The soft side of ecodesign

In the field of ecodesign research, existing paradigms still stress the importance of relatively traditional internal value chain issues, such as formal organisation, tool development, customization and formal management commitment. Field research shows that companies perceive additional aspects equally or even more importantly. Such aspects include more social, psychological and sometimes intangible processes that can ‘make or break’ ecodesign implementation. Unwillingness to cooperate, gaps between ecodesign proponents and executors, and other organisational complexities play an important role. Moreover, it has become clear that the relative importance of such issues play different roles in different stages of the product development process (PDP). Discrimination between earlier and later stages of the PDP reveals additional insights that researchers in academia and industry alike should incorporate in prescriptive and descriptive research activities related to ecodesign implementation.