Environmental strategies and green product development: an overview on sustainability‐driven companies

TLDR

Companies can address environmental sustainability challenges through strategies and operations such as green processes and product development. The study examines whether sustainability-driven companies’ environmental strategies support green product development and whether sector or geographic differences exist. The authors develop a taxonomy of environmental strategies, define measurable proxies, and analyze companies in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index through content analysis of websites and sustainability reports. Green product developers adopt environmental strategies at higher levels than non-developers, with sector-specific variations but relatively uniform geographic patterns. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Abstract

Abstract To respond effectively and efficiently to the environmental sustainability challenge, an important role can be played by companies, through appropriate strategies and operations, such as green processes and product development. In this paper, we investigate whether the development of green products is supported by the environmental strategic approaches adopted by sustainability‐driven companies, and whether there are economic sector or geographical area specificities. To this purpose, first we develop a taxonomy of environmental strategies and we define measurable proxies for both the environmental strategic approaches identified and the green product development. Then, we study a sample represented by the companies included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSWI). The methodology used is based on the content analysis of companies' websites and relevant documents, such as environmental and sustainability reports. The main result is that the levels of adoption of different environmental strategic approaches are higher for green product developers than for green product non‐developers. Moreover, the most implemented strategic approaches for green product developers vary depending on the economic sector, while a more homogeneous behaviour is found from the geographical perspective. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.