Assessing Sustainability Strategic Alignment in Automotive Product Development Decision-Making

Abstract

The integration of environmental considerations into product development has been discussed in literature with particular attention to approaches related to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). While these approaches aim to inform more sustainable products and business, a particular gap is the alignment between corporate sustainability strategies and operational decision-making. This study investigates how sustainability goals are operationalized in practice by assessing the strategic alignment between corporate targets and decision-maker priorities, exemplified by a Volvo Cars case study. This study applies the Analytic Network Process (ANP), a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method, to two decision cases involving polymeric automotive parts. Six criteria were evaluated: cradle-to-gate carbon footprint, end-of-life circularity, recycled content, biobased content, weight and cost. Data from 79 decision-makers in product development were used to quantify priorities, enabling assessment of strategic alignment. These findings were complemented with interviews with company sustainability experts and participating decision-makers to enable triangulation between strategic ambitions and operational practices, complemented with literature to assess the integration efforts in the case company and synthesize complementary improvement actions. The findings indicated several instances of internal and external misalignment, and misalignment between decision maker preferences and sustainability targets. The integration of environmental considerations into product development decision making was found to be relatively poor, with environmental aspects generally not viewed as an integral part of product development activities. Supplementary interviews and observations revealed that integration efforts from central sustainability functions addressed many of the prescriptions in literature, subsequently addressing much of the identified misalignment. However, a need was identified for top management support and allocation of resources, as well as the creation of dedicated collaboration spaces, to complement central sustainability efforts and to effectively motivate product development staff taking ownership of environmental considerations This study is a relevant example of current challenges present in environmental work and green product development, with a particular focus in the automotive industry. It also demonstrates how a quantitative method like ANP can be combined with qualitative analysis and an extended scope of respondents to assess misalignment between sustainability strategy and decision-making practices in complex industrial contexts.