An Organizing Vision Perspective on Green IS Development

Green information systems (Green IS) are innovative tools that can assist in achieving environmental sustainability. We investigate the manner in which institutional arrangements are brought about during the development of the Vessel Management System (VMS), a Green IS that was developed by a South Australian regulator and used for monitoring compliance with environmental protection legislation for vessels operating in the state’s inland and marine waters. To guide our investigation, we employ the organizing vision framework for ICT innovations. We isolate a set of conditions that can facilitate organizing vision processes to help organizational actors make sense of how the variety of their interests can be served by Green IS. Accordingly, effective organizing vision processes can occur in clearly defined networks of organizational actors driven by power and legitimacy and that channel their efforts to refine emerging Green IS and that culminate in the achievement of time-sensitive outcome-oriented targets.