The pace of digital technology’s evolution is disrupting the foundations of businesses and entire industries with a dramatic impact on economic, social, and environmental sustainability (George, Merrill, & Schillebeeckx, 2020). In theme three, we explore and analyse digital enablement and sustainability on three analytical levels: industry, business organizations, and employees. Specifically, we are interested in contributing to the sustainability of the AEC industry by consequently developing a model that is applicable more broadly. The AEC industry is the focal point because it impacts the sustainability of where and how work is conducted across many industries and is particularly pertinent to COVID-19-related pandemic changes (Parker, 2020). We aim to create a ‘roadmap’ to navigate business leaders, educators, and researchers through the multiple strategic tensions in the journey towards ‘digital sustainability’. Our programme directly tackles SDG 9 and 11.

The combination of digital enablement and sustainability is a global and complex grand challenge. Advice for this approach has been to assemble diverse communities of experts – academics and practitioners –  at a local level so that investigators can remain close to the challenges (Brammer, Branicki, Linnenluecke, & Smith, 2019). For this reason, our focus is initially on the AEC industry. We aim to translate the research insights to academic programmes and will help turn potential additional partners into collaborators.