Exploring the relationship between sustainability and project success - conceptual model and expected relationships

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. Companies are integrating sustainability in their marketing, communication and their actions. Sustainability has more recently also been linked to project management. The logic behind this link is that sustainability needs change and projects are realizing change. Several studies explored how the concept of sustainability impact project management. The research project reported in this paper elaborates on these works by studying how sustainability affects project success. Project managers, logically, strive for project success and considering sustainability may influence this success. Based upon a review of relevant literature, the paper develops a conceptual model that provides a more detailed understanding of how considering different dimensions of sustainability may affect the individual criteria of project success. The study also provides a conceptual mapping of the different relationships between dimensions of sustainability and criteria of project success. This mapping shows that the most positive relationships are expected for the relationship between sustainability and the success criteria stakeholder satisfaction, future readiness and controlled project execution. The expected relationship between considering sustainability and completing the project on schedule and within budget is uncertain.

Breakdown of Engineering Projects’ Success Criteria

“…In the most recent decade, many studies have placed project success in an even wider context, in which each project, in addition to bringing benefits to those directly involved, also should contribute to the community or even to societal welfare, progress, and development (especially major projects and megaprojects). Such a trend is influenced by globalization and networking, due to the pressure of different important global reports, such as world risk reports, global climate change reports, and so forth, and consequently sustainability was recognized as a new important criterion (Silvius and Schipper 2016;Sabini et al 2019). Across all the decades, we noticed that each decade's studies added a new aspect to the existing overview of project success criteria.…”

“…The figure shows the key groups of stakeholders and drivers in rectangles, and the associated resulting framework in circles, in which each earlier focus had an impact on all later foci, leading to integration of all criteria. The most important progress was made in the position of participant and stakeholder voices and sustainability (Silvius and Schipper 2016) when defining current criteria. In the 21st century, the voice of communities and even of society at large has become more and more important for declaring a project a success.…”

The Collaborative Effect of Sustainable Project Management (SPM) and Benefits Management (BM) on Project Success: with the Influencing Force of Project Governance

“…Whereas a project is temporary, unique, and complex with well-defined start and end time, scope, resources, properly designed to achieve specific goals by following the predetermined set of operations and procedures [41]. The complex nature projects required a lot of useful resources and a considerable amount of finances, which is essential for the completion of the entire project modalities by close interaction with the external environment [42].…”

The evolution of sustainability model patterns among winning participants of the Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator funding program

“…Such notable frameworks include the 40 Circular Economy Business Model Patterns (Takacs, Frankenberger & Stechow, 2020) by the BMI Institute ("Circular Economy -Business Model Innovation Lab", 2022), the 30 Questions to Kickstart Your Circular Business by Innovate UK's network partner, the Knowledge Transfer Network ("30 Ideas to Kickstart your Circular Business -Innovation Canvas", 2022), and the CIRCit Circular Economy Business Model Configurator (P. P. Pieroni, C. McAloone & C. A. Pigosso, 2019) ("Expert System Circular Economy Business Model Configurator", 2022), among others. However, there is no clear understanding on which models are the most impactful and relevant in real life settings for companies in terms of the successful implementation of projects (Silvius & Schipper, 2022) or the development of innovations (Adams, Jeanrenaud, Bessant, Denyer & Overy, 2015).…”