sustainable project management dissertation topics

How To Pick A Dissertation Topic?

Table of Contents

Picking what you’ll study for your big research project (dissertation) is a really important choice. Take your time and think about it carefully. Here are some steps to help you pick the right topic:

Reflect on your interests: Consider topics that genuinely interest you and align with your passion and expertise. Your enthusiasm will sustain you through the research process.
Review existing literature: Conduct a thorough review of literature in your field to identify gaps, unanswered questions, or emerging trends that could form the basis of your research.
Consider practical relevance: Choose a topic that has practical relevance and real-world implications for your field, industry, or community. Aim to address pressing issues or challenges faced by practitioners or organizations.
Consult with advisors and peers: Seek feedback from your academic advisors, mentors, or peers to get their perspectives on potential topics. They can give you good advice and assist you in making your ideas better.
Narrow down your focus: Once you have a broad topic in mind, narrow it down to a specific research question or area of investigation. Make sure your topic is manageable within the scope of your dissertation and aligns with the available resources and timeline.
Evaluate feasibility: Figure out if your topic is doable by checking if you can find enough information, if you have the right tools to study it, if it’s morally okay, and if there are any real-life limits that might get in the way. Ensure that you have access to the necessary resources and support to conduct your research effectively.
Stay flexible: Stay ready to change or improve your topic as you learn more during your research and find out new things. Your dissertation topic might change as you go, so it’s important to be open to that and be able to adjust along the way.
Consider your long-term goals: Think about how your dissertation topic aligns with your long-term academic or career goals. Choose a topic that will allow you to develop valuable skills, make meaningful contributions to your field, and position yourself for future opportunities.

150 Project Management Dissertation Topics: Category Wise

Traditional vs. agile methodologies.

A comparative analysis of traditional waterfall and agile project management methodologies.
Evaluating the effectiveness of agile methodologies in software development projects.
Implementing agile practices in non-IT industries: challenges and opportunities.
The role of project management maturity models in transitioning from traditional to agile methodologies.
Agile project management in dynamic and uncertain environments: case studies from various industries.
Integrating hybrid project management approaches: combining elements of traditional and agile methodologies.
Assessing the impact of agile project management on team dynamics and collaboration.
Agile project management in large-scale and complex projects: lessons learned and best practices.
Overcoming resistance to agile adoption: strategies for organizational change management.
The future of project management: trends and innovations in agile methodologies.

Project Management Tools and Software

Evaluating the effectiveness of project management software in improving project outcomes.
Adoption and implementation of project management tools: a case study approach.
Comparing different project management software solutions: features, benefits, and limitations.
Customization vs. out-of-the-box implementation: factors influencing the choice of project management software.
The impact of cloud-based project management tools on remote team collaboration.
Enhancing project management efficiency through the integration of collaboration platforms and project management software.
Project management software usability and user experience: implications for adoption and usage.
Assessing the security and data privacy risks associated with project management software.
Trends in project management software development: artificial intelligence, automation, and predictive analytics.
The role of project management software vendors in driving innovation and industry standards.

Project Risk Management

Identifying and prioritizing project risks: a systematic approach.
Quantitative vs. qualitative risk analysis: comparing methods and outcomes.
Risk management strategies for high-risk industries: construction, aerospace, and defense.
The role of project risk management in achieving project success: evidence from case studies.
Incorporating risk management into project planning and decision-making processes.
Stakeholder engagement in project risk management: challenges and best practices.
Resilience and adaptability: building a risk-aware project culture.
Emerging risks in project management: cybersecurity threats, geopolitical instability, and climate change.
Risk management in agile projects: adapting traditional approaches to dynamic environments.
The future of project risk management: predictive analytics, big data, and machine learning.

Project Scheduling and Planning

Critical path analysis and its applications in project scheduling.
Resource leveling techniques for optimizing project schedules and resource allocation.
The role of project management offices (PMOs) in project scheduling and planning.
Earned value management (EVM) as a performance measurement tool in project scheduling.
Lean project management principles: minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency in project schedules.
Agile project planning techniques: iterative planning, sprint planning, and release planning.
Time management strategies for project managers: prioritization, delegation, and timeboxing.
The impact of schedule compression techniques on project duration and cost.
Project scheduling under uncertainty: probabilistic scheduling models and Monte Carlo simulation.
Real-time scheduling and adaptive planning: harnessing technology for dynamic project environments.

Leadership and Team Management

Transformational leadership in project management: inspiring vision and empowering teams.
The role of emotional intelligence in project leadership and team performance.
Cross-cultural leadership in multinational project teams: challenges and strategies.
Building high-performing project teams: recruitment, training, and team development.
Distributed leadership in virtual project teams: fostering collaboration and trust.
Conflict resolution strategies for project managers: mediation, negotiation, and arbitration.
Motivating project teams: rewards, recognition, and intrinsic motivation.
The impact of leadership styles on project outcomes: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire.
Gender diversity in project teams: implications for leadership and team dynamics.
Team resilience and psychological safety: creating a supportive and inclusive project environment.

Project Governance and Stakeholder Management

Project governance frameworks: roles, responsibilities, and decision-making structures.
Stakeholder identification and analysis: mapping stakeholder interests, influence, and expectations.
Effective communication strategies for project stakeholders: stakeholder engagement plans and communication channels.
Managing stakeholder conflicts and competing interests in projects.
Make sure companies do good things for the community and talk to the people affected by their projects.
Look at how the big bosses of a project make decisions and handle the people involved.
Accountability and transparency in project governance: reporting mechanisms and performance metrics.
Regulatory compliance in project management: legal requirements and industry standards.
Balancing stakeholder interests in project decision-making: ethical considerations and social responsibility.
Continuous improvement in project governance: lessons learned and best practices.

Project Finance and Cost Management

Project budgeting and cost estimation techniques: top-down vs. bottom-up approaches.
Cost-benefit analysis and return on investment (ROI) in project decision-making.
Earned value management (EVM) as a cost control tool in project management.
Managing project financial risks: budget overruns, resource constraints, and market fluctuations.
Project procurement and contract management: negotiating contracts, vendor selection, and performance monitoring.
Life cycle costing in project evaluation: considering long-term costs and benefits.
Value engineering and value management: optimizing project value while minimizing costs.
Financial modeling and scenario analysis in project finance: assessing project feasibility and viability.
Funding sources for project financing: equity, debt, grants, and public-private partnerships.
Project finance in emerging markets: challenges and opportunities for investment.

Project Quality Management

Total quality management (TQM) principles in project management: continuous improvement and customer focus.
Quality planning and assurance processes: setting quality objectives and quality standards.
Quality control techniques in project management: inspection, testing, and quality audits.
Six Sigma methodology and its applications in project quality management.
Lean principles in project management: eliminating waste and optimizing processes.
Measuring project quality performance: key performance indicators (KPIs) and quality metrics.
Building a culture of quality excellence in project teams: training, empowerment, and recognition.
Supplier quality management in project procurement: ensuring supplier compliance and performance.
Benchmarking and best practices in project quality management.
Continuous improvement in project quality: feedback loops, lessons learned, and process optimization.

Project Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

Stakeholder engagement strategies in project management: stakeholder analysis, mapping, and engagement plans.
Effective communication techniques for project managers: verbal, written, and nonverbal communication.
Managing virtual project teams: communication tools, technologies, and best practices.
Conflict resolution strategies for project stakeholders: negotiation, mediation, and collaboration.
Stakeholder communication in crisis situations: managing stakeholder expectations and maintaining trust.
Building trust and credibility with project stakeholders: transparency, integrity, and responsiveness.
Cultural sensitivity and communication in multicultural project teams.
The role of project managers as communication facilitators and mediators.
Communication challenges in cross-functional project teams: aligning diverse perspectives and priorities.
Measuring stakeholder satisfaction and feedback: surveys, interviews, and feedback mechanisms.

Project Human Resource Management

Human resource planning in project management: resource allocation, skills assessment, and capacity planning.
Talent management strategies for project teams: recruitment, training, and career development.
Team-building techniques for project managers: icebreakers, team-building exercises, and bonding activities.
Performance management in project teams: setting objectives, providing feedback, and evaluating performance.
Conflict resolution strategies for project managers: negotiation, mediation, and conflict coaching.
Diversity and inclusion in project teams: fostering a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Leadership development in project management: training, coaching, and mentorship programs.
Managing virtual project teams: communication, collaboration, and team cohesion.
Building resilience and well-being in project teams: managing stress, burnout, and work-life balance.

