IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 36

Current information system
development practices typically
focus on technical and economic
dimensions, thereby neglecting vital
aspects of sustainability.

The Link between Sustainability
and Human Values
Penzenstadler and Femmer [10] proposed a generic
model that allows considering aspects of sustainability
during requirement engineering. Their hierarchical model
consists of a top layer with five interrelated sustainability
dimensions served by a middle layer consisting of values,
indicators, and regulations, and a lower layer with activities contributing to specific values or a set of them [10].
The elements of the middle layer are closely related to
each other, as for instance regulations can be formalized
as human values (e.g., data protection laws enforcing privacy). The five dimensions include the following:
Individual sustainability is concerned with the
maintenance of human capital such as health, education, knowledge, leadership, and access to services that
constitute human capital [10], [11].

Social sustainability focuses on social capital and
on preserving the solidarity of a society. This includes
effects of IS on communication, interaction, and governance [10]. Systems should facilitate activities or processes that directly or indirectly create benefits for
social communities [12].
Economic sustainability aims at preserving assets.
These do not only include capital, but also include added
value in form of interest [10], [12]. To foster economic
sustainability, systems should ensure that long-term
investments are protected from economic risks [10].
Environmental sustainability seeks to improve
human well-being by protecting natural resources [10].
Finally, technical sustainability ensures long-term
use and appropriate evolution of systems, while considering the rapid change of usage contexts and requirements [10], [12].
An exemplary excerpt of the model layers can be
seen in Figure 1. The goal to develop sustainable systems can only be achieved by considering human values and thereby exerting positive effects [2], [6] for all
dimensions of sustainability [10]. However, current IS
development practices typically focus almost exclusively
on the technical and economic dimensions [12] thereby
neglecting vital aspects of sustainability and ignoring
potential customer values.

Values, Goals, and Principles
Values are an explicit or implicit representation of the
desirable, which influence our selection from available

Sustainability

Top-Layer

Economic
Sustainability

Technical
Sustainability

Environmental
Sustainability

Human Health

Maintainability
Middle-Layer

Usage Time

Low-Layer

Individual
Sustainability

Human Rights

Social
Sustainability

Community

Education

Trust

Knowledge
Management

Mentoring

FIGURE 1. Exemplary excerpt of the generic sustainability model [10].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

∕

SEPTEMBER 2019

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019