Development of a framework for green product development

Purpose – The concept of “green product development (GPD)” has been emerged as a global phenomenon. The main objective of GPD is to minimize the impact of industrial growth on the environment across the globe. Many researchers have actively contributed articles for developing GPD, but none of them provide direction and guidance for an effective implementation of GPD in organizations. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify a comprehensive list of the principles, practices, tools and techniques, and integrate them to develop and propose a new framework for GPD for effective implementation in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – The present study has examined 37 frameworks published from 1991 to 2012 in selected 23 peer reviewed journals. The study has also identified pillars of the framework with the help of comparative analysis performed on the selected GPD frameworks. The study has formed a team to identify critical elements in the field of GPD. The team consisted academicians, practitioner and consultant. Findings – The findings of the present paper bring out extremely incoherent utilization of elements for implementing GPD. The study has identified 80 unique elements and 11 pillars to propose a comprehensive conceptual framework in the field of GPD with the help of comparative analysis. Also, the present study analysis of selected research articles founds that future research in GPD should be directed towards finding a coherent set of elements that may be further employed to formulate and execution of frameworks. To achieve the required task, the study has proposed a conceptual comprehensive framework in the field of GPD with the help of extensive literature survey and comparative analysis. Originality/value – The study has conducted extensive literature survey using various online portals and sources. It has not only performed critical review on existing sample of the frameworks but also raised the issue of what is really a framework and how to identify the frameworks from the literature. The study also provides guidelines to the future researchers to propose new frameworks in the field of GPD.