Project Procurement and Contract Management

Procurement planning and strategy development: make-or-buy decisions, sourcing options, and procurement methods.
Contract types and structures in project procurement: fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, and time-and-material contracts.
Supplier selection criteria and evaluation methods: vendor qualifications, bid evaluation, and supplier performance metrics.
Negotiation techniques for project managers: win-win negotiation, BATNA analysis, and concessions management.
Managing contracts and contractor relationships: contract administration, performance monitoring, and dispute resolution.
Outsourcing and offshoring in project procurement: risks, benefits, and best practices.
Legal and regulatory considerations in project procurement: compliance with procurement laws, standards, and regulations.
Contractual risk management: mitigating contract risks through indemnification clauses, insurance, and contingency planning.
Ethical considerations in project procurement: fairness, transparency, and integrity in procurement processes.
Continuous improvement in procurement and contract management: lessons learned, process optimization, and supplier feedback.

Project Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Integrating sustainability principles into project management: environmental stewardship, social equity, and economic viability.
Sustainable project planning and design: minimizing environmental impacts, maximizing resource efficiency, and promoting resilience.
Social impact assessment in project management: stakeholder engagement, community consultation, and social license to operate.
Sustainable procurement practices: ethical sourcing, fair trade, and supply chain transparency.
Green project management: reducing carbon emissions, conserving natural resources, and promoting renewable energy.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in project management: philanthropy, community development, and stakeholder engagement.
Sustainable infrastructure development: green buildings, sustainable transportation, and eco-friendly urban planning.
Environmental risk management in projects: assessing and mitigating environmental impacts and regulatory compliance.
Sustainable project financing: green bonds, impact investing, and sustainable finance mechanisms.
Sustainability reporting and disclosure: communicating project sustainability performance to stakeholders.

Project Innovation and Technology Management

Innovation management in project-based organizations: fostering a culture of creativity, experimentation, and learning.
Technology adoption and diffusion in project management: factors influencing technology acceptance and implementation.
Managing innovation projects: from ideation to commercialization, stage-gate processes, and innovation ecosystems.
Open innovation and collaborative project management: partnerships, co-creation, and knowledge sharing.
Digital transformation in project management: leveraging emerging technologies for project delivery and collaboration.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning in project management: predictive analytics, automation, and decision support systems.
Blockchain technology in project management: decentralized project governance, smart contracts, and supply chain transparency.
Virtual reality and augmented reality in project management: immersive training, visualization, and virtual collaboration.
Internet of Things (IoT) applications in project management: real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and asset tracking.
Data-driven project management: leveraging big data, analytics, and business intelligence for project insights and decision-making.

Project Governance and Compliance

Regulatory compliance in project management: legal requirements, industry standards, and certification programs.
Ethics and integrity in project governance: code of conduct, conflict of interest policies, and whistleblowing mechanisms.
Corporate governance and project management: alignment with organizational objectives, risk management, and performance oversight.
Internal controls and assurance mechanisms in project governance: auditing, monitoring, and accountability.
Project portfolio governance: prioritization, resource allocation, and strategic alignment.
Regulatory reporting and disclosure requirements: compliance with regulatory agencies, stakeholders, and investors.
Project audits and reviews: evaluating project performance, compliance, and lessons learned.
Governance of public-private partnerships (PPPs): contractual arrangements, risk allocation, and stakeholder engagement.
Continuous improvement in project governance: feedback loops, lessons learned, and process optimization.

Project Resilience and Change Management

Building project resilience: risk management, contingency planning, and adaptive strategies.
Change management in project management: managing resistance, communication, and stakeholder engagement.
Organizational resilience and project management: lessons from crisis management, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery.
Agile project management and organizational agility: responsiveness to change, iterative planning, and adaptive leadership.
Innovation and creativity in project management: fostering a culture of experimentation, learning, and adaptation.
Anticipatory project management: scenario planning, risk assessment, and proactive decision-making.
Crisis leadership and project management: decision-making under pressure, communication, and stakeholder management .
Change readiness assessment in project management: organizational culture, capacity building, and change champions.
Learning from failure: post-mortem analysis, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement.
Resilience in project teams: psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and well-being.

In conclusion, selecting the right project management dissertation topics is essential for exploring new frontiers, addressing pressing challenges, and making meaningful contributions to the field. By choosing a topic that aligns with your interests, expertise, and aspirations, you can embark on a rewarding journey of discovery and innovation in project management.

Step by Step Guide on The Best Way to Finance Car

The Best Way on How to Get Fund For Business to Grow it Efficiently

Useful Links

How much will your dissertation cost?

Have an expert academic write your dissertation paper!

Dissertation Services

Get unlimited topic ideas and a dissertation plan for just £45.00

Order topics and plan

Get 1 free topic in your area of study with aim and justification

Yes I want the free topic

Project Management Dissertation Topics

Published by Alvin Nicolas at January 10th, 2023 , Revised On May 17, 2024

Are you looking to select the best project management dissertation topic for your dissertation? To help you get started with brainstorming for project management topics, we have developed a list of the latest project management dissertation topics that can be used for writing your project management or operations management dissertation.

These topics have been developed by PhD-qualified writers on our team , so you can trust them to use them when drafting your dissertation. If you have used one of the project management dissertation ideas provided on our website and want that removed from this page, please contact us via live chat, email or telecom.

Project management is an important area of study because the success of any business is largely dependent on successful project management. At ResearchProspect, we have many project management experts who can help you with topic selection, proposal writing and full dissertation writing.

Review the step-by-step guide on how to write your own dissertation here. Check our complete list of dissertation topics .

International Development Dissertation Topics
Cooperate Governance Dissertation Topics
Business Intelligence Dissertation Topics
Business Information Technology Dissertation Topics
International Business Dissertation Topics
Business Management Dissertation Topics
Business Psychology Dissertation Topics
Business Law Dissertation Topics
Business Dissertation Topics
HRM Dissertation Topics
Management Dissertation Topics
Operations Management Dissertation Topics

Latest Project Management Research Topics

Management quality and control- assessing the role of project length in the uk construction sector..

Research Aim: The construction industry is one of the most significant contributors to the country’s economy. This study investigates the role of project length on management control and quality in the UK’s construction sector. Also, the research will analyse the connection between project length and quality control, considering the moderating impact of management quality control on a project’s success.

Sustainable Construction and Project Management- A review from literature.

Research Aim: The main aim of this study is to analyse the role of sustainability and sustainable construction in project management, focusing on the existing literature on sustainability, sustainable practices, and how it has impacted the project’s success within the construction industry. We will investigate how to achieve sustainability and its benefits to the construction industry.

Project Management- Evolution and Development from the past twenty years.

Research Aim: This study will examine the development and evolution of project management over the past twenty years taking account of how things have changed due to technological advancements, updated skills, and new trends. The paper will discuss theories and various aspects contributing to the changes and latest project management developments. Project management involves operation, risk, dynamics, and several other fields. This study will give you a proper understanding of how it has developed and evolved within these twenty years.

Visit our topics database to view 100s of dissertation topics in your research area.

Investigating the Challenges in Public Procurement for Project Management- A case study of UK's IT sector.

Research Aim: In many countries, public procurement estimates for a considerable market section can be essential in inspiring communities and achieving governmental objectives. Keeping this in mind, the government has set rules to regulate public procurement. This research will investigate the challenges faced in public procurement for project management in the UK’s IT sector, highlighting different socioeconomic factors national factors, balancing dynamic pressures, satisfying the requirements, and keeping an ultimate goal of maximising competition in mind.

Assessing the Impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on Project Delays and Digitalization - A case of the European Construction industry.

Research Aim: The COVID -19 pandemic has forced the countries to confront a new reality; the method adopted to prevent the spread has included social distancing and isolation and complete lockdowns, which caused several problems for the project managers and companies, and also resulted in indefinite delays. This study will examine the impact of the covid-19 crisis on the European construction industry, digitalisation’s role in reducing the negative consequences, and how the industry deals with the situation. a qualitative and quantitive research study will be conducted to get significant results for this study.

The Impact of Knowledge Management Practices on Organisational Performance in Private Sector

Research Aim: This research investigates the relationship between knowledge management practices and organizational performance within the private sector. It explores how various knowledge management strategies and initiatives influence these four key performance indicators: productivity, innovation, competitiveness, and financial outcomes.

The Mediating Role of Artificial Intelligence in Exploring the Impact of Leadership on Employee Performance

Research Aim: This study examines the mediating role of artificial intelligence in explaining the relationship between leadership styles and employee performance. It investigates how AI-enabled leadership practices influence employee productivity, engagement, satisfaction, and overall organisational effectiveness.

Investigating the Project Management Best Practices in the Healthcare Industry

Research Aim: This research explores project management best practices within the healthcare industry. It aims to identify key strategies and approaches that contribute to successful project execution, resource optimization, stakeholder satisfaction, and ultimately, improved healthcare outcomes.

