Business process pattern for improving social sustainability

Business process management (BPM) has the ability to boost transformations towards sustainable entities by innovating organizational structures. While the majority of existing BPM tools and methods focus on economic obligations, social sustainability is often underrepresented. This is problematic b...

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Main Authors: Thorsten Schoormann, Marco Di Maria
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Australasian Association for Information Systems 2024-11-01
Series:Australasian Journal of Information Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ajis.aaisnet.org/index.php/ajis/article/view/4949
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author Thorsten Schoormann
Marco Di Maria
author_facet Thorsten Schoormann
Marco Di Maria
author_sort Thorsten Schoormann
collection DOAJ
description Business process management (BPM) has the ability to boost transformations towards sustainable entities by innovating organizational structures. While the majority of existing BPM tools and methods focus on economic obligations, social sustainability is often underrepresented. This is problematic because it inhibits business improvement of people’s quality of life (e.g., health and equity), fails to address changing customer demands beyond transactional excellence, and obstructs the consideration of new regulations. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, recurrent problems and best practice solutions for integrating social sustainability into business processes were collected. These were formalized into a set of process patterns and then evaluated through illustrative demonstrations, an applicability check, and interviews with process experts. The paper proposes ten patterns together with a series of examples to guide the analysis and improvement of processes in terms of social sustainability. They support both generating novel ideas and identifying weaknesses. In doing this, our work complements existing tools and methods from sustainable BPM, advances the current body of knowledge in this stream, and opens avenues for a more holistic consideration of sustainability in business processes.
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spelling doaj-art-16fb74559f864657843ec3e13bc15c032025-08-20T02:02:57ZengAustralasian Association for Information SystemsAustralasian Journal of Information Systems1326-22382024-11-012810.3127/ajis.v28.4949Business process pattern for improving social sustainability Thorsten Schoormann0Marco Di Maria1Technische Universität BraunschweigUniversity of Hildesheim Business process management (BPM) has the ability to boost transformations towards sustainable entities by innovating organizational structures. While the majority of existing BPM tools and methods focus on economic obligations, social sustainability is often underrepresented. This is problematic because it inhibits business improvement of people’s quality of life (e.g., health and equity), fails to address changing customer demands beyond transactional excellence, and obstructs the consideration of new regulations. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, recurrent problems and best practice solutions for integrating social sustainability into business processes were collected. These were formalized into a set of process patterns and then evaluated through illustrative demonstrations, an applicability check, and interviews with process experts. The paper proposes ten patterns together with a series of examples to guide the analysis and improvement of processes in terms of social sustainability. They support both generating novel ideas and identifying weaknesses. In doing this, our work complements existing tools and methods from sustainable BPM, advances the current body of knowledge in this stream, and opens avenues for a more holistic consideration of sustainability in business processes. https://ajis.aaisnet.org/index.php/ajis/article/view/4949Business process redesignBusiness process improvementProcess patternDesign patternSocial sustainability
spellingShingle Thorsten Schoormann
Marco Di Maria
Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
Australasian Journal of Information Systems
Business process redesign
Business process improvement
Process pattern
Design pattern
Social sustainability
title Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
title_full Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
title_fullStr Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
title_full_unstemmed Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
title_short Business process pattern for improving social sustainability
title_sort business process pattern for improving social sustainability
topic Business process redesign
Business process improvement
Process pattern
Design pattern
Social sustainability
url https://ajis.aaisnet.org/index.php/ajis/article/view/4949
work_keys_str_mv AT thorstenschoormann businessprocesspatternforimprovingsocialsustainability
AT marcodimaria businessprocesspatternforimprovingsocialsustainability