Green Business Process Management Usage Of Existing And New Tools For Achieving The Ecological Goals

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, grade: 2.3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: The aim of this work is to find relevant approaches of Green Business Process Management (BPM) and analyse them with regard to their purpose. It was considered whether the approaches are extensions of the traditional BPM concepts adapted to the ecological dimension or if they are newer techniques and tools introduced by the rise of Green Information Systems (IS). In order to achieve this goal, the basic concept of BPM and its way towards more sustainability is presented at the beginning followed by the explanation of current approaches. Afterwards, the BPM Lifecycle, which serves as a suitable framework to allocate the different tools and techniques, is introduced. Based on the rough presentation, the main part deals more intensively and in more detail with the tools and techniques of Green BPM approaches. These tools and techniques were mapped into an adapted (Green) BPM Lifecycle so that relevant implications could be derived in the discussion section. But first, the mentioned tools and techniques are classified according their field of acting. Finally, the discussion part takes place where the major contributions are analysed and interpreted according to the observed results and background knowledge. Companies have been looking at sustainability for several decades, recognizing that by reducing pollution they can also maximize their profits. Thus, sustainability in the field of Information Systems (IS) is becoming increasingly important as topics like Green IS and IT are addressed. These deal with the reduction of IT consumption and emissions because of the implementation of more sustainable business activities. However, this raises the requirement for approaches in the field of Business Process Management. Research and practice lacked an appropriate approach to connect these two areas of Green IS and BPM, which is why the notion of Green Business Process Management was introduced. Experts are developing instruments and techniques whose primary objective is to integrate sustainability into the different phases of the business process Lifecycle so that more ecological processes can be realized. Such approaches help organizations in defining their optimal business strategies regarding the four dimensions of time, quality, flexibility, cost and now adding the aspect of environment.

​ Green Business Process Management – Towards the Sustainable Enterprise" consolidates the global state-of-the-art knowledge about how business processes can be managed and improved in light of sustainability objectives. Business organizations, a dominant part of our society, have always been a major contributor to the degradation of our natural environment, through the resource consumption, greenhouse emissions, and wastage production associated with their business processes. In order to lessen their impact on the natural environment, organizations must design and implement environmentally sustainable business processes. Finding solutions to this organizational design problem is the key challenge of Green Business Process Management. This book- discusses the emerging challenges of designing “green” business processes,- presents tools and methods that organizations can use in order to design and implement environmentally sustainable processes, and- provides insights from cases where organizations successfully engaged in more sustainable business practices. The book is of relevance to both practitioners and academics who are interested in understanding, designing, and implementing “green” business processes. It also constitutes a valuable resource for students and lecturers in the fields of information systems, management, and sustainable development. Preface by Richard T. Watson

The intent of this book is to give interested parties an overview of green and its impact on business, without spending countless hours researching the subject. It provides information in a manner that can be used to help businesses determine the role green will play in their futures. The book is not intended as a detailed implementation guide, but as an aid in understanding the current thinking on what green really is and what an organization can do. The book is presented in three major sections. The first section is intended to give an overall understanding of what is meant by green, a brief history of the environmental movement as it relates to business, trends in carbon measuring and reporting, and definitions of green. The second section discusses standards, certifications, and measurements that relate to green and environmental management. The final section presents methods that may be used to implement and manage green processes within an organization, along with tools and a road map that may be used by those companies seeking to become green. The road map utilizes process improvement tools that will be familiar to many organizations.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of nine international workshops held in Hoboken, NJ, USA, in conjunction with the 8th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2010, in September 2010. The nine workshops focused on Reuse in Business Process Management (rBPM 2010), Business Process Management and Sustainability (SusBPM 2010), Business Process Design (BPD 2010), Business Process Intelligence (BPI 2010), Cross-Enterprise Collaboration, People, and Work (CEC-PAW 2010), Process in the Large (IW-PL 2010), Business Process Management and Social Software (BPMS2 2010), Event-Driven Business Process Management (edBPM 2010), and Traceability and Compliance of Semi-Structured Processes (TC4SP 2010). In addition, three papers from the special track on Advances in Business Process Education are also included in this volume. The overall 66 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 143 submissions.

