Co-designing ESG Platform Functionality: A Digital Platform Ecosystem Approach

Abstract

The concept of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), has captivated the attention of firms and academics, driven by an EU directive for firms to report ESG. Digital platforms fulfill an essential role to support organizations to manage their ESG initiatives. Since ESG disclosure standards are ambiguous, designing a digital platform for ESG is challenging. The design of ESG platform functionality is hindered as essential knowledge is fragmented across various stakeholders. In this paper, we show how a platform owner, complementor, and platform user co-design ESG platform module features by applying an ecosystem approach. Situated in a socio-technical context, we apply Action Based Research (ADR) that includes a cyclic process of design iterations in an actual real-life setting. We identified ten challenges that may occur in the design process, and we explain which strategies have been applied to overcome the challenges.