Reengineering a Green Business

Introduction

Business processes, representing the way in which business operate, play a significant role in contribution towards the carbon footprint of an organization. Repetitive erroneous processes not only make for an inefficient business but also result in high carbon generation. The “Carbon footprint” of an organization represents the CO₂ from emissions throughout the life cycle of a product, service or activity (Wiedmann et al., 2006; Barthelmie et al., 2008) and contributes to increased atmospheric carbon levels (Luchsinger, 2009). One approach for businesses to maintain sustainable operations whilst addressing its carbon footprint would be to identify the extent of carbon emissions resulting from their business processes. This has to be followed by a framework within which green business process operates that is based on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) to minimize carbon emissions.

This position paper presents a framework for “Green Business Process Reengineering Life Cycle” with a specific focus on CO₂ emitting business processes. This paper further proposes a carbon reporting mechanism as part of the business reports, identifying and evaluating alternate processes, and moving towards measuring and justifying their changes. Starting with a literature review in identifying carbon emitting business processes and characteristics in transforming them to green processes, a discussion is developed on challenges in implementing green processes. From this discussion, a green reengineering framework is proposed that establishes a research agenda in the Green Business domain from the information systems management perspective. The paper concludes with delineating concepts of validating the proposed framework and future research directions.