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Improving Project Performance

Research Aim: The study investigates the role of blockchain technology in improving project performance across various industries. It examines its impact on project transparency, security, efficiency, and collaboration. The research aims to identify the key mechanisms through which blockchain technology can optimise project management processes and contribute to the achievement of project goals and objectives.

The Impact of Project Management Offices (PMO) on Company Management

Research Aim: This research examines the impact of Project Management Offices (PMOs) on company management practices. It focuses on how the establishment and operation of PMOs influence organisational decision-making, resource allocation, strategic alignment, project success rates, and overall business performance.

Exploring the Sustainability Practices in Project Management

Research Aim: This study explores sustainability practices within project management. It investigates how organisations integrate environmental, social, and economic considerations into project planning, execution, and evaluation. The research aims to identify best practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with sustainable project management.

The Role of Project Management in the Changing Consumer Behaviour and Market Trends in E-commerce

Research Aim: The research examines the role of project management in adapting to changing consumer behaviour and market trends within the e-commerce industry. The research aims to explore how project management methodologies and tools facilitate the identification, analysis, and implementation of initiatives that respond to evolving consumer preferences.

An Analysis of the Project Management Challenges in Dealing With Remote Teams

This study analyses the project management challenges associated with managing remote teams. It investigates the unique obstacles, communication barriers, coordination issues, and productivity concerns in distributed work environments. The research aims to identify effective techniques for overcoming these challenges and enhancing the success of projects conducted with remote teams.

Adopting Agile Project Management in Non-Traditional Industries

This study explores the process and outcomes of adopting Agile project management methodologies in non-traditional industries. It examines the challenges and implications of implementing Agile practices in sectors not conventionally associated with Agile approaches.

COVID -19 Project Management Research Topics

What lessons can we learn from the covid-19 (coronavirus) crisis.

Research Aim: The coronavirus outbreak is a major concern for the health of potentially hundreds of thousands of people. It also impacts the global economy with tourism, aviation, and hospitality, which were the hardest-hit industries initially. This research aims to identify the strategies that would enable us to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the efficiency of organisations. ndemic as notified by the World Health Organisation has had a significant impact on busines

How to Minimise the Impact of the COVID-19 Virus on an Organisation?

Research Aim: The coronavirus outbreak is a major concern for the health of potentially hundreds of thousands of people. It also impacts the global economy with tourism, aviation, and hospitality the initially hardest-hit industries. This research aims to identify the strategies that would enable us to minimise the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the efficiency of organisations.

Project Management and COVID-19: How to Manage an Extraordinary Crisis?

Research Aim: While we’re still early days into the crisis, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that COVID-19 is a black swan event. You couldn’t have predicted it, nor could you have anticipated its impact. Conventional rules go out the window during such a crisis. There is no standard risk management playbook for dealing with a worldwide epidemic; you have to improvise and adapt on the fly. This research will discuss this extraordinary event, how to deal with it, and minimise its impact on your organisation.

Project Management in the Times of COVID-19

Research Aim: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as notified by the World Health Organisation has had a significant impact on businesses the world over. More and more countries are being impacted every day with substantial loss of life and business. This study will investigate how business organisations around the world have been proactive in minimising the COVID-19 impact for their customers, and at the same time, helped their customers to run and deliver efficient services for their customers.

How the UK Government is Supporting Businesses with Project Management (PMO) and Governance During COVID-19?

Research Aim: The main aim of the research will be to focus on identifying the strategies and policies implemented by the UK government to support businesses with project management and governance during the Covid-19 crisis.

Should Project Risk Management Take the Pandemic into Consideration?

Research Aim: Considering the world has endured pandemics before, this is, in theory, a known risk. But you likely did not include it in your project risk register, as it is very unlikely. In this case, the risk is unknown to you because you and your team didn’t identify this risk. Whether we agree or not, no one in the world was able to assess the impact of COVID-19 before it happened accurately—and there is still uncertainty about its implications moving forward. Consequently, this may not be part of project risk management. This research explores what we can do in such a scenario.

COVID-19 Challenges and Response: How Procurement Underpins the World Bank’s Response to the Pandemic?

Research Aim: The World Bank Group is committed to providing a fast, flexible response to the coronavirus pandemic. It offers financing, policy advice, and technical assistance in every region, from healthcare and education to trade and technology. In this research study, we explore how different teams around the World Bank Group are responding to the challenges ahead.

How to Win a New Project in the Times of COVID-19?

Research Aim: COVID-19 might have derailed project plans for many organisations, but it’s worth considering what might still be possible remotely. There might be more to salvage than we think, which this research study will explore.

Communication Through Crisis: Keeping Project Management Effective in the Wake of COVID-19

Research Aim: The evolution of managing projects is taking a turn during this COVID-19 crisis. Instead of holding a conference call for a few locations where groups of people are in the same room, we are now facilitating sessions where everyone is in a separate location. Think about that for a minute. You are promoting a meeting with ten people, and no one is in the same room. Can we be successful in this new environment? This research aims to identify the communication tools and policies that would enable organisations to respond to the challenges posed by the Covid-10 crisis effectively.

Preventive Measures for Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Research Aim: Employers and occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals have a vital role to play in preventing the spread of coronavirus. To mitigate the spread of the disease, an increasing number of employers are making efforts to modify working patterns, including encouraging staff to work from home if they develop any of the symptoms. This research will investigate the preventive measures taken by business organisations to deal with the Covid-19 crisis.

Considerations for Business and Risk Managers During the Coronavirus/COVID-19 Outbreak

Research Aim: The situation for businesses and risk managers is changing rapidly after the outbreak of COVID-19. Alongside the obvious risks to human health, we also see severe disruption-related impacts on organisations arising from travel and opening restrictions, event cancellations, workforce issues, supply chain disruptions, financial and market volatility, and cash flow problems. This research study will talk about the considerations for business and risk managers during the Coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak.

Coping with Coronavirus: Strategies to Mitigate Business Risks

Research Aim: What would happen to your organisation if illness led to a sudden reduction of more than 40% of the workforce? In this research, the researcher will use a mixed research method to uncover the strategies businesses can adopt to cope with coronavirus and mitigate business risks.

Dissertation Topics in Project Management Dynamics and Influences

Correlation between brand dominance and influencer marketing: a case study of lux.

Research Aim: This study is based on the correlation between the dominance of brands via influencer marketing. The main objective is to determine the positive or negative impact of the correlation between brand dominancy via influencer marketing.

Analysis of Strategies to Incorporate Innovative Services into Consumer Lives

Research Aim: This research will analyse the best strategies that need the contemporary life model of consumers and are essentially required to be addressed to meet the modern era’s current requirements.

Factors that Influence Customers Satisfaction on Brand Success: A Case Study of Young Adults

Research Aim: This study will investigate how brand success relies on customer satisfaction. Identifying determinants of customer satisfaction will be the key objective of this work.

Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Project Management

Research Aim: This research aims to identify the Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Project Management. It will also address the advantages and disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence using the existing literature.

Importance of Soft Skills in Project Management

Research Aim: This research aims to identify the importance of Soft skills in Project Management. Students may use any example project as the base of the research.

The Role of Digital and Remote Teams in Project Management

Research Aim: This research aims to address the role of Digital and Remote teams in Project Management. It will be a comparative study of both types of team that covers and assess their advantages and disadvantages.

The Importance of Soft Skills in Project Management-Case Study

Research Aim: This research aims to address the importance of Soft skills in Project Management. A case study will evaluate project managers’ soft skills and their association with teammates in the workplace. It will also suggest ways to improve the soft skills of all the employees in an organisation.

Hybrid Project Management Approaches

Research Aim: This research aims to address the role of Hybrid Project Management approaches and their growing popularity.

Importance of Change Management

Research Aim: Change Management is an important skill that a project manager needs to possess to meet organisational transitions’ challenges. This research aims to highlight the importance of change management and its implementation in the working environment.

Culture and Conflict Management

Research Aim: This research focuses on culture and conflict management in the workplace, addresses the issues of concern, and suggests possible solutions.

Dissertation Topics in Project Management Dynamics and Organizational Success

Is project management software worth the cost.

Research Aim: Project management, as an individual academic subject, has flourished in recent decades. With it has come companies and software development firms that churn out what they consider project management tools most focused on scheduling time, cost, and team. The research will analyse different project management software to conclude if they increase productivity and lead to project success.

Team Conflict Dynamic Model & Project Success Written by Ruskin Bond

Research Aim: The research will use the team conflict dynamics model to analyse different conflict types and team conflict profiles to produce resolutions that can improve or lead to project success.

