- Sustainability vision within and across firms
- The role of IS in enabling the assessment of sustainability performance

vtdao@ship.edu

Jerry Carbo

jacarbo@ship.edu

Ian Langella

imlangella@ship.edu

Steve Haase

sjhaas@ship.edu

Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Shippensburg, PA 17257

Viet T. Dao, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Management Information Systems
Grove College of Business
Shippensburg University
1871 Old Main Drive, GRH315
Shippensburg, PA 17257
Office: (717) 477-1415
E-mail: vtdao@ship.edu