The Nexus between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Sustainability: The Current Digital Bet

Dear Colleagues,

The digital revolution has entailed radical changes in both business ecosystems and social communities, to the extent that it has reshaped personal routines and values. This megatrend is still evolving, and has put advanced information and communication technology (ICT) developments in the limelight, such as hyper automation, human augmentation, big data analytics, and Blockchain, which have the potential to create opportunities and to drive disruptive innovations in the business value creation process (Gartner, 2019).

Within this constantly evolving digital context, the global policy makers agenda has put growing emphasis on the concept of sustainability from an environmental, financial, social, and political standpoint (United Nations, 2020). Notwithstanding, the current, unprecedented economic and health crisis due to COVID-19 is making the achievement of sustainability goals even more defying. Thus, there is the urgent need to conceive effective solutions to achieve such goals without further delays.

ICT may enable the fulfillment of the sustainability objectives (Malhotra et al., 2013; Zerbino et al., 2019). Hence, it is necessary to state that the most recent developments in the ICT field may help in tackling the current sustainability addresses.

Accordingly, this Special Issue aims at clarifying how ICT may be leveraged for enhancing the sustainability of firms and society from heterogeneous perspectives, such as environmental, financial, social, and political. Furthermore, by considering a technological standpoint, it purports to explore how to assess, analyze, and improve the sustainability of the ICT solutions, and of further digital developments. Thereby, it investigates the "Sustainability by ICT" and "Sustainability in ICT" concepts, potentially integrating the corresponding scientific literature streams.

We encourage manuscripts that offer interesting theoretical and empirical contributions to these intertwined research themes in public, business-to-business (B2B), and business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts. Studies with various methodological approaches, e.g., qualitative, quantitative, meta-analyses, literature reviews, and mixed-methods, are welcome. Topics of interest include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Big data and business analytics (g., artificial intelligence, process mining, and machine learning) for sustainability;
• ICT in circular ecosystems and closed-loop supply chains;
• Sustainability of energy-intensive ICT, such as distributed ledger technologies and Blockchain (including cryptocurrencies);
• Green information systems;
• ICT innovation platforms for sustainable multi-stakeholder initiatives (g., crowdfunding);
• Internet of Things (IoT) in energy and waste management;
• Social media for sustainability awareness and development;
• Digital technologies for carbon footprint assessment;
• ICT-enabled, sustainability-related risk management;
• Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) supported by advanced digital technologies;
• ICT-driven policy making for sustainability;
• ICT in sustainable smart ecosystems (g., smart cities);
• Sustainability and Industry 4.0 digital technologies.

References

1. Gartner (2019), "Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020: A Garner special report", available at: https://www.gartner.com/en/doc/432920-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2020
2. Malhotra, A., Melville, N.P., Watson, R.T. (2013), "Spurring impactful research on information systems for environmental sustainability", MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, Vol. 37, Issue 4, pp. 1265-1274. Doi:10.25300/MISQ/2013/37:4.3
3. United Nations (2020), "The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020", available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020.pdf
4. Zerbino, P., Aloini, A., Dulmin, R., Mininno, V. (2019), "Towards Analytics-Enabled Efficiency Improvements in Maritime Transportation: A Case Study in a Mediterranean Port", Sustainability, Vol. 11, Issue 16, Article number 4473. Doi:10.3390/su11164473

Prof. Dr. Davide Aloini
Dr. Alessandro Stefanini
Dr. Pierluigi Zerbino
Guest Editors

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• information and communication technology (ICT)
• environmental sustainability
• financial sustainability
• technological sustainability
• social sustainability
• digital technologies
• green technologies
• circular economy
• industry 4.0