Grupo Alarcos · Conference paper · 2021
The Importance of Software Sustainability in the CSR of Software Companies
María Ángeles Moraga de la Rubia, Ignacio García Rodríguez de Guzmán, Félix Óscar García Rubio, Coral Calero Muñoz
Organizations around the world, as well as their stakeholders, are becoming increasingly aware of the need for, and the benefits of, socially responsible behavior, and sustainability is a core aspect of this. Given the presence of software systems in most companies and almost every aspect of modern-day life, the promotion of the environmental aspects of software systems is a key factor in sustainable development, and any company aspiring to be considered as a first-class corporate citizen should provide for it in their CSR. This chapter aims to ascertain how well the policies of companies that develop software are aligned with Software Sustainability, as well as to give recommendations on including specific actions in their CSR to promote Software Sustainability. The CSR policies of the ten biggest software companies have been studied, identifying a list of actions that the software industry should include in their CSR. In order to do this, different meetings were held among researchers. As a result, a list of actions specific to Software Sustainability that the software industry should be including in their CSR has been proposed. Moreover, we have analyzed the CSR of a Spanish software company, obtaining that the percentage of coverage in respect of the actions defined is 40%. The dimension with more actions is the human dimension, where the percentage of coverage is above 90%. Regarding the economic and environmental dimensions, the company took into consideration 36% and 13% of the actions, respectively. These resulted in a D level of Software Sustainability (possible values: A–E). Based on these results, we have suggested some actions to be implemented in order to improve the industry’s Software Sustainability level.