Research Aim: The research will examine how the cultures of project managers may influence their methods of conflict resolution. How does a project manager’s culture affect how they name, frame, blame and try to tame conflict in their project? Learn more about Conflict Management.

Analysing the Impact of Project Management Principles and System Dynamics on Humanitarian Logistics

Research Aim: Recent environmental disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis have increased the need for humanitarian logistics around the world as such events have claimed the lives of millions while also causing millions in infrastructure damage. To reduce these damages improvements, need to be made to logistics operations. The research paper will analyse System Dynamics (SD) in collaboration with humanitarian logistics, which factors in stakeholders, responses, flows in the supply chain, and its interactions. The study aims to recommend adaptations to project management theories to modify them as a tool for planning processes of humanitarian operations.

Analysing the Project Delay Causes and How Global Construction Companies Are Coping with It

Research Aim: The main aim of the research will be to identify the leading causes and symptoms of project delays and how they impact the project life cycle. The second phase of the project will be focused on how global construction companies have devised different strategies to cope with this issue.

Assessing the Importance of Communication in Maintaining Quality and Timely Delivery of Project Activities

Research Aim: This research will be focus re, through the mediation of i on analysing the significance of communication between the project organisation and its stakeholders (both internal and external) and how this efficient communication helps the organisation in maintaining quality and timely delivery of project activities.

Identifying the Factors of Project Selection: Does a Drastic Shift in Project Benefits Approach Towards Customer-Centricity?

Research Aim: The primary purpose of this research paper is to identify the most critical factors that help in selecting a project. This paper will specifically be focusing on analysing the shift of the project benefits approach towards customer-centricity. Project benefits are focused more on attaining tangible things such as high sales, more revenue, faster call handling times, etc.; whereas customer centricity approach is focused more on selecting those clients who are easy to work with, having high brand value, etc.

Analysing the Impact of Project Misalignment with Business Objectives on the Overall Project Performance

Assessing the Importance of Project Management Soft Skills in the Context of Project Success Rates

Research Aim: This research will conduct a detailed critical analysis of project management soft skills, including its benefits and cost and how it helps the project in achieving the desired result and outcome.

Analysing the Impact of Psychosocial Stressors on Project Manager Performance. The Mediating Effect of Organisational Culture

Research Aim: Using a research model, the impact of psychosocial stressors (health & well-being, work individual interface, work environment, etc.) is tested on project managers’ performance using dimensions of performance. Project managers are asked to complete a questionnaire that will be the basis of collecting empirical data. The data is then analysed using Smart PLS.

Analysing the Impact of Culture on Project Performance in the IT Industry

Research Aim: The research aims to analyse the causes of delay and failure due to cultural factors. The research model investigates the impact of national culture and organisational culture, through the mediation of interpersonal conflict, on project performance which is measured through various dimensions.

Examining the Impact of Organization to Implementation of Project Management Practices

Research Aim: In this research, the researcher will use mixed methods research techniques to undercover the informal people-focused project management practices that are implemented in SMEs. Using interviews and surveys, firms from a specific industry will be selected to collect data to examine the firm’s perceived size and how it impacts project management practices.

Examining Project Management Research Trends that Influence Project Success

Research Aim: The researcher will use systematic literature review techniques to identify and analyse project management research trends. Then using comparative analysis, a plausible relationship between project management research trends and social and economic trends is analysed.

Analysing the Impact of Project Management Maturity Factors on Project Success in Large Enterprises

Research Aim: The role of projects has significantly increased worldwide due to more improved international standards and training in the field. Many studies still identify that the number of successful projects hasn’t changed. This research aims to study the possible relationship between project performance/success factors and organisational project management maturity.

The Impact of Agile Project Management on Productivity in the IT Industry

Research Aim: The research will use quantitative research techniques to analyse the impact on productivity in companies working in the IT industry. Mainly, productivity will be measured using the dimension of customer satisfaction, improvement of productivity, and job satisfaction. Empirical hypothesis testing methods will be used to analyse and report the outputs of the data.

Agile-Scrum for Healthcare Project Management

Research Aim: Agile-scrum project management was developed originally for the IT industry; however, it has unlimited potential to bring benefits to other sectors, including the healthcare industry. The research will attempt to show how it may be applied in the healthcare industry to develop frameworks to improve quality, timeliness, and overall value for delivering healthcare in a large-scale patient setting. Learn about creating the best environment for research and writing your project.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

Research-Based Project Management Dissertation Topics

Investigating project management success for project-oriented business organisations from the perspective of technical capacity, organisation structure, and leadership.

Research Aim: This research will talk about the different ways a high-achieving, project-oriented firm utilises project management to enhance its organisational structure and leadership. The study will also analyse the technical capacity of organisations based on the implementation and success of project management techniques.

Understanding The Role Of Project Management Soft Skills To Increase Project Success Rates – Review Of Statistically Meaningful And Documented Evidence

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the impact of project management soft skills on the success of the project. This will be done using statistical data and evidence.

Understanding The Role Of Project Management Methodologies To Increase Project Success Rates – Review Of Statistically Meaningful And Documented Evidence

Research Aim: This research will evaluate the role of project management methodologies and the impact it has on project success. Statistical data and evidence will be used for this research.

The Impact of Project Manager’s Optimism and Stress Management on IT Project Success

Research Aim: The research aims to uncover how soft competencies of IT project management affect project success. The study will focus on optimism and stress’s impact on IT project success. The study will be conducted using empirical research methods using a survey or questionnaire distributed to managers. The study’s data is proposed to be analysed using structural equation modelling.

Analysing Critical Success Factors of Project Management on Global Software Development

Research Aim: The study will use quantitative research methods to identify critical success factors related to project management in global software development (GSD). The study will analyse the variation of essential success factors with respect to project type and size and company type and size. The data will be analysed using inferential statistics.

Analysing the Impact of Strategic Roles in Project Management Office on Business Ecosystems

Research Aim: The study will examine seven project management office roles for the achievement of strategic planning in large public sector organisations in the UK. The proposed research will use a questionnaire survey to collect data from project managers in public organisations that have project management office (PMO) units. The data collected will then be analysed using multiple regression.

Examining Project Stakeholder Management (PSM) using Fuzzy Cognitive Map Modeling

Research Aim: The research paper aims to analyse current methodologies related to the support of PSM. The study aims to improve the practice of project stakeholder management methodologies using Fuzzy Cognitive Map modelling. The data will be collected using a case study of a public organisation in the UK.

Examining the Impact of Risk Management Use on Information Systems Project Success

Research Aim: The proposed study will analyse the impact of risk management practices on information systems projects to address the continued industry practice of geographically separated teams. The data for the study will be collected using a survey of information systems project managers. The study will attempt to establish a relationship between risk management practices and successful outcomes. The data collected will be analysed using correlation analysis.

Improving Project Management Model – Implementing Support Factors into Earned Value Management (EVM)

Research Aim: The study proposes to integrate supporting factors into the Earned Value Management (EVM) model such as earned schedule, quality management, and risk management. The purpose of the study is to integrate these factors to examine the weaknesses and limitations of the current EVM model. The model will be tested on a small sample project. Numerical data will be collected and analysed using the model to validate its performance.

Examining The Differences Between Process Groups And Project Life Cycle – Potential Problems For PM Practitioners

Research Aim: The proposed research analyses the differences in phases of a project life cycle and process groups. The study aims to examine how both methods are practically implemented in a project environment. The data will be collected using questionnaires sampled from project managers in the UK across various sectors. The questionnaire data will then be analysed using inferential statistics.

Analysing the Importance of Project Management in Law Firms

Research Aim: The study will explore the concepts of legal project management, its definition, application, and advantages. The research will examine various law firms in the UK that have implemented legal project management to improve their performance. The data will be collected using surveys of law firms in the UK and analysed using inferential statistics.

Examining Factors for Project Success in the UK

Research Aim: The methodologies of project management are not limited to construction and national defence projects, and they extend to many other industries. The proposed study will analyse to what extent project management tools and methodologies are effective in these industries in the UK. The research will survey project managers in the UK across various industries and sectors, focusing on project risks, project management methodology, organisational support, and project management tool usage.

Analysing the Role of Project Management Practices in Private Organisations

Research Aim: The study aims to identify and analyse the project management practices that are commonly used in private organisations generally and sectors of activity. The research also examines practitioners’ characteristics when choosing between project management practices and their use in groups. The study will be conducted using a mixed-methods research methodology, using surveys and interviews to collect data.

Examining the Impact of Cost Salience and Information Asymmetry on Incentive Contract and Project Manager’s Profit

Research Aim: The study will analyse the impact of subjective assessments of cost salience and project variability using the framework of uncertainty theory and principal agency theory. The study will examine the effect of these variables on a project manager’s profit. The research will be conducted using case study methodology, explicitly focusing on cases where project managers pay contractors over a menu of deadline-based incentive contracts to undertake a project broken into two sequential tasks.

