Edinburgh Napier University

  The world is changing, and the market is changing, at speed of light. The ongoing global pandemic, environmental pressures, cost pressures, inequality, and productivity challenges are having an impact on every industry, business and organisation. The world of Information Technology (IT) business is a boiling cauldron. Some organisations grow rapidly, others disappear almost instantly, and some of them, often the larger organisations, stagnate and wither slowly. With all this happening, one of the main concerns for leaders is “how can my organisation become sustainable?” This has resulted in a growing number of sustainability initiatives across all industries. It can be argued that IT Services is one of the industries most impacted by the changes in the economic and business climate. As a result, there is a growing, if not an insatiable, desire to create a sustainable organisation. Even though there is some literature available describing organisational sustainability, there is limited literature available on sustainability of IT services firms. If you add the geographical dimension of Singapore, the amount of literature really dwindles.

The researcher adopted a qualitative approach to analyse the perceptions of managers employed in IT firms in Singapore on organisation sustainability. Similarly, this research thesis adopted a qualitative approach using Grounded theory to analyse managers’ individual views, experiences, meanings, and perceptions to events and situations.

This allowed the researcher to describe and characterise a theoretical framework – Sustainability Quadrant.

Fourteen managers participated in the study, which was conducted through semi structured interviews as a research instrument.

A conceptual model was developed with recommendations to managers along with the prioritization of the same. The findings suggest that there are quite a few factors that influence the perception of the managers and they can be analysed, categorized and summarized as a set of characteristics and concomitant recommendations to help managers improve the sustainability of IT services firms in Singapore.

This thesis provides the basis for further empirical research into organisational sustainability for IT services firms, as well as providing guidance on some of the conceptual and practical implications for managers to deal with the topic of organisational sustainability. Sustainability as a concept is lot more relevant after 2020, where we witnessed an eternal factor like “pandemic” challenge the sustainability of industries not just firms. These external factors will continue to happen, and managers can only prepare and mitigate the risk.