Stakeholders Influence and Internal Championing of Product Stewardship in the Italian Food Packaging Industry

Environmental management is becoming a top issue on managers' agendas in several industries. The adoption and implementation of a sound “green” strategy involves following product stewardship practices. Product stewardship is the idea that manufacturers, rather than consumers, governments, or waste companies, ought to take responsibility for the recycling and disposal of their products at the end of their life cycle. This article is aimed at investigating the relationships between the adoption of product stewardship practices and the involvement of different actors in the decision‐making process. By means of discriminant analysis, 120 firms have been classified into two different environmental profiles. Results indicate that firms that are more committed to product stewardship differ from less‐committed firms in the influence exerted by different stakeholders and in the supportive role played by the management at different hierarchical and functional levels. In general, it appears that top management involvement in the decision‐making process is a critical condition for the successful championship of product stewardship. In addition, the effective implementation of product stewardship along the product life‐cycle stages is correlated to a strong commitment on the part of chief technical officers and development engineers rather than of manufacturing or marketing managers.