Examining the Impact of Employment Background and Social Media Usage on Project Management and Communication

Research Aim: The proposed research looks to examine the use of social media on project work. The study aims to analyse social media features, preferences, and opinions within projects. The data will be collected using a random sampling of individuals across the UK who are actively involved or participating in projects. The data collection instrument will be a questionnaire survey that gathers information on variables of social media preferences, opinions, and usage of social media for project purposes.

Examining the Agile Management Approach to Develop a Risk Management Framework in Construction Projects

Research Aim: The study will propose an agile management concept that uses a risk management framework that races alignments and discovers connections between Agile and traditional project management concepts. The purpose of the research is to deal with risk in construction projects that are built based on the Agile management concept.

Also Read: Construction Engineering Dissertation Topics Why is engineering management critical?

Dissertation Topics on Project Management in Construction Industry

The impact of inter-organisational projects (iops) on project delivery methods.

Research Aim: The purpose of the research is to examine how actors use relational, institutional work (IOPs) to activate key stakeholders from coupled subfields to institutionalise new project delivery methods. The study will be cross-sectional and be based on the UK construction industry. The study will use mixed methods research.

Proposing a Multi-Methods Framework of Project Management Operations and Total Building Performance- Towards a Low Carbon Construction Industry

Research Aim: The research will develop a new multi-methodology framework to analyse the effects of the building development project process that includes operations management, building energy consumption, carbon emissions, and indoor environmental quality (IEQ).

Analysing Practices, Needs, & Delivery Benefits of Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) of Project Management in the Construction Industry

Research Aim: The research will examine the nature of SMEs in the construction industry that allows them to adopt informal practices of project management and explore its comparative costs and benefits. The research will use mixed methods research techniques to collect and analyse data.

Examining Causes and Effects of Poor Communication in the Construction Industry

Research Aim: The research will examine the identification of causes and effects that may result in poor communication in the construction industry of the UK. The research will use mixed methods research to conduct a study to compare current and past factors that may result in poor communication through the project life cycle of construction projects.

Analysing Risk Management in Procurement Options in the Construction Industry

Research Aim: The purpose of the study is to analyse the various risk management factors according to procurement options – design-bid-build, design-build, and collaborative forming contracts. The research will use mixed methods research to collect and analyse data.

The Impact of Organisational Characters on Construction Project Performance

Research Aim: The research will examine the relationship between project performance and organisational characteristics in construction companies. The study will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to collect data on project performance. The study will also document organisational aspects using social network analysis tools. The study will be conducted using quantitative research techniques.

Also Read: Construction Engineering Dissertation Topics

Complete this short online form and provide as much information as possible to receive instant quotes from our writers specialising in your area of research .

Order a Proposal

Worried about your dissertation proposal? Not sure where to start?

Choose any deadline
Plagiarism free
Unlimited free amendments
Free anti-plagiarism report
Completed to match exact requirements

Dissertation Topics on Different Project Management Knowledge Areas

Conflict management/resolution, the role of the project manager in internal and external relationship management – a study on new project management.

Research Aim: The study will use mixed methods research to identify the roles of project managers in internal relationship management and external relationship management. The analysis will both recognise and categorise the role groups to provide evidence for understanding the change from traditional project management to new project management.

Examining the relationship between Project’s Added Value and Trust-Conflict Interaction among Project Teams – A Study on Calculative and Relational Trust

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the impact of trust-conflict interactions on project teams and project-added value. The research will use calculative and relational trust dimensions to study its influence on project-added values with the dimensions of project conflict, task conflict, and relationship conflict. The proposed study will be using structural equation modelling for data analysis.

Topics in Leadership

The mediating role of leadership styles in the relationship between emotional intelligence and collaboration satisfaction – perspectives from emotional intelligence.

Research Aim: The research will examine the relationship between the emotional intelligence of project leaders and satisfaction outcomes perceived by team members under the dimensions of performance contribution satisfaction, efficiency satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and interest satisfaction. The study will analyse this relationship through the mediation factor of various leadership styles using structural equation modelling.

A Framework for Balancing Person-Centered Leadership and Team-centered Leadership in Project Managers – Examining Archer's Realist Social Theory

Research Aim: The research will use Archer’s Realist Social theory to develop a framework for comprehending the project manager interaction between person-centred leadership and team-centred leadership. The study will be conducted using mixed methods research for data collection and analysis.

Topics in Scheduling (Time)

Project scheduling for construction of renewable energy plants using critical path method – application of planning and scheduling.

Research Aim: The proposed study will analyse the construction project demands of various coordinated activities with differing durations and dependencies in a large-scale biogas plant. The study will focus on applications of planning and scheduling to analyse a biogas plant construction project using the critical path method.

Setting Effective Target Benefits using Project Benefits Management – A Research using Goal Setting Theory

Research Aim: The research will use goal-setting theory to present case studies to validate the scale of practical target benefits. To verify the scale, empirical research techniques will be used to analyse the dimensions of specificity, attainability, and comprehensiveness.

Topics in Quality Management

Improving quality using multi-project strategies – new competence-based theories.

Research Aim: The research aims to analyse the differences in traditional approaches and new competence-based approaches to improving quality. The research will use variables of variety and innovation, project scope, and property of specifications to analyse the impacts on quality. The study is conducted using empirical techniques.

Analysing the Impact of Cultural Heritage on Project Appraisal and Quality Assurance in Major Public Investments – A Case Study

Research Aim: The proposed research will examine the methods with which cultural heritage values are handled in early phase evaluations of major public investment projects in the UK. The research will use a case study document analysis to analyse how cultural heritage issues are addressed in early project phases.

Topics in HR Management

Adopting dynamic capability among human resource-related quality management practices – improving product development.

Research Aim: The research study will use a theoretical framework to investigate the relationships among human resources related to quality management practices, new product development as a dynamic capability, strategic flexibility, and knowledge integration. The data collected and analysis will be conducted using structural equation modelling.

Allocation of Human Resources to Projects in Service Units – A Comparative Study

Research Aim: The research looks to identify resource allocation issues and practices in service units whose responsibility is both project and non-project activities. The research will portray mechanisms of top-down resource allocation that need to be supplemented or replaced with those that provide greater flexibility. The research techniques used will be empirical.

Topics in Communication

The impact of national and organisational culture on communication in projects.

Research Aim: The research will use independent variables of national and organisational culture under Hofstede’s dimensions of culture to analyse the impact of these on communication in projects. The study will use quantitative techniques for data collection and analysis.

Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Competencies in Project Management of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)

Research Aim: The purpose of the research is to understand the requirements of intercultural communication competencies that are needed when engaging in cross-cultural project management in the non-profit sector. The study will be conducted using mixed methods research techniques, including questionnaires and interviews.

Hire an Expert Writer

Orders completed by our expert writers are

Formally drafted in an academic style
Free Amendments and 100% Plagiarism Free – or your money back!
100% Confidential and Timely Delivery!
Appreciated by thousands of clients. Check client reviews

Important Notes:

As a project management student looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing project management theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

The field of project management is vast and interrelated to so many other academic disciplines like civil engineering , construction , law , engineering management , healthcare , mental health , artificial intelligence , tourism , physiotherapy , sociology , management , marketing and nursing . That is why it is imperative to create a project management dissertation topic that is particular, sound and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic; it is the basis of your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong: your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, and there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in writing your dissertation as you may end up in a cycle of rejection at the very initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

Keeping our advice in mind while developing a research topic will allow you to pick one of the best project management dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and adds to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Take a look at some of our sample project management dissertation topics to get an idea for your own dissertation.

How to Structure Your Project Management Dissertation

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

A Title Page
Acknowledgements
Declaration
Abstract: A summary of the research completed
Table of Contents
Literature Review : This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analysing published and unpublished literature available on the chosen research topic, in light of research questions to be addressed. The purpose is to highlight and discuss the relative weaknesses and strengths of the selected research area whilst identifying any research gaps. Break down of the topic and key terms can have a positive impact on your dissertation and your tutor.
Methodology: The data collection and analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes research design, research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and data analysis strategy .
Findings and Analysis: The findings of the research are analysed in detail in the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include graphs , charts, and tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
Discussion and Conclusion: The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section of the paper is to draw a linkage between the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regard to the implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
References: This should be completed in accordance with your University’s requirements
Bibliography
Appendices: Any additional information, diagrams, graphs that were used to complete the dissertation but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

About ResearchProspect Ltd

ResearchProspect is a UK-based academic writing service that provides help with Dissertation Proposal Writing , Ph.D. Proposal Writing , Dissertation Writing , Dissertation Editing and Improvement .

