The Role of Triple-Loop Learning in the Adoption of Digital Carbon Footprint : The Invisible Environmental Impact of Digital Services Companies

Abstract: The global demand for digital services has been growing steadily, which has led to an increase in the utilization of data and consumption of energy, causing an increment of the global digital carbon footprint. Therefore, corporations providing digital services are gradually enforced to be able to measure and quantify their digital carbon footprint, which requires them to restructure their organizational strategy, processes, and culture. Yet, previous research in the digital service industry presents a gap in understanding how to accelerate the adoption of measuring the digital carbon footprint and fails to provide a framework for corporations to incorporate new sustainability initiatives. Thus, this thesis investigates the usefulness and need for digital services companies to use a triple-loop learning framework for adopting the digital carbon footprint as a new measurement for sustainability. From this, the study has made use of semi-structured interviews with professionals from ten digital services companies aimed at examining their processes for incorporating the digital carbon footprint into their sustainability operations. Results show that many companies used a combination of the three loops of learning, and the majority applied triple-loop learning in various sustainability initiatives. The creation or redesign of industry-level standards, by inter-organizational networks and communities of practices, was the primary process of triple-loop learning applied for the adoption of the digital carbon footprint. Here, multiple organizations came together to create standards for measuring the digital carbon footprint, redirecting the behaviour of the digital services industry and, potentially, of the global market towards sustainability. Therefore, the application of a triple-loop learning framework has the potential to create a more sustainable digitalization of the corporate world, which allows for different stakeholders to share knowledge and join forces to produce standards that have the potential to transform the societal- traditional systems needed for the incorporation of the digital carbon footprint.