The green manufacturing framework—A systematic literature review

Abstract

Green manufacturing (GM) plays a vital role in the fight against climate change. Since its introduction in the early 1990s, its relevance has increased for academia and practice. Scholars have found valuable insights in existing GM literature focused on bibliometric analyses, single industries, and countries. Nevertheless, structured and multidisciplinary research is needed. We conduct a comprehensive systematic literature review based on an initial 6,000 publications from three databases. The dataset is reduced using specific exclusion and inclusion criteria, resulting in a final dataset of 189 articles. The descriptive analysis indicates a significant increase in publications in recent years, with a focus on a few journals and research methods, while the co-occurrence analysis reveals former research foci. Based on a content analysis using MAXQDA, we develop a GM framework by clustering the defined 290 codes from previous literature into the segments of influences, elements, and results. Within these segments, we further differentiate the themes granularly into seven additional categories and 30 sub-categories. Finally, using in-depth analysis, we find three main new research streams covering GM’s performance, people, and interdisciplinary orientation. This work contributes to existing literature in three ways. First, we provide new insights into the previous development of GM research. Second, we offer a comprehensive GM framework that structures and systematizes the current research on GM, offering additional knowledge about this field. Third, we propose new perspectives on the future evolution of GM and derive guiding research questions.