Towards a conceptual framework for life cycle assessment in sustainable information systems management

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) play an important role for the sustainable development of business organisations. New metrics and methodologies are required to explore the interactions between IS, organisations and the environment. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology already proved its ability to measure environmental impacts of complex systems in other industries. However, when trying to adopt these methods to IS, researchers face problems as to comparability and transparency, two major aspects within the concept of LCA. Therefore, our work suggests a framework for LCA in Sustainable IS Management to avoid emerged methodical problems. Thereby, our research follows the design science approach, merging LCA methodologies with characteristics of Sustainable IS. The outcome of our approach is a conceptual framework of methodologies, supporting the assessment of IS solutions in early stages. The evaluation of the framework is applied by functional testing and the assessment of a business scenario.