Sustainability is at the top of the agenda of most tech companies. Specifically, tech companies increasingly utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to meet their sustainability goals. However, little is known about how tech companies can leverage AI to accelerate sustainability by formulating and implementing appropriate strategies. To better understand the intertwined nature of AI and sustainability from a strategy perspective, this research conceptually develops a novel AI x Sustainability framework by drawing from the nested sustainability model and integrating insights from different literature streams. It then applies this framework to six leading Big Tech companies (i.e., Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, and SAP) by conducting a comprehensive document analysis of 69 documents describing 244 individual AI x Sustainability initiatives to reveal whether and how these companies appear to follow specific AI x Sustainability strategies. Lastly, an exploratory survey with potential tech companies' clients ( = 192) sheds light on how clients perceive tech companies' communicated strategic positioning based on the framework. The research provides new theoretical insights, serves as a blueprint for other tech companies, including implications for their AI x Sustainability positioning, and offers a variety of future research directions.

中文翻译：

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科技公司如何通过人工智能推进可持续发展：开发和评估人工智能 x 可持续发展战略框架

可持续发展是大多数科技公司的首要议程。具体来说，科技公司越来越多地利用人工智能 (AI) 来实现其可持续发展目标。然而，人们对科技公司如何利用人工智能通过制定和实施适当的战略来加速可持续发展知之甚少。为了从战略角度更好地理解人工智能和可持续发展相互交织的本质，本研究通过借鉴嵌套的可持续发展模型并整合不同文献流的见解，从概念上开发了一种新颖的人工智能x可持续发展框架。然后，通过对描述 244 个单独的 AI x 可持续发展计划的 69 个文档进行全面的文档分析，将该框架应用于六家领先的大型科技公司（即亚马逊、谷歌、IBM、Meta、微软和 SAP），以揭示这些公司是否以及如何实施似乎遵循特定的人工智能 x 可持续发展策略。最后，对潜在科技公司客户 (= 192) 进行的探索性调查揭示了客户如何看待科技公司基于该框架传达的战略定位。该研究提供了新的理论见解，为其他科技公司提供了蓝图，包括对其人工智能 x 可持续发展定位的影响，并提供了各种未来的研究方向。