Mobile Applications as a Medium for Communicating Sustainability Initiatives : Addressing User Values and CSR

• Main Author: Tördal, Henrik
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informationsteknologi 2012
• Subjects: Mobile applications; CSR; Sustainability
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-176553

As the globalization process in our society grows the awareness about social responsibility of an organization increases. As the 21st century proceeds, the profit creation and an organizations work with sustainability will become increasingly inseparable leading to an intensified influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on stakeholder perception and social legitimacy affecting the economic outcome. The increased influence on stakeholders highlights the importance of communication. Since CSR is a relative question of what constitutes good business practice in the eye of the emerging societal demands that shapes tomorrow’s expectations new ways of communication need to be investigated. The mobility and the novel form of interaction make mobiles and mobile applications suitable for a wide range of different contexts and its suitability for communicating a company’s sustainability initiatives is investigated in this thesis. The empirical findings, based upon a case study on the telecommunication sector, a user survey, mobile technologies, and present sustainability solutions show that mobile applications can be an alternative to existing communication channels used today. However, there are some limitations that come with this medium. The limitations are the usage area of application, the low interest and awareness of CSR communication, the susceptibility among commonalty and what responsibility areas that are suitable to communicate through applications. However, with the limitations of mobile applications as a means to communicate are a few identified solutions and recommendations. The most prominent ones are related to application usage and the ways to adapt sustainability measures to the chosen technology. More specific gamification, visualization, manipulation are identified as vital aspects as well as a focus on application functionalities and providing sustainability as a value add-on.