Advancing Business Process Technology for Humanity: Opportunities and Challenges of Green BPM for Sustainable Business Activities

The sustainability of organizations’ business activities is currently an intensely discussed issue which is gaining increasing importance. The research field of Green Information Systems (Green IS) is concerned with designing and investigating innovative methods and techniques supporting a better sustainability of business activities based on information systems (IS). According to the IEEE tagline Advancing Technology for Humanity, IS can contribute to a more sustainable business world and thus to a betterment of humanity. In our contribution, we argue that techniques and methods from the field of Business Process Management (BPM) can considerably support the preservation of the environment while performing business activities and thus contribute to a betterment of human living conditions. Organizational as well as technological opportunities and challenges of Green BPM are investigated and demonstrated by means of exemplary application scenarios from different organizational contexts. In order to delineate the technological potential of Green BPM, a semi-automated approach for process sustainability improvement is presented by means of a further application scenario.