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Sustainability
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Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities
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Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2022) | Viewed by 10305

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Chiara Verbano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
Interests: innovation management; risk management; project management; lean healthcare
Prof. Dr. Sara Marcelino Sádaba

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Engineering Department, Public University of Navarre, 31006 Pamplona, Navarra, Spain
Interests: project management; sustainability; heritage restoration; industrial residues valuation
Prof. Dr. Amaya Pérez-Ezcurdia

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Engineering Department, Public University of Navarre, 31006 Pamplona, Navarra, Spain
Interests: project management; industrial design; sustainability
Dr. Raffaele Testorelli

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
Interests: project management; risk management; stakeholder management; value creation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is well recognised that sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time.

The concept of sustainability is embedded in project management, with sustainable project management (SPM) being used to support organizations in achieving competitive advantage (Chofreh et al., 2019; Martens and Carvalho, 2016). More precisely, SPM can be defined as “the management of project-orientated change in policies, assets or organisations, with consideration of the economic, social, and environmental impact of the project, its result, and its effect, for now, and for future generations” (Silvius, 2007). Characteristics of SPM emerging from project outcomes and project management are recognized in (Silvius, 2017): applying triple-bottom-line criteria, that is, the balanced integration of economic, environmental, and social perspectives (Elkington, 1997), in taking a values-based approach to project management, including a stakeholders management approach, and considering projects via a societal perspective. 

Despite valuable existing studies focused on specific subjects in SPM, and a few relevant literature reviews summarizing the state of the art of SPM (e.g. Silvius, 2017; Marcelino-Sadaba et al., 2015), an integrated methodology supporting the effective implementation of sustainability in each phase of the project management lifecycle (Martens and Carvalho, 2016), providing activities, tools and practices, and including organizational and cultural issues is still lacking; there are numerous important topics that remainunexplored by scholars. On this basis, the purpose of this Special Issue is to increase our knowledge of sustainable project management with the aim of highlighting the most promising paths and fostering a systematic development in the field.

To this end, we are interested in original research articles and reviews that are related, but not limited, to the following topics:

  • Strategic project management for sustainability;
  • Project portfolio selection for sustainability;
  • Sustainable project manager;
  • Balancing economic, social and environmental objectives in project management;
  • Stakeholders management and participation for sustainability;
  • Sustainable value generation in projects, and value-based approaches to project management;
  • Sustainable project products design and development;
  • Sustainable project performance management;
  • Sustainable project performance and value measurement;
  • Risk management to support sustainable value generation in projects;
  • Knowledge management in projects for sustainability;
  • Organizational perspective of sustainable project management;
  • Contingency approaches to sustainable project management;
  • Cultural dimension of sustainable project management;
  • Impacts of sustainable project management for the economy, the environment, local and global society;

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Chiara Verbano
Prof. Dr. Sara Marcelino Sádaba
Prof. Dr. Amaya Pérez-Ezcurdia
Dr. Raffaele Testorelli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • project management
  • sustainable project management
  • sustainable project
  • stakeholder management
  • project performance management
  • project value management
  • project risk management
  • project knowledge management
  • project portfolio management

