Mapping the business focus in sustainable production and consumption literature: Review and research framework

This paper reviews the growing literature on sustainable production and consumption (SPaC) for characterizing the prevailing business focus. We perform a systematic review of the literature in order to identify the fundamental themes of research and the prevailing key issues. We find the business focus in SPaC literature to largely revolve around five principal themes. First is the conceptualization of SPaC, second is the governing role of policy frameworks in initiation and guidance of SPaC transformation, third concerns with the broader (strategic) implementation issues, fourth concerns with the finer (operational) implementation issues and fifth revolves around the importance of maintaining the progress of implementation. Based on the identified themes, we thereby propose a research framework for assisting scholars towards a more structured investigation into the field. In this framework, we focus on further explicating each principal theme to outline, the theme-specific key implications for guiding scholarly work. Overall, the outcomes of this review provide an organization to further strengthen the business focus in SPaC literature.