Introduction to the Social Computing for Sustainability Minitrack

Sustainable management aspires towards balancing and integrating social, economic and environmental dimensions. Existing roadmaps, frameworks and systems do not comprehensively support sustainable transformation nor do they allow decision makers to explore interrelationships and influences between the sustainability dimensions. Equally, the usage of social computing (SC) and in particular online social networks (OSN) is growing rapidly, yet there is a poor understanding of how they can provide support, influence and change sustainable practices at the individual and corporate levels. Increasingly we find individuals and organizations are using SC/OSN to share and benchmark their sustainability practices and key performance indicators. At one end of the spectrum we have organizations engaging and participating on issues of environmental and societal concern and at the other end we have individuals who are sharing their daily achievements in terms of their exercise, health, and diet. This mini track looks across this entire spectrum where SC/OSN is being used to support, share, measure, benchmark, model, quantify, qualify sustainability goals, practices, performances, indicators with the aim of achieving or enhancing the sustainability of individuals, families, organizations, supply chains, and society as a whole.