Sustainable Cooperate Information Portals: Digital Knowledge Communities for SME

Abstract

The project ECORADAR with participation from over 80 German enterprises and institutions was part of the fona funding focus ‘Integrated Sustainable Protection—Instruments for Sustainable Business Management’ set by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The primary task of the portal’s construction consists of the creation of an Sustainable Management Community. The purpose of the summary is to show the structure and elements of the ecoradar-community. Both, the creation of a “culture of trust” among the participating enterprises and the strategy of a successful integration of the joint project partners are of specific interest. Ecoradar (www.ecoradar.de, currently: https://oekoradar.uni-hohenheim.de /) is the name for an new innovative Internet portal that sets out to use the simplest and most persuasive means to motivate sustainable management in those organizations which have so far taken little or no interest in this aspect. Ecoradar is based on the experience of the project oekoradar.de, made 15 year before in 2001. The primary task of the portal’s construction consists of the creation of a Sustainable Management Community. The purpose of the article is to show the structure and elements of the ecoradar-community. Both the creation of a “culture of trust” among the participating enterprises and the strategy of a successful integration of the joint project partners are of specific interest. The content models are presented and the article is examining the ability of the ecoradar-community to develop, share and use the available knowledge by using the tools of knowledge-management. The new ecoradar-modell is concentrated in the field of energy management and climate protection instruments. Finally, the authors describe the technology that is used to create the portal (Kreeb et al. Organizational communication and sustainable development—ICTs for mobility, IGI Global, Hershey, 2009). © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.