Sustainability in Project Management Practices
Sustainability in projects involves a wide range of aspects and is an area rarely without controversies and debates. Contemporary project management should consider sustainability in its core practices and systems such as procurement (sustainable resources) and risk management (environmental risks).
However, it has been argued that adding (sustainability) perspectives and considerations to a project is part of stakeholder management and of project constraints, rather than something fundamentally new to project management. Others have argued that integrating sustainability to project management requires a significant change, a mind shift.
Write an article that discusses these two positions. Develop an argument as to which extent each position can be justified. You may want to think in terms of differences between ‘traditional project management’ and ‘sustainable project management’.
To support your points, you are encouraged to use secondary data. Evidence based on secondary data would typically consist of references to the literature.
The article should be 4000 words long.
Title, author, references, and appendices are NOT included in the word count. The article should be structured in sections, with numbered headings and sub-headings, and pagination in order to enhance clarity. Referencing should follow the Harvard style.
The article will be assessed on the following criteria:
80+%: Critical discussion displays an excellent understanding of theory and conceptual frameworks. Excellent use of evidence to test (corroborate or challenge) current thinking. The evidence is very much related and in line with the theory / concepts. Very confident cogent arguments are presented.
Sources to help with writing the article:-
Brones, F., Monteiro de Carvalho, M. and de Senzi Zancul, E. (2014), “Ecodesign in project management: A missing link for the integration of sustainability in product development?”, Journal of Cleaner Production, 80, pp. 106–118.
Daneshpour, H. (2015), “Integrating Sustainability into Management of Project”, International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, 6(4), pp. 321-325.
Ebbesen, J.B. and Hope, A.J. (2013), “Re-imagining the Iron Triangle: Embedding Sustainability into Project Constraints”, PM World Journal, II(III).
Eskerod, P. and Huemann, M. (2013), “Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: what standards say”, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 6(1), 36 – 50.
Gareis, R., Huemann, M., Martinuzzi, R-A., Sedlacko, M. & Weninger, C. (2011). “The SustPM Matrix: Relating sustainability principles to project assignment and project management”. EURAM11, Talinn
Labuschagne, C. and Brent, A. C. (2005), “Sustainable Project Life Cycle Management: the need to integrate life cycles in the manufacturing sector.”, International Journal of Project Management, 23(2), 159-168.
Robichaud, L.R. and Anantatmula, V.S. (2011), “Greening Project Management Practices for Sustainable Construction”, Journal of Management in Engineering, 27(48), pp. 48-57.
Sánchez, M.A. (2014), “Integrating sustainability issues into project management”, Journal of Cleaner Production, 1-14.
Schieg, M. (2009), “The model of corporate social responsibility in project management”, Business: Theory & Practice, 10(4), 315–321.
Silvius, A.J.G. and Schipper, R. (2014), “Sustainability in project management: A literature review and impact analysis”, Social Business, 4(1), 63-96.
Silvius, A.J.G. and Schipper, R. (2015), “Developing a Maturity Model for Assessing Sustainable Project Management”, Journal of Modern Project Management, 3(1), 16-27.
Silvius, A.J.G. (2015), “Considering Sustainability in Project Management Processes”, in Thomas, K. (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Sustainable Development and Economics, (Chapter 14, pp. 311-334) IGI Global Publishing.