Make shipping green again - How big data practices affect environmental sustainability in shipping

Sammanfattning: In recent years, the shipping industry has faced important pressure to address CO2 emissions from steadily increasing maritime trade flows. While regulators still have to come to an agreement regarding their intervention, solutions brought by big data are already offering new opportunities to address this problem. Numerous researchers have addressed the relationship between organizations and the environment, nevertheless the effects of big data on environmental sustainability have so far received little attention from the academic world. The question therefore arises what supports the implementation of such practices and how transparency in stakeholder relationships can be enabled. By drawing on findings from a qualitative study, this thesis aims at filling the theoretical gap by framing the implementation of big data practices as a change process. Consequently, a number of factors influencing the use of big data practices for environmental sustainability could be identified and attributed to the interaction with different stakeholders including firms, customers, competitors and regulators. The nature of these dynamics could further be enlightened, as big data practices turned out to improve transparency and trust.