Business Process Management: Saving the Planet?

Abstract: 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.