Consideration of Sustainability in Projects and Project Management: An Empirical Study

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Author(s): Gilbert Silvius (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, The Netherlands & Van Aetsveld, The Netherlands), Ron Schipper (Van Aetsveld Project Management and Change, The Netherlands)and Snezana Nedeski (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)
Copyright: 2014
Pages: 22
Source title: Sustainable Practices: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Information Resources Management Association (USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4852-4.ch050

Keywords: Environment & Agriculture / Environmental Science and Technologies / Information Science Reference / Sustainable Development

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Abstract

The relevance of integrating the concepts of sustainability into project management shows from the growing number of studies on this topic. These studies approach the topic mostly from a conceptual, logical, or moral point of view. Given the fact that the relationship between sustainability and project management is still an emerging field of study, these approaches make sense. However, they do not diminish the need for more empirical studies to understand how the concepts of sustainable development are implemented in practice. This chapter reports an analysis of 56 case studies on the integration of the concepts of sustainability in the way organizations initiate, develop, and manage projects. The research question of the study was: To what extent do organizations consider the concepts of sustainability in the initiation, development, and management of projects? The study found an overall average level of sustainability consideration in the actual situation of 25.9%. For the desired situation, this score is almost 10 percent higher, showing an ambition to take sustainability more into consideration. The study also showed that the way sustainability currently is considered in projects should be categorized as the traditional “making things less bad” approach to sustainability integration and not as a more modern “how can we contribute to making things good” approach. However, the scores of the desired situation indicate that the modern approach to corporate responsibility is certainly the ambition of the participating organizations.

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