ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT – DEVELOPING A GREEN BPM READINESS MODEL

During the last half decade, various theories, concepts, and models have been established to make organizations more environmentally sustainable. The IS community had their share with the Green IS/IT domain. As it turned out most of these concepts took a very functional approach, not making a good fit for business process oriented organizations. To fill this gap the research stream of Green Business Process Management (GBPM) arose. In this paper we develop and discuss various capabilities that organizations should have in order to actually take advantage of GBPM. We call these capabilities GBPM readiness

Business Process Management: Saving the Planet?

Organisational and government concerns about environmental sustainability (ES) are on the increase. While a significant amount of research from a wide range of domains has addressed various ES challenges, intuitively, Business Process Management (BPM), with its focus on process improvement and process performance measurement, has much to offer the ES field. In this paper we aim to understand the BPM research contribution to ES, including specific Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI), and the BPM concepts that have been utilized in the ES context. To this end we conduct a systematic literature review to capture prior research focused on BPM and ES, coding the articles according to their contribution to EPIs and other ES concepts, while also contrasting their focus with main challenges identified in industry reports. Our study identifies which EPIs have been addressed in prior BPM research and highlights areas of future contribution

Green BPM as a business-oriented discipline : a systematic mapping study and research agenda

Green Business Process Management (BPM) focuses on the ecological impact of business processes. This article provides a systematic mapping study of Green BPM literature to evaluate five attributes of the Green BPM research area: (1) scope, (2) disciplines, (3) accountability, (4) researchers and (5) quality control. The results allow developing a research agenda to enhance Green BPM as an approach for environmentally sustainable organizations. We rely on a dichotomy of knowledge production to present research directives relevant for both academics and practitioners in order to help close a rigor-relevance gap. The involvement of both communities is crucial for Green BPM to advance as an applied, business-oriented discipline

What IS can do for Environmental Sustainability: A Report from the CAiSE´11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS

The panel on Green and Sustainable Information Systems at the 21st International Conference on Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11), held in London in June 2011, was intended to discuss issues in Environmental Sustainability and Information Systems within the Information Systems Engineering research community. Information systems, which have become pervasive and hence impact on most aspects of human activity, can help to reduce the negative impact of human activities on the environment in two main areas

Towards a Green IS Taxonomy

This paper proposes a set of categories and topics to guide the formation of a taxonomy of Green IS in an endeavor to stimulate efforts to determine the scope and content the field. The resulting taxonomy will complement the SIGGreen Statement of basic Green IS principles. The suggested categories for the taxonomy presented in this paper include the greening of core IS activities supplemented with additional topics drawn from the emerging body of Green IS literature, outcomes of workshops, conference presentations and meetings of SIGGreen as well as the authors experience and communication with fellow members of SIGGreen. It is hoped that others will engage in a constructive effort to further develop the taxonomy and that it will be used to support the application of IS toward global and local initiatives for Sustainable Development

What IS Can Do for Environmental Sustainability: A Report from CAiSE’11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS

The panel on Green and Sustainable Information Systems at the 21st International Conference on Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11), held in London in June 2011, was held to discuss issues in Environmental Sustainability and Information Systems within the Information Systems Engineering research community. This panel report describes the panelists’ views on using information systems for improving sustainability and on improving the energy efficiency of the data centres on which information systems are based. The current topics of research, possible contributions of the IS community, and future directions are discussed

How Software Promotes the Integration of Sustainability in Business Process Management

Business research and practice increasingly focus on integrating sustainability in organizations. To contribute to rising challenges related to the society and the environment, sustainability-driven concepts (e.g., environmental friendly)have to be implemented in the daily business routines, and thus, need to be considered during the design of business processes in any organization. In this study, we conceptualize the field of Green Business Process Management (BPM)and use the derived concepts to classify supporting modelling tools and concrete software features. While our study indicates a lack of realization of the ecological and social sustainability in particular and a gap in supporting users during the redesign phase, there are software features that can potentially serve as a starting point to further incorporate sustainability in the design, implementation, and controlling of business processes

GREEN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AS AN ELEMENT OF GREEN BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

This study aims to answer the following research question: How can green human resource management (GHRM) spur green business process management (GBPM)? It employs a literature review combined with scientific reflection. This work contributes to the development of knowledge by (1) conducting an analysis and synthesis of literature on GBPM, (2) combining the issue of GBPM with GHRM, and (3) showing directions for future empirical research focusing on the linkage between GBPM and GHRM. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper systematically discussing the linkage between GBPM and GHRM

Pathways to Greener Pastures: Research Opportunities to Integrate Life Cycle Assessment and Sustainable Business Process Management Based on a Systematic Tertiary Literature Review

Sustainable Business Process Management (BPM) is a research field that aims to improve the sustainability performance of organizations’ operations. With its focus on business processes, it has the potential to bring sustainability considerations from external reporting to the core of organizations. We present a systematic tertiary literature study to provide a catalog of existing literature reviews and primary work and to give a consolidated overview of the state and research needs of the field. We find that Sustainable BPM research has focused on modeling approaches and most of the work so far is largely conceptual, with a limited sustainability perspective. Based on these findings, we propose an integration of BPM and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), an established and rigorous method for sustainability analysis. We present research opportunities to show how both disciplines can synergize and leverage methods and techniques for business process automation and innovation to effectively improve the sustainability performance of organizations

Green Information Technology as Administrative innovation - Organizational factors for successful implementation: Literature Review

There is a considerable amount of awareness of environmental issues and corporate responsibility for sustainability. As such, from a technological viewpoint, Green IT has become an important topic in contemporary organizations. Consequently, organisations are expected to be innovative in their business practices to become more sustainable. Yet, the popularity and adoption of such initiatives amongst employees remain low. Furthermore, the management practices for adhering to Green IT are largely dormant, lacking active incentives for employees to engage in Green IT initiatives. This study observes the phenomenon of Green IT through administrative innovation. In doing so this paper performs a comprehensive analysis of 137 papers published between 2007 and 2015. The paper reveals organizational factors for successful implementation of Green IT as administrative innovation that can be useful to both academia and practice