During the last three decades, information and communication technologies have fundamentally changed the way we work, live and communicate. The ubiquity of internet services, which become increasingly interactive and complex, together with enhanced connectivity, facilitated by innovative mobile devices, induces an ever-rising demand for computing, storage and data transmission capacities. Today, information systems (IS) constitute the backbone of the globalized economy and are indispensable for modern business and production processes. At the same time, environmental sustainability has evolved as the most pressing societal challenge of the 21st century, in particular due to the looming threats of climate change. By virtue of their global influence and reach, business companies significantly contribute to the creation of environmental problems, but owing to their organizational knowledge, capabilities and resources, they also have the capacity and ability to play a key role in shaping the path towards a more sustainable development. The companies leading the way have noticed that corporate sustainability is not necessarily a burden that negatively impacts their bottom line. If strategically managed, environmental product and process innovations can decrease operational costs, enhance corporate reputation, and differentiate from competitors. With regard to environmental sustainability, IS play a contradictory role: on the one hand, the manufacturing, operation and disposal of information technology (IT) infrastructure are responsible for serious environmental impacts: from the mining of conflict minerals to carbon dioxide emissions that equal those of the airline industry to enormous amounts of toxic e-waste. On the other hand, IS are perceived as key enablers of a "green" economy: environmental management systems and the reengineering of business processes can substantially reduce the environmental impacts of business organizations, while technological innovations provide opportunities to decrease the ecological footprint of end-user products and services. Many organizations have started to implement first environmental measures to decrease IT energy consumption and to reduce operational costs, mostly in an unstructured and uncoordinated manner though. Although Green IS practices feature a considerable potential to increase corporate environmentalism while creating promising business opportunities, the adoption of enterprise-wide cross-functional initiatives aimed at implementing Green IS has been rather slow. Economic uncertainties regarding the long-term effects of Green IS adoption and the lack of appropriate management frameworks have been identified as main inhibitors of an encompassing implementation of Green IS initiatives throughout the enterprise. In this context, this thesis addresses relevant research gaps, contributes to theory development in the evolving Green IS research discipline, develops practice-oriented management frameworks, and emphasizes the importance of following a strategic approach to leverage the competitive potential of Green IS. This cumulative thesis comprises an introduction that includes a literature review and a pre-study, four theory-based conceptual research articles, and two empirical studies, one of them building on qualitative, exploratory case study research whereas the other relies on quantitative data which has been analyzed with structural equation modeling. This thesis targets four specific research goals to advance theory-building in Green IS research and to promote the adoption of Green IS in practice. First, this thesis clarifies and defines the central terms and key concepts Green IT, Green IS, Green IS strategy, and Green IS practices drawing on a transdisciplinary research approach. Second, the most important challenges and inhibitors of Green IS adoption are identified and characterized. In particular, the lack of management frameworks, which encourage a holistic implementation that follows a strategic rationale, the complexity of strategic Green IS alignment, the multi-dimensional performance impacts of cross-functional initiatives and, above all, the uncertainty relating to the business case of Green IS practices, are identified as the most pressing challenges. Third, current actions of business firms to address these challenges are examined. Building on exploratory case study research, distinctive Green IS strategies are identified in managerial practice. Most notably, the empirical insights from quantitative survey research suggest a positive relationship between Green IS adoption and firm competitiveness, thus decreasing the economic uncertainty which inhibits the implementation of far-reaching environmental initiatives. Fourth, practice-oriented management frameworks are developed. The fine-grained Green IS strategy concept advises the formulation of strategies addressing the corporate, competitive, and functional management level. The proposed typology of four Green IS strategies illustrates distinct strategic options, from which executives can choose under consideration of their competitive targets and the firm-specific context. To allow for consistency of Green IS strategies, the presented alignment framework facilitates coherence with economic and environmental corporate goals. Furthermore, the actors, roles and responsibilities relevant to the alignment process are described. In addition, a management framework for the holistic adoption of Green IS, which specifies decisive management areas and distinguishes between three degrees of environmental impacts, is presented along with a comprehensive catalogue of Green IS implementation measures. As a consequence, this research offers both empirical insights and conceptual models to advance the adoption of Green IS initiatives, thus meeting the challenges of climate change and turning corporate sustainability into a business opportunity. Informationssysteme (IS) zeigen in Bezug auf ökologische Nachhaltigkeit gegensätzliche Eigenschaften. Einerseits verursachen die Herstellung, der Betrieb sowie die Entsorgung von Informationstechnologie (IT) – Infrastrukturen schwerwiegende negative Umweltauswirkungen: Vom Abbau von Konfliktmineralien über Kohlendioxidemissionen bis hin zu beträchtlichen Mengen giftigen Elektroschrotts. Andererseits werden IS als Schlüsseltechnologien für eine nachhaltige Wirtschaft gesehen. Umweltmanagementsysteme und die Umgestaltung von Geschäftsprozessen können den ökologischen Fußabdruck von Organisationen bedeutend verringern. Zudem eröffnen technologische Innovationen neuartige Möglichkeiten, die Umweltauswirkungen von Produkten und Dienstleistungen über den gesamten Lebenszyklus hinweg zu senken. Zahlreiche Organisationen haben damit begonnen, einzelne Green-IT-Maßnahmen zu implementieren um den Energieverbrauch und operative Kosten zu senken. Allerdings verfolgen die meisten Unternehmen hierbei keinen strukturierten oder strategischen Ansatz. Obwohl Green-IS-Initiativen beachtliche Potentiale zur Verbesserung der ökologischen Nachhaltigkeit von Organisationen bieten und gleichzeitig vielversprechende wirtschaftliche Chancen eröffnen, schreitet die Umsetzung von bereichsübergreifenden Green-IS-Maßnahmen in Unternehmen nur langsam voran. Ökonomische Unsicherheiten in Bezug auf die Rentabilität derartiger Maßnahmen sowie der Mangel an adäquaten Management-Frameworks werden in diesem Zusammenhang als zentrale Hinderungsgründe für eine strategische und ganzheitliche Umsetzung von Green-IS-Initiativen identifiziert. Diese Dissertation adressiert diese Hinderungsgründe, schafft Schlüsselkonzepte für den neuen Green-IS-Forschungszweig, entwickelt praxisorientierte Management-Frameworks und hebt die Bedeutung eines strategischen Ansatzes bei der Implementierung von Green IS hervor. Diese Forschungsarbeit offeriert empirische Einblicke wie auch konzeptionelle Modelle um die Umsetzung ganzheitlicher Green-IS-Initiativen in Organisationen voranzutreiben. Unternehmen haben somit die Chance, den Herausforderungen des Klimawandels verantwortungsvoll zu begegnen und gleichzeitig durch eine nachhaltige Unternehmensführung Wettbewerbsvorteile zu generieren.

