Business, Climate Change, and Innovation: Deconstruction and Re-imagination

Managers in industries as diverse as elevator manufacturing and music have applied information systems innovatively to automate business processes, analyze and share information, and in many cases, transform the very basis of competition. Might this pattern also be emerging in the realm of environmental sustainability, and if so, how? I will examine this question in a specific domain: innovative information systems used to manage carbon emissions. As a new class of enterprise system with a high adoption rate, there is a great deal of uncertainty about carbon management system (CMS) adoption, implementation, and impacts. I take a small step towards shedding light on these issues by analyzing data collected from large multinational firms to determine adoption antecedents and examine self-selection. Results suggest that for this set of firms CMS adoption is consistent with agency-theoretic arguments but not with institutional theory arguments, and that self-selection effects are present, but different for adopters and non-adopters. I discuss potential explanations for these results as well as future research directions.