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15 Computer Support for Cooperative Sustainability Communication 181
are shared interests, the challenges of daily life, weekend activities, possible face-to-face
meetings etc. From an economic perspective the communication processes are trivial
and insignificant and would disturb business processes. In the language-action
perspective the platforms provide new structures allowing individuals to take up
challenges beyond the horizon of systemic mechanisms and traditional action orien-
tations. Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus characterize this as ‘disclosing worlds’. Others
characterize this as ‘social contagion and the spread of ideas’ (Kleinberg 2008).
With regard to sustainable development, the hope is that social networks will
contribute to overcoming the conflict between traditional action orientations in soci-
etal subsystems (like short-term profit maximization in the economy) and to devel-
oping new orientations in line with the ideas of sustainability. OSMs and other Web
2.0 services should open up organisations to these issues. However, there is no guar-
antee that an organization will decide to become a sustainable organization. This is
perhaps the most challenging aspect of all. Members of an organization charged
with supporting these processes cannot plan these projects as they can plan and
manage traditional projects because the goals and means are not predefined.
There are more fundamental ways in which computer systems can contribute to
changing generalized action orientations. Even when computer tools, e.g. for car-
bon footprinting and life cycle assessment, are developed with decision support in
mind, they play an important role in communication processes. Computer tools
make problems visible; they help organisations to better understand both problems
and possible solutions. In fact, many companies and other organisations make use
of life cycle assessment projects and test life cycle assessment tools in order to gain
new insights, try to anticipate stricter regulatory standards and explore new com-
petitive opportunities. LCA tools are designed to support these experiments.
Computer support in the transition phase has completely different purposes than in
phases with stable action orientations. Computers are used as a ‘tool’ to enhance the
capabilities of the users (for more on the tool metaphor see Möller et al. 2006). They
provide information on an ad-hoc basis rather than routinely generated data (Burritt
et al. 2002). Typical software tools are simulation programs, which for example are
based on Forrester’s system dynamics approach. Simulation tools require compre-
hensive formalization efforts because they need all the specifications necessary to
calculate the future states of the modelled system. Furthermore, validation steps are
required in order to guarantee that the simulation software generates more or less
the same process as real processes. However, a special class of software tools does
not require these formalization efforts. These tools are used in connection with for
example formative scenario analysis (Scholz and Tietje 2002) or the WBGU syn-
drome concept (WBGU 1996). In fact, these tools are aimed at better understanding
ill-defined problems, i.e. problems that are nebulous and unstructured, and new
ways of reaching a solution or even solutions that have not yet emerged.
The software instruments serve as a new ‘language’ in the transformation phase.
They are containers of new forms of thinking (e.g. life cycle thinking) and establish
new forms of argumentation (e.g. in case of life cycle assessment new typical
diagrams and flow charts). Information systems provide data for good arguments,
i.e. the data must be presented in a form that fits the communication process.