Evaluating Sustainable Digitalization: A Carbon-Aware Framework for Enhancing Eco-Friendly Business Process Reengineering

In an era where sustainability is paramount, understanding the environmental impact of digitalizing business processes is critical. Despite the growing emphasis on sustainable practices, there is a lack of comprehensive methodologies to evaluate how digitalization impacts environmental sustainabilit...

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Published inSustainability Vol. 16; no. 17; p. 7789
Main Authors Vergallo, Roberto, D'Alo, Teodoro, Mainetti, Luca, Paiano, Roberto, Matino, Sara
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2024
Subjects
Artificial intelligence
Business models
Business process reengineering
Carbon
Case studies
Corporate sustainability
Digital technology
Digitization
Emissions
Energy consumption
Environmental impact
Environmental performance
Environmental sustainability
Product life cycle
Production engineering
Reengineering (Management)
Research methodology
Software
Sustainable development
Technology application
Italy
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Summary:In an era where sustainability is paramount, understanding the environmental impact of digitalizing business processes is critical. Despite the growing emphasis on sustainable practices, there is a lack of comprehensive methodologies to evaluate how digitalization impacts environmental sustainability compared to traditional processes. This paper introduces a carbon-aware methodological framework specifically designed to assess the sustainability of business process reengineering through digitalization. The Digital Green framework quantitatively analyzes the environmental costs associated with digital transformation, ensuring that truly sustainable digitalization results in lower resource consumption relative to the complexity of the process being digitalized. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the framework was applied to a case study involving the reengineering of an administrative process at a small university in southern Italy. The case study highlighted the framework’s ability to quantify the environmental benefits or detriments of digital transformation, thus guiding organizations toward more sustainable digital practices. This research contributes to the field by offering a concrete tool for aligning digitalization efforts with ecological sustainability, and by paving the way for integration with initiatives such as the Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specifications.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su16177789