Green Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications assembles the most up-to-date collection of research results and recent discoveries in environmental and green technology. This comprehensive anthology covers a wide range of topics, i

This book constitutes revised papers from the eleven International Workshops held at the 15th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2017, in Barcelona, Spain, in September 2017: BPAI 2017 – 1st International Workshop on Business Process Innovation with Artificial Intelligence; BPI 2017 – 13th International Workshop on Business Process Intelligence; BP-Meet-IoT 2017 – 1st International Workshop on Ubiquitous Business Processes Meeting Internet-of-Things; BPMS2 2017 – 10th Workshop on Social and Human Aspects of Business Process Management; ‐ CBPM 2017 – 1st International Workshop on Cognitive Business Process Management; CCABPM 2017 – 1st International Workshop on Cross-cutting Aspects of Business Process Modeling; DeHMiMoP 2017 – 5th International Workshop on Declarative/Decision/Hybrid Mining & Modeling for Business Processes; QD-PA 2017 – 1st International Workshop on Quality Data for Process Analytics; REBPM 2017 – 3rd International Workshop on Interrelations between Requirements Engineering and Business Process Management; SPBP 2017 – 1st Workshop on Security and Privacy-enhanced Business Process Management; TAProViz-PQ-IWPE 2017 –Joint International BPM 2017 Workshops on Theory and Application of Visualizations and Human-centric Aspects in Processes (TAProViz'17), Process Querying (PQ'17) and Process Engineering (IWPE17). The 44 full and 11 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions.

Environmental sustainability creates both tremendous business opportunities and formidable threats to established companies across virtually all industry sectors. Yet many companies tackle the issue in a superficial or passive way, rather than considering fundamental changes to their existing business models. By ignoring the opportunities of Green Business Model Transformations, companies exclude themselves from a large variety of potential means to create economic value. In addition to ordinary product and process innovations, they can change “the rules of the game” within an industry towards environmental sustainability. Green Business Model Transformations, however, are challenging ventures: New, green business models with all their uncertainties and inherent complex systemic characteristics are difficult to design, assess, and implement successfully, particularly in the context of established companies that often entail complex structures and considerable inertia. As a result, there is a great need for guidance in management practice. This publication addresses this need with a general approach to Managing Green Business Model Transformations that is based on a broad theoretical foundation, illustrated by many real-world examples from various industry sectors.