Management Practices for Sustainable Product Development: Insights From a Systematic Literature Review

Sustainable Product Development (SPD) has been gaining increased attention in academia, industry, and policy. Over the past three decades, significant progress has been observed in incorporation of environmental issues into the product development process, through the so-called ecodesign management practices. Nevertheless, systematisation of the SPD practices, which simultaneously consider the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability, is still missing. To address this gap, this research aims to identify the existing SPD management practices in the academic literature, with special focus on how sustainability dimensions are currently being considered, their coverage in relation to key knowledge areas for product development and their applicability across the SPD phases. Through a systematic literature review, 362 practices were identified and further classified according to a classification criteria. While environmental considerations are still the most prominent ones, the research highlights the importance of the early stages of product development for SPD, as well as the key knowledge areas which are currently being covered by the practices, such as sustainability evaluation and sustainability improvement.