For further assistance with your dissertation, take a look at our full dissertation writing service .

Our team of writers is highly qualified. Our writers are experts in their respective fields. They have been working in the industry for a long time. Thus they are aware of the issues and the trends in the industry they are working in.

Need more Topics.?

Review Our Best Dissertation Topics complete list.

Free Dissertation Topic

Phone Number

Academic Level Select Academic Level Undergraduate Graduate PHD

Academic Subject

Area of Research

Frequently Asked Questions

How to find dissertation topics about project management.

To discover project management dissertation topics:

Examine emerging industry challenges.
Investigate novel methodologies or tools.
Analyse project success factors.
Explore risk management strategies.
Review real-world project cases.
Opt for a topic aligning with your passion and career aspirations.

A systematic literature review concerning the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management

Open access
Published: 31 July 2021
Volume 73 , pages 31–60, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

sustainable project management dissertation topics

Kevin Friedrich ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8349-4223 1

9670 Accesses

10 Citations

Explore all metrics

The concept of sustainable development is widely accepted as one of the most important topics of our time. Although significant research has already been conducted within the field of integrating sustainability into project management, different interpretations of the role of sustainability appear. This is a major issue for the scientific community, as due to these varying interpretations it is difficult to put publications into context; accordingly, it might lead to communication issues within the community. With this research study we want to help solve this issue. We conduct a systematic literature review and identify 293 relevant publications. Using a synthesis approach based on grounded theory, we define three different categories of interpretations of the role of sustainability in the current state of research. The literature is then assigned back to these interpretations. Following this approach we are not only able to review the development of each interpretation over time, but also to identify that many publications contain multiple interpretations. Based on our findings, we give recommendations for the reflection of the existing literature, the writing of new publications and communication in the research field. We also redefine the concept of ‘sustainable project management’ based on a major theoretical characteristic we synthesise during our grounded theory approach to give guidance to future researchers.

What Is Sustainability? A Review of the Concept and Its Applications

The Sustainable Development Goals prioritize economic growth over sustainable resource use: a critical reflection on the SDGs from a socio-ecological perspective

A systematic literature review on corporate sustainability: contributions, barriers, innovations and future possibilities

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

The concept of sustainable development is widely accepted as one of the most crucial topics of our time and increasingly important in corporations worldwide (United Nations 2016 ). Multiple companies have integrated sustainability into their organisation but bringing those sustainability aspects into the daily operational business is a significant challenge within praxis and theory. The current state of research offers several different approaches to combat this. One approach is to include sustainability into project management: the field of project management itself is increasingly located in the centre of everyday business in most organisations (Haniff and Salama 2016 ; Kerzner 2013 ). It is argued that up to 1/3 of global GDP is realised through projects (Turner et al. 2010 ).

Though sustainability and project management are in the centre of public interest to a greater degree, there are some major differences between the theoretical background of both, as we wish to demonstrate.

When evaluating the sustainability literature, it is obvious that multiple definitions of sustainability and sustainable development exist (Labuschagne and Brent 2005 ). However, the most commonly applied definition of what is ‘sustainable’ with regard to development originated in the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987 , para. 1): “to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This anthropocentric definition already sets a theoretical frame for sustainability and implies a holistic view in time, including short term (preserve today) and long term (to save for future generations) considerations. But within the report one can also discover that sustainable development has a spatial character by considering impacts of an action taken from a local and global view. In his book ‘Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business’, John Elkington describes the aspects of sustainable development with the concept of a triple bottom line; sustainability is about balancing economic, social and environmental goals. These pillars are also known as ‘Triple-P (People, Planet, Profit)’ (Elkington 1997 ). Thus, sustainability can be seen as a holistic, multidimensional concept considering economic, social and environmental aspects with no restrictions in either time or space.

When evaluating the project management literature, a project can be defined as “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” (Project Management Institute 2013 , p. 3). This definition identifies projects as restricted in time and scope. In 1969, Dr. Martin Barnes first defined the theoretical concept of the iron triangle regarding the efficiency in projects in his course entitled ‘Time and Money in Contract Control’ (Barnes 2007 ). In the later widely accepted version, it describes projects as restricted in time, cost and quality. Moreover, most project management approaches have a one-dimensional focus for monetary goals by maximising the outcome and minimising the required input. Thus projects can conventionally be seen as an endeavour with focused (quality) goals and scope that are limited in time and cost (Haniff and Salama 2016 ).

In summary, on the one hand there is the in time and space holistic, multidimensional concept of sustainability and, on the other hand, the one-dimensional focus and restricted frame in time, cost, scope and quality of the conventional project management concept. This seems to be in contrast when trying to define the relationship and integration possibilities of sustainability in project management (Silvius et al. 2012a ). Long term issues that might even be only detected by future generations should already be considered in a temporary endeavour like a project. Furthermore, both the multidimensional sustainability and project goals that define the original scope might be contradictory.

Because of the growing importance of project management and sustainability, as argued above, these contrasts between the concepts have a high relevance for the scientific community. Silvius even describes sustainability as a new school of thought in project management (Silvius 2017 ).

Although many contributions already exist in the research field of integrating sustainability into project management (Aarseth et al. 2017 ; Goel et al. 2019 ; Silvius and Schipper 2014 ), there exists a gap in research as the role of sustainability in project management is interpreted as conceptually different within the research field, as we will present in detail in the next section. For example, on the one hand, some researchers include an interpretation of the role of sustainability as an additional cost (Hand et al. 2015 ; Otegi-Olaso et al. 2015 ). On the other hand, other researchers show an interpretation of the role of sustainability as an economic benefit (Fiksel et al. 1999 ), a chance for financial success (Robichaud and Anantatmula 2008 ) or an investment (Robichaud and Anantatmula 2008 ) that could help to decrease operational costs (Bachour and Chasteen 2010 ; Eid 2002 ). To the best of our knowledge, this gap in the interpretation of the role of sustainability in project management was never a central part of an existing research study. Still, we see it as a major challenge in the research field, because due to these different interpretations it is difficult to put scientific publications into context and, accordingly, it might lead to communication issues within the scientific community.

We want to close this gap by defining categories of the different interpretations of the role of sustainability and, furthermore, by defining sustainable project management based on a main theoretical characteristic to give assistance in the research field.

Therefore, the research question this paper wants to answer is: How can the existing literature for integrating sustainability into project management be conceptually structured regarding the interpretation of the role of sustainability? The first aim of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) (Brereton et al. 2007 ; Hart 1998 ; Moher et al. 2009 ; Okoli 2015a ; Rousseau et al. 2008 ; Xiao and Watson 2017 ) for the development of conceptual categories that reflect the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in the research field. As a second aim, we want to systematise our results and reflect whether there is a structural order to these conceptual categories and review the definitions of sustainable project management to give guidance to future researchers. In addition, we will identify as of yet undiscussed topics and knowledge gaps for the field of research which should be tackled.

In the upcoming chapters, we will give a short introduction to the current state of research and the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management we could identify in the first instance. We will then describe why we have chosen the method of an SLR, how we conducted it and how we intended to structure our results. Afterwards, the selected literature used for the analysis will be presented and described. Later on, the synthesis will be described and results will be shown. Based on these results, in a final step the research question will be discussed, conclusions will be drawn and we will close our study with an agenda for future research and the identified limitations.

2 State of research

When reviewing the literature, it is obvious that various definitions of sustainable project management already exist. Tam ( 2010 , p. 176) defines sustainable project management as “the promoting of positive and minimizing of negative sustainability impacts (economic; environmental; and social) within the process by which projects are defined, planned, monitored, controlled and delivered such that the agreed benefits are realized and contributing to a sustainable society.” Meanwhile, Silvius and Schipper ( 2014 , p. 79) define sustainable project management as “the planning, monitoring and controlling of project delivery and support processes, with consideration of the environmental, economic and social aspects of the life-cycle of the project’s resources, processes, deliverables and effects, aimed at realising benefits for stakeholders, and performed in a transparent, fair and ethical way that includes proactive stakeholder participation.” Armenia et al. ( 2019 , p. 12), on the other hand define it as “the managerial practice aiming at pursuing project objectives by maximizing economic, social, and environmental benefits through the proactive involvement of stakeholders, the consideration of the extended life cycle of resources, processes, and effects, and continuous organizational learning.”

These definitions present a first frame for the research field of integrating sustainability into project management. In their publications, the authors of these definitions, as well as the entire research field (as we will see later), refer either directly or indirectly to the definition of sustainability from the Brundtland report, which we presented in our introduction.