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2775 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Development and Value Creation, an Approach from the Perspective of Project Management
by Nelson Moreno-Monsalve, Marcela Delgado-Ortiz, Milton Rueda-Varón and William Stive Fajardo-Moreno
Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 472; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010472 - 27 Dec 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4075
Abstract
The discipline of project management has been maturing over time, integrating positively with some organizational approaches, such as strategy and sustainable development, to meet current needs without risking future capabilities. In this sense, it is observed that measuring the success of a project [...] Read more.
The discipline of project management has been maturing over time, integrating positively with some organizational approaches, such as strategy and sustainable development, to meet current needs without risking future capabilities. In this sense, it is observed that measuring the success of a project only from the classic mechanistic perspective of the triple constraint: scope, time, and budget, is insufficient; this opens a space for a new variable of social progress: the creation of value. Thus, the objective of this study is to identify the degree of relationship between the success of the projects and the sustainable development approach, managing to determine through the results obtained some opportunities for improvement in light of the economic and organizational context. As a starting point for this research, a review of the literature associated with topics, such as sustainable development, value creation, and modern trends in project management, was carried out. The second step was to design and apply a structured survey to 148 Colombian companies that develop projects in different sectors, such as technology, infrastructure, and services. With the information collected, a structural equation modeling—SEM model was applied to determine the relationship between the selected variables. Finally, the results of this research showed that the success of a project that is carried out under a sustainable development approach has a positive tendency toward the creation of value. In conclusion, it is found that the four dimensions studied: impact, relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency, allow us to explain to a greater or lesser extent the success of the projects through their approach to sustainable development and value creation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities)
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13 pages, 725 KiB  
Article
Uncertain Public R&D Project Portfolio Selection Considering Sectoral Balancing and Project Failure
by Hongbo Li, Rui Chen and Xianchao Zhang
Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15774; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315774 - 27 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1055
Abstract
In order to promote scientific and technological innovation and sustainable development, public funding agencies select and fund a large number of R&D projects every year. To guarantee the performance of the resulting project portfolio and the government’s investment benefits, the decision maker needs [...] Read more.
In order to promote scientific and technological innovation and sustainable development, public funding agencies select and fund a large number of R&D projects every year. To guarantee the performance of the resulting project portfolio and the government’s investment benefits, the decision maker needs to select appropriate projects and determine a reasonable funding amount for each selected project. In the process of project selection, it is necessary to consider the balance of funding allocated to different scientific sectors as well as the failure probability of the projects in future execution, so that the expected performance of the project portfolio is maximized as much as possible. In view of this, we propose and study the uncertain public R&D project portfolio selection problem considering sectoral balancing and project failure. We formulate a stochastic programming model for the problem to support the portfolio decisions of the funding agencies. We also transform the model into an equivalent deterministic second-order cone programming model that can be directly solved by exact solvers. We generate datasets reflecting different scenarios through simulation and perform computational experiments to validate our model. The impacts of various factors (i.e., the number of project proposals, project failure probability, the upper limit of the budget allocated to each project, and the decision maker’s tolerance for project failure) on the project portfolio performance are analyzed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities)
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17 pages, 3491 KiB  
Article
An Empirical Framework to Sustain Value Generation with Project Risk Management: A Case Study in the IT Consulting Sector
by Raffaele Testorelli and Chiara Verbano
Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12117; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912117 - 25 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1874
Abstract
Projects are the main vehicles of innovation and growth and are characterised by inherent uniqueness and uncertainty, particularly in the current complex, dynamic, and highly uncertain business environment. In most types of organisations, much effort is expended on dealing with risk-related issues in [...] Read more.
Projects are the main vehicles of innovation and growth and are characterised by inherent uniqueness and uncertainty, particularly in the current complex, dynamic, and highly uncertain business environment. In most types of organisations, much effort is expended on dealing with risk-related issues in order to ensure project success. For this reason, there is growing interest from both academia and practitioners in Project Risk Management (PRM) as a value generation process for different stakeholder groups, particularly to understand what value can be generated in projects through PRM and how value generation can be improved, while considering contextual factors and the impacts on the individual, organisational, and societal levels. This study analyses value generation through PRM in a pilot case study in the IT consulting sector. From the analysis of the results, it is possible to grasp preliminary indications on how to promote value generation in projects through PRM; in addition, the integration of ecological and social impacts into the notion of value generation through PRM provides a perspective on the sustainability orientation of projects. This work contributes to filling a gap in the literature and provides guidance to organisations on how to tailor the PRM system to maximise value generation in projects to different stakeholder groups. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities)
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28 pages, 3170 KiB  
Article
Novel Quality-Embedded Earned Value Performance Analysis Tool for Sustainable Project Portfolio Production
by Chen Wang, Yutong Tang, Mukhtar A. Kassem, Hong Yeow Ong, Jeffrey Boon Hui Yap and Kherun Nita Ali
Sustainability 2022, 14(13), 8174; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14138174 - 4 Jul 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2149
Abstract
Although many project portfolio management tools have been developed, little has been found capable of evaluating and managing project quality, cost, and schedule simultaneously. Limited cross-project references also limit lessons learned in the context of triple constraints. This study aims to embed quality [...] Read more.
Although many project portfolio management tools have been developed, little has been found capable of evaluating and managing project quality, cost, and schedule simultaneously. Limited cross-project references also limit lessons learned in the context of triple constraints. This study aims to embed quality check into the earned value management (EVM) method and develop an extended tool for triple constraint management based on EVM. The purpose is to evaluate and manage the triple constraints of a project in one go, incorporating quality management and portfolio management functions into costing and scheduling. The newly developed tools are tested and validated in real-world case studies. It was proven to assist project portfolio stakeholders in triple constraints planning, organizing, monitoring, managing, and reporting using a single reporting format. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Sustainable Project Management: Challenges and Opportunities)
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