Since scientists have recognised the greenhouse effect that is associated with the global warming, environmental friendly behaviour has become more important, and it is increasingly expected from companies to become more ecofriendly. This study deals with the so-called ‘Greenwashing’, a marketing strategy that is discussed by the author. The author examines the company’s motivations to become ‘greener’, and the relevance of IT-based environmental performance measurement to corporations. The main purpose of this study is to identify and visualize Key Ecological Indicators. Thus, the contribution of this work is the development of the theoretical foundations of KEIs, and the implementation of a KEI framework for business-processes on the basis of a case study.

Textsample: Chapter 3.2, Requirements for KEIs: The previous definition set properties KEIs must fulfil. But there are further aspects needed for evaluating the quality of KEIs. In literature there are al-ready plenty of requirements for classical indicators or indicator systems and some explicitly for environmental indicators available. Consequently requirements to indicators are also applicable to KEIs, as they are in fact a special subset of indicators. There are so many different requirements named in literature that a limitation to the most essential and relevant ones is necessary. The first requirement that is going to be introduced is summarized under the term ‘economical requirement’. It consists of the aspects time, quality, flexibility and profitability of information and consequently means that it should be worthwhile to take effort in gathering information and processing them to indicators. This is determined by setting the requirement that the gathering and processing procedure should cost less than, or at least be proportional to the benefits generated by it. Further this process should be executed with-in a certain period of time, so that these indicators are available at a point in time when they are usable and needed. Flexibility is mentioned in terms of a set of indicators and means that they should be adaptable. At last quality signifies an appropriate preparation of information for decision-making. The-se consisting aspects should be entirely optimized, as they are also related and have negative effects to each other. For example if the time attribute is optimized to a real-time collection of data and calculation of indicators, it will decrease profitability, as the needed infrastructure enabling real-time indicators is more expensive. Thus one has to consider whether real-time is really necessary to improve time and decrease profitability. Setting this general requirement actually covered a lot of different requirements that are named and listed by other authors, for example requirements like currency, availability or acceptable costs. Because of this generalization almost every set of requirements that have been found did include some kind of economical requirement. It illustrates that it is very relevant. Measurability or quantification is yet another frequently mentioned requirement. It means representing the fact of interest by a number. Achieving it is not easily feasible in each case, like measuring the mentioned customer satisfaction KPI. Nevertheless it is achieved by identifying a set of measures that might indicate it. And there are further requirements like simplicity, verifiability, comparability and reliability, which will not be explained as they mostly speak for themselves or are not that relevant to the requirements for KEIs. However, there are some requirements particularly set for environmental indicators in literature. KEIs are a subset of environmental indicators and therefore requirements for environmental indicators can apply to them as well. Environmental indicators should: - address key issues. - be quantifiable. - be derived from process (modeling) data. - relate to other metrics commonly used in research and business decision-making processes. With key issues the big environmental problems could be meant, or issues within the corporation that exist concerning ecology, so environmental indicators should be connected to them. Quantification and measurability is also a requirement for ecological indicators. Derivation from process data offers the first evidence for a possible procedure to determine KEIs, discussed in section 3.5. The relation to other metrics is helpful for using these metrics for decision-making and is even necessary if aspects like eco-efficiency are go-ing to be measured. This relation is not essential to KEIs so that it is not made a requirement for them. With these several requirements for indicators and environmental indicators requirements for KEIs will be set for this work: - Economical Requirement. - Relevancy (tied to strategy by target value). - Measurability / Quantification. - Environmental reference. - Transparency. The economical requirement does apply to KEIs with its contained aspects time, quality, flexibility and profitability. It is always a fundamental requirement in practice. Further it should fulfil the requirements ‘relevant” by connection to strategy and ‘environmental reference” by containing some kind of environmental impact. They result from the definition of KEIs. Moreover KEIs should also be measurable or quantifiable for decision-making and transparent to discuss how they are calculated or how well they express certain information.

• Environmental Impact

• Key Ecological Indicator

• Identification

• Visualization

• KEI

• Greenhouse Effect