Implementing environmental considerations within product development practices: a survey on employees' perspectives

Ambitions toward a circular economy will necessitate more pro-activity in the current practices of many organizations in order to reduce environmental impacts. Since a product's environmental fate is dictated by organization's product development, it is essential to better understand how environmental issues are taken into account in product development practices. Building on constructs from empirical research in eco-design, this paper investigates how these issues are integrated into product development practices based on the perceptions of employees drawn from a non-probability sample. We assessed employees' perceptions of how frequently these environmental considerations are applied within individual product development phases, and how are they managed. We also explored whether employee's attitudes influenced perception of these practices, and if so, how. For instance, different attitudes seem to influence product development practices at different levels of abstraction. Furthermore, these results suggest that indeed environmental considerations have not yet become a mainstream topic within product development practices; for instance, there remains much potential for more frequent inclusion of environmental considerations within various product development phases, and for highlighting their role as criteria in decision-making. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.