The Technological Dimension of Sustainability: A Conceptual Perspective on Governability and Resilience Under Tech4.0

Technology is increasingly central to sustainability, yet frameworks built around the environmental–social–economic (E–S–Ec) triad and ESG disclosure regimes do not fully capture the governance problems created by interconnected digital and cyber–physical infrastructures. In this conceptual paper, Tech4.0 is used in a deliberately narrow working sense, focusing on AI-mediated decision systems, data/platform/cloud infrastructures, software dependency chains, and cyber–physical control environments in which opacity, infrastructural dependence, interdependence, and cascading failures create distinctive problems of governability and resilience. Against this background, the paper examines whether making the technological dimension explicit adds analytical value within sustainability architecture. It examines the case for treating Technological Sustainability (T) as a distinct analytical dimension/pillar insofar as it foregrounds system properties of the Technosphere that tend to be diluted when distributed across environmental, social, and economic categories. The paper then discusses the hierarchy T → Corporate Technological Responsibility (CTR) → Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) as a possible corporate-level operational pathway and outlines an exploratory measurement agenda structured around exposures, capabilities, and outcomes. Rather than offering empirical proof or a validated reporting architecture, the article provides a conceptual research program for later empirical inquiry into technological accountability under Tech4.0 conditions.