Following the thermo-industrial revolution, the impact of homo sapiens has been so deep that
in thousands of years from now it will be possible to carry out a “geology of mankind” (Crutzen
2002). Indeed, besides traces of some past constructions it will be possible to identify geological
evidence of its negative impacts on the natural environment (pollutions, destruction of
biodiversity, global ecosystem changes). Our species appeared some 300 000 years ago, for
Palsson et al. (2013) if we are to survive the Anthropocene, “it is essential to fundamentally
rethink the environment-humanity relationship”, and possibly to set boundaries to those
negative impacts. For example, Steffen et al. (2015) suggested nine planetary boundaries, and
not crossing them would require adequate governance responses (Biermann 2012).
Unfortunately, according to Whiteman et al. (2013), “Despite awareness of the declining state
of ecosystems, business management scholars have yet to adequately link business processes
to macro ecological processes and boundary conditions”.
In order to examine the extent to which the business processes of large digital firms are linked
to “macro ecological processes and boundary conditions”, that we call “grand ecological
challenges”, we discuss the following propositions:
 Proposition n°1: Large digital firms are concerned with grand ecological challenges.
 Proposition n°2: Large digital firms adopted practices to address grand ecological challenges.
In Section 2 we present the background literature, and in Section 3 our data and methodology,
before presenting our results in Section 4 and concluding with a discussion in Section 5.

Link: https://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egos/main_rel-de-reserve-mode-active-content-id-1539047741567-subtheme_id-1510963251684

Slides: https://gossart.wp.imt.fr/files/2019/08/presentation.pdf

Paper: https://gossart.wp.imt.fr/files/2019/08/paper.pdf