Pharmaceutical industry riding the wave of sustainability: Review and opportunities for future research

In recent years, the sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry has received growing attention from consumers, policymakers, and organizations. Concerns about the introduction of sustainability practices into the development of new delivery systems, new products that pose a lower environmental risk, waste recycling, the reduction of water usage, greener manufacturing methods, and recyclable packaging have intensified attention on this topic. The sustainability of the pharmaceutical industry has also aroused the interest of scholars from various disciplines, such as chemistry, engineering, and environmental sciences. Even business and management studies are taking this topic into account. A higher degree of management complexity is affecting pharmaceutical companies, in which the need to ensure environmental, economic, and social sustainability, as well as to control expenses, has led to the introduction of an economic logic into the management of sustainability issues. Thus, we review existing business and management studies on sustainability in the pharmaceutical industry with the following aims in mind: to depict the current status of the research, to delineate the main approaches to sustainability, and to identify possible gaps and subject areas to be investigated in future research. The analysis reveals that environmental sustainability has become a central focus of management studies, especially in terms of cleaner production, green supply chain, green materials, and sustainable human resource management. The paper proposes areas that remain unexplored and might represent opportunities for future research, including waste management, the economic impact of new drugs, the contribution of pharmaceutical companies to the economic sustainability of health systems, and the study of emerging vs. mature markets.