ICT sustainable management: towards a better alignment with the sustainable development strategy

Abstract

The impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in terms of Sustainable Development (SD) has led to a great transformation in business management, which positions innovation as an essential element of differentiation for the new market conquest. These ICT, that are particularly adapted, allow creating value for the company in a sustainable way and more aligned with the global SD strategy while ensuring to bring competitive advantage and anticipate new economic, social and environmental problems. To implement an innovation approach that gives organizations the means to develop sustainable management strategies, allowing them to increase overall performance, we proposed the "ICT Sustainable Management" model which is designed according to a Green IT (GIT) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concepts in order to seek new transition ways for management serving SD. Our model constitutes a first research step to lead reflection on next-generation SD-oriented management models. For this reason, we consider it more appropriate to approve the validity of our model through its application on different categories of companies that use ICT. Analysis of the results of this application test has demonstrated the validity of our model at the scale of five companies. This initial validation will be supported by improvements and new tests that will be extremely useful to improve the model and to advance knowledge in this new field of research.