Towards a software industry corporate social responsibility reference model for software sustainability

Abstract

Over the last few years, sustainability has become increasingly relevant in different areas of industry. However, from the point of view of the software companies, the concept of software sustainability is still underdeveloped, as software emissions are not as easily observable as in other sectors, such as the power generation. A starting point for software development companies to tackle software sustainability is the inclusion of actions focused on improving software sustainability within their corporate social responsibility (CSR). For this reason, in this work, a set of specific software sustainability actions aligned with ISO 26000 corporate social responsibility standard is proposed. By including these actions in the CSR of software companies, they can improve sustainability aspects associated with software. In addition, the proposal was applied to six leading companies in the software sector in order to check its suitability and applicability.