Responsible BPM Forum

Business Process Management research has traditionally been concerned with developing, implementing, and evaluating artefacts with properties that help organizations realize more efficient and effective business processes. Pivoting from this, Responsible BPM (RBPM) aims to inhabit a broader viewpoint by taking additional concerns such as worker wellbeing, fairness, and ethics into account. The promise of RBPM is that by taking a stance on values to be realized with BPM, issues out of reach of traditional BPM can be addressed. In this, RBPM is closely aligned with Green BPM, that is, BPM additionally concerned with considering environmental sustainability. Based on my own experience with Green BPM research, we will examine opportunities for explicating value judgements that underpin Green BPM. Of particular interest here are competing conceptualizations of environmental sustainability that stem from differing underlying beliefs and value systems. These influence how Green BPM aims to bring about environmentally sustainable business practices, and to which end. We will see how surfacing such value judgements informs research questions, our ability to consider broader limitations of our research, and how new research avenues can be uncovered. Ultimately, these considerations are also relevant for the RBPM community, which stands to benefit from the Green BPM field’s experience in extending its perspective on business processes.