Modeling environmental information relevant for Industry in the European Information Space

Abstract

An approach is presented to model environmental information relevant for industry in the European information space. The approach is based on the theory of external control mechanisms initially introduced by Dyllick (1992). This certain theory has its roots in new political economy on the one hand and institutional branches of management science on the other. The theory seems useful to shed some light on the black box “industry” as it helps to model the behaviour of companies and different external stakeholders and their dynamic relations, embedded in five different spheres or external control mechanisms respectively: market, legislation & politics and general public. Further, the spheres: natural environment and IT-aspects are added. Any sphere has its particular efficiencies and characteristics, e.g. market: demand and price, politics: election and legitimacy, general public: license to operate, natural environment: eco-compatibility, and IT-aspects: accessibility. To make the approach concrete and vivid as possible, examples are provided from the field of corporate environmental management information systems (CEMIS), with special emphasis on the domain of sustainability reporting. The present contribution was initiated by the meta-modeling initiative within the FP 7 project “ICT for Environmental Sustainability research” (ICT-ENSURE, <www.ictensure.eu>).