Business processes and environmental sustainability

Purpose The question of environmental sustainability continues to attract rapidly growing attention, as it has become a central debate topic among academics, policymakers and business practitioners across the globe. Besides, extant literature highlights that the choices made about industrial processes, products and services are likely to have substantial environmental repercussions. However, the pursuit of profits by business organisations often undermines the inherent environmental impacts. Consequently, this study aims to empirically investigate the effects of business processes on environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The focus is on 132 developing countries over the period 2005–2019. The empirical evidence is based on both robust OLS estimators and the Driscoll and Kraay robust standard errors. Findings We find that business processes, proxied by gross value added in the agriculture, industry and services sectors, contribute to environmental degradation through increased greenhouse gas emissions. These results are consistent across various income groups and geographical regions. Contingent on these findings, it is necessary for developing countries to provide incentives to business operations concerned with green processes while enforcing regulatory sanctions on environment-unfriendly practices. Originality/value The study complements the extant literature by assessing the nexus between business processes and environmental sustainability in developing countries.