Project Management in the Biotech Context: Exploring the Interrelation between Maturity and Sustainable Project Management

Abstract

Biotechnology is an emerging and increasingly important sector in the current context. As the number of biotech projects grows, so does the need to establish processes to improve project management effectiveness and project success, including assessing their impacts (positive and negative) on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs). This broader approach opens the door to developing a new project management (PM) paradigm designated by sustainable project management (SPM). However, there is a need for more empirical studies to understand how sustainability can be integrated into project management. This research is based on the proposition that PM maturity could lead to incorporating sustainability in PM. No research studies are reported in the literature exploring this interrelationship between maturity and sustainable project management; such is this study’s purpose and originality. The study applies Kerzner’s Level 3 PM maturity model on a sample of 96 biotech companies in Portugal through a questionnaire that addressed project managers and team members. The findings suggest that the process of integrating sustainability into PM should follow these steps: (1) perform an early PM maturity diagnosis to identify the company’s most and least dominated areas; (2) identify the strengths and weaknesses that impact the integration of sustainability into project management practices; (3) develop a customized and adjusted action plan to integrate sustainability in PM. The study’s main contribution relies on understanding how sustainability can be integrated into project management, explaining the role of maturity assessment in this process. In addition, it characterizes the biotech industry projects concerning the linkage between PM maturity and sustainability and provides recommendations that may contribute to the companies’ development towards sustainable project management.

Green project management practices, green knowledge acquisition and sustainable competitive advantage: empirical evidence

“…Regardless of project's nature, conducting projects is the organization's way of generating the long-term investment goals of a company, which in its turn contributes to sustainability in a long-term perspective including SDGs (Magano et al, 2021). Recently, Banihashemi et al…”

“…However, projects generally consist of resembling activities and deliverables (Kerzner, 2022). Regardless of project's nature, conducting projects is the organization's way of generating the long-term investment goals of a company, which in its turn contributes to sustainability in a long-term perspective including SDGs (Magano et al, 2021). Recently, Banihashemi et al (2017) demonstrate the first quantification in the form of a model for integrating sustainability at each stage of PM practices.…”

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“…Such-outlined factors facilitate project management. resulting in reduced project costs and implementation time as well as in lesser reliance on rigid rules and procedures (Magano et al, 2021, as cited in Spalek, 2014Kerzner, 2019). Moreover.…”

“…carried out by J. Magano et al (2021) the majority of the respondents indicated that an organization's culture is characterized by informal project management.…”

Zrównoważone zarządzanie projektami. Krytyczny przegląd literatury

“…W najnowszych tekstach zrównoważone zarządzanie projektami ma wymiar conditio sine qua non nowoczesnego rozumienia projektów w organizacjach (Whyte i in., 2022) oraz poza nimi, co coraz częściej adresowane jest poprzez dostrzeganie ich roli społecznej (Di Maddaloni i Sabini, 2022;Magano i in., 2021;Shen i in., 2010). Podejście do problemu może dotyczyć na przykład dojrzałości projektu i kształtowania relacji z interesariuszami oraz wpływu tych czynników na sukces projektu (Brajer-Marczak i in., 2021).…”