The Role of Digital Technology in Sustainability: A Literature Review

Digital technologies can help to fulfill social needs through innovative and socially-embedded solutions. The research fields of digital sustainability, digital social innovation, and social entrepreneurship are about exploring how the tools of our digital age can be designed, adapted, and aligned to achieve local and global social needs. However, despite the current interest, there remain conceptual ambiguities regarding the focus of each field. This review examines current research by reviewing 24 articles across the Basket of Eight and two IS conferences. Our results clarify the different focus areas within each research field but also show that the three research fields overlap due to the remaining conceptual ambiguities. To enable more focus in future research, we discuss implications regarding the conceptual overlap, propose first steps to address them, and close by developing eight avenues for future research