In a fiercely competitive environment, modern technologies have attracted the tremendous attention of businesses for existence. As a consequence of this development, research areas including supply chain management, industrial engineering, operation management, and so on have been influenced by the effect of these cutting-edge technologies. Leading-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence are assisting to remodel the operational management and production systems of businesses. In the literature, increasing consensus and investigations exist that new technologies can provide a variety of advantages for performing and developing sustainability issues. However, empirical insights on how the advantages of artificial intelligence can enhance business sustainability (in terms of economic, environmental, and social sustainability) are relatively scarce. Therefore, this chapter investigates the advantages of artificial intelligence on business sustainability from the angle of three aspects, namely environmental, economic, and social sustainability.
TopIntroduction
Due to the various significant problems caused by climate change, environmental sustainability has become a critical issue for business operations worldwide. Various environmental policies are intended to develop resource capacity as well as efficiency while limiting the utilization of non-beneficial proposals that might have an unfavorable effect on the environment (Kar et al., 2022). Endeavors to respond to difficulties of resource scarcity, economic benefits or environmental effects, or amalgamations of these have been done by industries, governments, and societies around the world (Lieder and Rashid, 2016). Besides regulatory pressure, various internal and external factors such as market changes, pressure from stakeholders, and corporate strategies have driven businesses to increasingly measure and evaluate their environmental as well as social impacts. Most of these interests focus on adverse effects on the environment and society like quantifying the diminishing of material and energy utilization, or the avoidance of waste as well as pollution (Dijkstra-Silva et al., 2022). Researchers have focused their efforts on the enhancement of sustainable activities by adopting these three pillars of sustainability in recent years. They have unearthed that the enhancement of sustainable activities necessitates a balance of social as well as economic growth (Gupta et al., 2023).
In general, sustainability has been evaluated in three aspects namely, social, environmental, and economic sustainability (Yildiz Çankaya and Sezen, 2019; Kar et al., 2022; Gupta et al., 2023). Environmental sustainability describes the conservation of natural entities like climate stability, minerals, and many others which the human race cannot exist without of these. To conserve natural resources, the improvement of novice and sustainable technologies as well as strategies has a critical role. Social sustainability, on the other hand, can be evaluated as a tool for achieving environmental as well as economic sustainability purposes. Social sustainability comprises indirect actions like providing the economic and political privileges of communities or individuals embarking on societal activities such as constructing social awareness administration structures or developing higher standards for human life (Yusuf et al., 2013). Finally, economic sustainability is an essential subject for businesses and demonstrates that effective and efficient exploitation of resources is significant to prohibit inefficacious outcomes of resource utilization as well as safeguarding existence and profitability (Durmaz et al., 2021). To summarize from the general point of view, sustainability can be evaluated as meeting today’s requirements without sacrificing the capability of future generations to meet their own requirements (Yildiz Çankaya and Sezen, 2019).