But although all scientific contributions about integrating sustainability into project management act within the same field of research and base their research mostly on the same definition of sustainability, we see after a first evaluation of the literature that there exist different or even opposing interpretations of the role of sustainability as follows.

Some publications view sustainability issues “as a constraint or a low priority” (Verrier et al. 2014 , p. 88) and research on how sustainability aspects as constraints remain in relation to the conventional constraints in project management manifested in the iron triangle (Atkinson 1999 ; de Silva 2015 ; Ebbesen and Hope 2013 ; Eid 2004 ; Grevelman and Kluiwstra 2010 ; Mishra et al. 2011 ; Otegi-Olaso et al. 2015 ; Tharp 2012 ; Zdanytė and Neverauskas 2012 ). Other publications interpret sustainability “as an opportunity for improvement throughout the project” (Fernández-Sánchez and Rodríguez-López 2010 , p. 1193) and see sustainability more as a genuine goal (Marnewick 2017 ) that should be part of the business case (Silvius and Schipper 2012 ).

Many authors contributed with multiple approaches of considering sustainability in the project risk management describing how sustainability related risks in the project delivery process or the project deliverable can be managed or mitigated by specific actions (Chawla et al. 2018 ; Fernández-Sánchez and Rodríguez-López 2010 ; Goedknegt 2013a ; Tharp 2012 ). Despite this view, other authors argue that sustainability is less a risk than an opportunity (Bachour and Chasteen 2010 ; Crawford 2013 ) that makes an organisation more competitive (Obradović et al. 2018 ) and can increase its market value (Ghosh et al. 2014 ).

On the one hand, several publications have interpreted sustainability as a challenge where “a lot of effort […] has to be involved in implementation” (Toljaga-Nikolić et al. 2016 , p. 1092); on the other hand, some publications state that “some principles of sustainability are implicitly considered in project management” (Gareis et al. 2011 , p. 63). Certain researchers have even interpreted sustainability as a mind or paradigm shift, as a completely new approach for project management (Eskerod and Huemann 2013 ; Labuschagne and Brent 2008 ; Økland 2015 ; Silvius and Schipper 2014 ), focusing on the environmental aspect defining a ‘Green Project Management’ (Dai and Xu 2011 ; Maltzman and Shirley 2010 ) or establishing a new standard for sustainable project management (Carboni et al. 2013 ; Green Project Management® 2019 ).

While some see sustainability as something that creates tensions and contradictions (Gluch and Räisänen 2012 ), others say sustainability aspects “lead to synergies with other business interests.” (Byggeth and Hochschorner, 2006 , p. 1421) Several researchers see a pressure to incorporate sustainability (Misopoulos et al. 2018 ; Taylor 2010 ), which might arise from legislation (Senner 2011 ), policies (Martens et al. 2016 ) or to avoid bad credibility or reputation (Schieg 2009 ). Other researchers encourage projects and project managers to address sustainable aspects (Goedknegt and Silvius 2012 ; Xu and Hua 2011 ). Table 1 summarizes these different interpretations.

Within the context of our research question, we intend to clarify which of the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management exist in the research field, how they can be categorised, what their relationship is and reflect the existing definitions of sustainable project management. Therefore, we decided to conduct an SLR. This method is particularly suited to capturing the relevant literature in a research field, deducing a conceptual order from it and measuring a distribution within this order, as is our goal.

Previous (systematic) literature reviews have already addressed relevant aspects of sustainability, just like for crowdfunding (Böckel et al. 2020 ), governance (Heidingsfelder and Beckmann 2020 ) and customer relationship management (Müller 2014 ). These literature reviews have shown that by including sustainability the complexity of the respective topic increases. This applies also to project management as previous literature reviews on sustainable project management have shown. These reviews though have a different focus than our approach. Most literature reviews focus on the relationship between sustainability and project management. For example, Ali et al. ( 2016 ) analyse the body of knowledge for the linkage between the concepts of design for sustainability and project management and so develop potentials and needs arising from this relationship. Aarseth et al. ( 2017 ) identify that two perspectives exist in the literature, the perspective of the delivering project organisation and the perspective of the host organisation. The SLR then defines eight sustainability strategies adopted by project organisations and hosts (or both). Other SLRs focus on the creation of a conceptual framework, so for example to manage sustainable projects based on the four dimensions—namely processes, products, organisations and managers (Marcelino-Sádaba et al. 2015 )—or to integrate sustainability performance into business (Morioka and Carvalho 2016 ). Armenia et al. ( 2019 ) develop a conceptual framework linking five dimensions of sustainable project management that are, as per their analysis, the principal research domains for the integration of sustainability into project management, to be specific corporate policies and practices, resource management, life cycle orientation, stakeholders’ engagement and organisational learning. Some SLRs have a particularly generic approach and summarise constructs, variables or aspects of sustainability in project management (Martens and Carvalho 2014 ) or define critical parameters from sustainable project management, computational procedures, evolutionary algorithms and the inclusion of feedback functions for sustainability in project management (Chawla et al. 2018 ). Additionally, the impact of sustainability on project management is part of the research of some SLRs. For example, Silvius and Schipper ( 2014 ) identify from the literature areas of impact of sustainability on project management in general; Khalifeh et al. ( 2019 ) analyse the impact of project sustainability management on project success. Goel et al. ( 2019 ) possessed an industry focus conducting a morphological analysis categorising the literature of sustainability integration in the management of construction projects under the 7 dimensions of motivations, stakeholder orientation, organisational context, temporal orientation, benefits, barriers, risks and 31 variants thereof.

All these (systematic) literature reviews have the common feature of focusing on the relationship between the concepts of sustainability and project management and on integration possibilities. However, as we have seen, the interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management already differ in the existing literature, which creates a gap in the research field. We therefore wish to step in on another meta level with our SLR to close this gap. The need for this analysis was already identified by Chofreh et al. ( 2019 , p. 6) who analyse in their review the importance of sustainable project management for organisations and focus specifically on the development of potential research themes and the gaps therein: “In the terminology research topic, a study that analyses the terms used in SPM [sustainable project management; author’s note], their relationships, and categorisation would be valuable for academics and practices to clarify the ambiguity of terms.”

It is our goal to systematise our results and reflect whether there exists a structural order of the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management. During our research process, the development of a stage model of the different interpretations proved to be the most reasonable approach, as we will discuss later. Within the research field, different stage models already exist.

The stage model of Silvius und Schipper ( 2010 ) reflects on how comprehensively the three dimensions of sustainability are included at the project level of resources, business processes, business model and products/services sustainability. In a later developed model, the authors switch their focus from the project level/area of inclusion to the activity level of inclusion, defining stages from reactive to proactive, namely pre-compliance, compliance, beyond compliance, integrated strategy and purpose & passion (Silvius and Schipper 2018 ). The stage model of Kohl ( 2016 ) reflects to which extent in intensity sustainability is integrated in an (project) organisation from exposure to integration and transformation, while Siew et al. ( 2016 ) measure project sustainability maturity levels by a fuzzy-based approach. All these stage and maturity models have a more practical focus on the integration of sustainability than on the conceptual structure of the scientific literature, which is why our stage model is still needed.

In the following section, we will describe our research method in detail to synthesise the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management, create a stage model out of these and re-define sustainable project management.

As we want to find all publications relevant to our research question, an SLR is the appropriate method. We followed the general recommendations of Fisch and Block ( 2018 ) for systematic literature reviews to structure our approach. An SLR must be designed to identify every research study that has been published addressing a specific research question during a specific period (Nightingale 2009 ; Schweizer and Nair 2017 ). As (systematic) literature reviews are concept-centric (Webster and Watson 2002 ), they are suitable to identify existing concepts. Furthermore, an SLR has a goal not only to identify but also to synthesise relevant literature on a topic (Torraco 2016 ), just like we want to bring the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in the research field in relation.

As recommended by different researchers, we executed a scoping study to set a frame for our approach (Okoli 2015a ), to delimit the timeline, size, subject area and topic of the research field (Tranfield et al. 2003 ) and especially to finalise our research question (Denyer and Tranfield 2009 ).

In order to find appropriate keywords, we broke down the research question to its key components, ‘sustainability’ and ‘project management’. We then listed the keywords found in existing (systematic) literature reviews in the research field, during the scoping study (Levy and Ellis 2006 ) enhanced by the main keywords for the research field as identified by de Toledo et al. ( 2019 ). In addition, a brainstorming session and synonym search was conducted to discover even more appropriate keywords and phrases fitting to the research question (Tranfield et al. 2003 ). We selected multiple search terms: ‘Sustainability’, ‘Sustainable’, ‘Sustainable development’, ‘CSR’, ‘Corporate social responsibility’, ‘Ecological’, ‘Green’, ‘Three pillars’, ‘Project management’, ‘Project’, ‘Projects’, ‘Green project management’, ‘Agile’, ‘Project life cycle’ and ‘Scrum’. The search strings were adjusted by database regarding the database specific restrictions. We pooled our search queries for better efficiency and used the meta search platform HeBIS (Hessisches Bibliotheksinformationssystem), in particular, which includes e.g. EBSCO-Host, Web of Science and Science Direct (-2018), among others. Footnote 1 This was expanded by search iterations on Scopus, Proquest, Google Scholar, the Google search engine and the PMI Library due to our experience in the scoping study.

