Business Process Automation and Innovation

Business processes constitute a core concept in modern management. They can be understood as “a collection of inter-related events, activities, and decision points that involve a number of actors and objects, which collectively lead to an outcome that is of value to at least one customer” (Dumas et al., 2018, p. 6). Their optimization in terms of automation and innovation is of tremendous importance for organizations.

In the last decade, sustainability has become a crucial goal for the optimization of business processes (Seidel et al. 2014, vom Brocke et al. 2012). First, processes themselves need to be sustainable. Second, capabilities for process automation and innovation need to be sustainable. Third, the effects of an increasing automation of business processes also have effects with regards to sustainability goals. These sustainability goals cover all three bottom lines of the triple bottom line model (i.e., economic, environmental, and social goals).

Digital means create more opportunities for the automation and innovation of business processes. However, we also see that these digital means have an impact on the sustainability of both organizations in general and business processes in specific. For instance, processes using Robotic Process Automation are prone to failure when the underlying core systems change (Syed et al., 2020), or process mining in healthcare has runs the risk of compromising the privacy of patients (Pika et al., 2020). Alternatively, exogenous shocks in the environment require a higher degree of process innovation (Röglinger et al. 2022). 

As such, more research on the intersection of sustainability and business process automation and innovation is needed.

In this call, we motivate research at the intersection of sustainability and business process automation and innovation. We welcome research from all traditions, different theoretical perspectives, and across different contexts. We are open to all methodological and theoretical approaches. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Sustainable and green business process management;
• Methods to innovate business processes with a focus on (economic, environmental, and social) sustainability;
• Conceptual process modeling for sustainably competitive business processes;
• Using process automation to increase process sustainability;
• Building sustainable capabilities for process automation and innovation;
• Analyzing the effects of process automation on different sustainability measures (e.g., the triple bottom line);
• Using process mining and analytics to understand the sustainability impact of processes and process changes.

We look forward to receiving your contributions at any time—early submissions to the Special Issue are warmly welcomed. Feel free to contact us before your submission to assure it fits in the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Plattfaut
Prof. Dr. Amy Van Looy
Guest Editors

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• sustainability
• process automation
• process innovation
• business process management
• triple bottom line