EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ICT DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
Abstract
Industry 4.0, industrial digitalization, robotics, sustainability, circular economy,
eco-efficiency – these are all hot topics for researchers and professionals, as well.
Since we are in the era of fourth industrial revolution, companies invest more and
more money in tools and solutions that make it possible to connect all their processes,
machines, workers and even products into a single network, and to gather data about
them and through analyses, achieve high performance and improvement. Keeping up
with technological innovation especially in ICT is vital for companies all around the
world. Another important issue is sustainability and the concept of circular economy.
The greatest challenge of our society is to change our operations in order to live within
the limits of our planet. This expectation for change usually emerges from
stakeholders of companies, but in order to gain competitive advantage it is important
to improve environmental performance and their capability to create and prosper
within the circular economy concept.
In this paper we would like to explore if there is a connection between ICT
development and environmental performance. Could these concepts work together,
do companies develop both aspects and use the advances? We investigate how the
application of advanced ICT tools effect companies’ environmental performan ce,
which will be tested on a database of 300 companies by statistical analyses. The
database was collected by the Hungarian Competitiveness Research Centre in 2013.
Preliminary results say that the companies in the sample, which are advanced in
use of ICT tools both in meaning of extension of usage and variety of tools, lay
significantly higher emphasis on auditing environmental activity, introducing an
accounting system which is capable to assess environmental expenses, and
formulating environmental criteria for suppliers than those who are less advanced in
ICT.
Key words: ICT, Industry 4.0, environmental performance
