ESE-BPA: An integrated qualitative process analysis framework

Abstract

This master thesis aims to extend contemporary qualitative business process analysis methods with metrics from environmental, social and ethical accounting (ESEA) methods. As sustainability has become of increasing interest in business and practice, organizations have adapted ESEA methods to account for the non-financial impact of their actions. In the field of business process management, Green BPM allows for insights in resource usage, among other environmental externalities. It does not include social and ethical externalities. Therefore, metrics from ESEA methods have been adjusted and incorporated in a newly designed framework called environmental, social, and ethical business process analysis (ESE-BPA). ESE-BPA enables individual business processes to be analyzed in terms of their utilities, process demographics, and conflicts of interest, among other things. After performing ESE-BPA, organizations will have gathered business process redesign opportunities. This allows for organizations to adapt their business processes, as well as gathering insights in the internal workings and the transitions over time.