CHALLENGES IN INCORPORATING SUSTAINABILITY INTO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Despite decades of disaggregated initiatives aimed at improving the well-being and quality of life of its employees, their families, communities and stakeholders, many high-technology firms are still struggling to develop an integrated approach to address the triple bottom line aspects of sustainability. In particular how sustainability is being integrated into the product development process, and the challenges that result, is of interest to this work. A literature review into the role of internal factors of how a firm implements a sustainability strategy revealed that it was too normative to guide the implementation of a corporate sustainability strategy at the level of the product development value chain. Therefore, to better understand how senior and mid-level managers actually implement such a strategy, a case study was conducted at two business divisions of two different large, multinational firms that are relatively early in their development of an integrated sustainability strategy. The findings provide insight into the role of internal factors at the level of a business division as it attempts to incorporate sustainability into its product development value chain.