Sustainability in Project Management Competencies: Analyzing the Competence Gap of Project Managers

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. How can we develop prosperity, without compromising the life of future generations? Companies are integrating ideas of sustainability in their marketing, corporate communication, annual reports and in their actions. More recently, the concept of sustainability has also been linked to project management. Projects are “instruments of change” within organizations, which play an important role in the realization of sustainable business processes and practices. Project managers are therefore important “change agents” in organizations that have a strong influence on the sustainability of organizations. However, the standards of project management fail to address the role project managers’ play in realizing sustainable development and project managers are lacking the competences to consider the sustainability aspects of their projects. For the implementation of sustainability in organizations, it is crucial that this competence gap is closed by the standards of project management competencies. This paper reports a literature-based analysis of the coverage of the competencies required for considering sustainability aspects, in the standards of project management competencies. The study aims to specify the competence gap of project managers with regards to sustainability, and to provide guidance on how to close this gap. The paper therefore makes specific suggestions on how the standards of project management competencies should develop in order to prepare project managers for their pivotal role in realizing sustainability of organizations.