An Information Infrastructure For Sustainable IT Procurement: A Suitable Case For Actor-Network Theory?

The use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is assessed as a means of understanding the context of the information architecture needed to support sustainable procurement practices. The Higher Education (HE) Institutions within the UK public sector have been the subject of central government initiatives to fulfil the UK’s international obligations to reduce carbon emissions. This has included measures to introduce sustainability criteria into procurement decisions, which require staff to make decisions informed by the sustainability characteristics of the products available. This could include a wide range of data about the whole supply chain of a product, which could involve many different organisational entities. Previous research, particularly on the evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures, suggested ANT as a research approach. The particular features of ANT that seemed to be particularly supportive of the understanding of the issues of IT sustainable procurement are presented along with examples of their application to the problem domain.

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