It is generally recommended to conduct a forward and backward search for a (systematic) literature review (Levy and Ellis 2006 ; Webster and Watson 2002 ). We have chosen authors from the SLRs for the backward reference search enhanced with researchers mentioned as “key-contributors of the sustainability school (in project management)” (Silvius 2017 , p. 1488). The forward author search was conducted within both Google Scholar and Web of Science. To ensure quality was high and to not miss any appropriate publications, the main contributors in the research field were contacted.

To set an appropriate scope for the SLR and identify the literature relevant to the research question, we decided to establish a practical screen with inclusion/exclusion criteria (Okoli 2015b ). To ensure international comparability, we adjusted the search criteria of the databases so only literature published in English was searched. The search included all years until 2019. For the quality appraisal (Okoli 2015a ), we decided to review the type of literature and included all potential literature (so peer-reviewed studies and articles, books and book chapters, but also scientific grey literature, not peer-reviewed studies and articles, conference papers and reviews, project management methodologies and frameworks like PMBOK/Prince2/ICB and editorials) with scientific relevance to the research question. We decided to do so since project management is a highly practical research topic compared to others and thus not to miss relevant literature. Non-scientific publications were excluded. To avoid doublings through a publication bias, we removed publications based on the same study and when in doubt contacted the author (Easterbrook et al. 1991 ; Song et al. 2000 as with Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ). In order to ensure only relevant papers were used for our full text analysis (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ), we decided, similarly to Silvius and Schipper ( 2014 , p. 65), to exclude publications “that did not discuss sustainability in the context of project management”. In particular publications with only project/industry/country specific content that could not be generalised were excluded. For the full text analysis, the studies were weighted via an A-B-C listing (Sutton et al. 1998 as with Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ):

A-List publications are directly related to the research question

B-List papers are relevant in the general context of the research question, but not as the main object of the research

C-List papers are out of scope (‘nice-to-read’), because they are not in the context of the research question

Primary as well as secondary studies (Cronin et al. 2008 ) were included for further examination.

It was our decision to follow the approach of Petticrew and Roberts ( 2006 , p. 100) regarding when to stop the search for further literature: “when the search has covered all the most relevant databases and bibliographies, and when further searches of databases, and scanning of bibliographies of review papers do not add to the tally of included studies.”

After the data extraction, we synthesised the found literature (Brereton et al. 2007 ), which is called the most important step for (systematic) literature reviews (Okoli 2015b ). Our goal was to synthesise the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management. Therefore, we largely followed the recommendations made by Wolfswinkel et al. ( 2013 ) for using the grounded theory approach by Glaser and Strauss ( 1967 ) in SLRs. The grounded theory approach follows the steps of open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

As we coded the existing literature via inductive open coding, we want to mention that existing categories, concept definitions, success factors, characteristics, dimensions, boundary conditions, etc., were described within the literature which we extracted in the first instance as codes (Bandara et al. 2015 ; Okoli 2015b ). For the axial coding, we then identified the underlying concepts of the codes and aligned the publications to the concepts via a concept matrix (Webster and Watson 2002 ). We then defined categories for the concepts and later major categories which reflected the different interpretations of the role of sustainability.

In the next deductive step as part of our grounded theory approach, the literature was assigned to the interpretations identified during the axial coding. This way, we could verify the identified categories of the different interpretations of the role of sustainability. We then conducted a quantitative analysis of the categorised literature to review the development of each interpretation over time.

We subsequently conducted the selective coding according to our grounded theory approach. Therefore, we further condensed the synthesis by working through the identified interpretations and connected them to a main theoretical characteristic. Based on this main characteristic, we defined an order of the different interpretations in a stage model. In the last step, we created a definition of sustainable project management.

4.1 Descriptive record of search results

We searched in multiple iterations. According to our exclusion criteria, unsuitable publications were removed. The remaining publications were selected for the synthesis. Regarding our iterations, we proceeded as seen in the following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) (Moher et al. 2009 ) statement and flow diagram, which is slightly adjusted according to our research approach (removing the duplicates after screening) (Fig. 1 ).

PRISMA flow diagram [own source according to Moher et al. ( 2009 )]

From the 293 publications, we extracted the following data. Most of the identified contributions (33 publications) were (co)authored by Gilbert Silvius. Over the years, publications increased discontinuously, though we still see sustainability in project management as a growing field of research (Fig. 2 ).

Amount of publications by year (own source)

Most publications (24) were published in the ‘Journal of Cleaner Production’. Footnote 2

During the past, multiple relevant studies on sustainable project management have been conducted, most about how sustainability is considered in the different project management areas. Some studies tried to identify in detail within which project management areas sustainability can be considered (Eid 2000 ; Hwang and Ng 2013 ) and multiple studies focus on or at least mention the relationship of sustainability to specific project management areas. Examples for project management areas involved are procurement (Ojeda and Reusch 2013 ), supply chain management (Eid 2004 ), resource management (Chawla et al. 2018 ), quality management (Eid 2002 ; Rusinko 2005 ; Wang et al. 2014 ; Ho and Fan 2014 ; Molina-Azorín et al. 2009 ; Sam et al. 2009 as by Morioka and Carvalho 2016 ), cost management (Rodríguez-Olalla and Avilés-Palacios 2017 ), communication (Morfaw 2014 ; Wang et al. 2014 ), stakeholder management (Eskerod and Huemann 2013 ; Kampf and Thomsen 2008 ; Rahman et al. 2017 ; Silvius and Schipper 2014 ) and reporting (Eid 2004 ; Silvius et al. 2012b ; Tufinio et al. 2013 ).

Other studies researched on indicators (Brent and Labuschagne 2004 ; Schipper and Silvius 2017 , 2017 ; Talbot and Venkataraman 2011 ; Vatalis et al. 2012 ; Yao et al. 2011 ) or incentive models (Kivilä et al. 2017 ). There exist studies focusing on assessments (Daneshpour 2015 ; Pope et al. 2004 ), especially environmental impact assessments (Brent and Petrick 2007 ; Labuschagne and Brent 2004 ; Wilkins 2003 ) or decision making (Brent and Labuschagne 2004 ; de Brucker et al. 2013 ; de Magalhães et al. 2019 ; Khalili-Damghani and Sadi-Nezhad 2013 ). Other researchers focused on specific project management tools such as stage gates (Chawla et al. 2018 ; Eid 2004 ; Lotz et al. 2009 ) or on management tools modified to sustainable purposes such as the Sustainable Balanced Scorecard (Figge et al. 2002 ; Grevelman and Kluiwstra 2010 ; Kirchhof and Brandtweiner 2011 ; Morioka and Carvalho 2016 ).

Most recent research seems to expand to the impact of sustainable project management on (project) success (Khalifeh et al. 2019 ; He et al. 2019 ) and to the motivation to include sustainability in project management by project managers (Marnewick et al. 2019 ; Silvius and de Graaf 2019 ; Poon and Silvius 2019 ) and project owners (Zhang et al. 2019 ). Our findings are summarized in Table 2 .

4.2 Different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management

In our description of the current state of research in Sect. 2 we showed that different or even opposing interpretations of the role of sustainability in the research field exist. One of our goals was to develop conceptual categories that reflect these different interpretations. To develop these categories, we synthesised the 293 publications via grounded theory. During the open coding we identified more than 4212 codes and created 397 memos from the publication regarding their interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management. To obtain a better understanding of the different interpretations, we first analysed from which project management and sustainability aspects the literature distances in these codes.

Approximately 76% of the total publications distance themselves directly or indirectly from a project management concept in which sustainability is not explicitly considered. Many publications (Moehler et al. 2018 ; Obradović et al. 2018 ; Otegi-Olaso et al. 2015 ; Toljaga-Nikolić et al. 2016 ) refer to this approach as ‘traditional project management’, but sometimes it is also named ‘conventional (project) management’ (Wang et al. 2014 ). Methodologies and frameworks like PRINCE2, PMBOK and ICB, but also the V-Model or Scrum can be described as such. Sustainability aspects can be added and integrated to those, as will be explained, but are not part of the initial concept.

A smaller number of publications, around 5%, distance themselves from 2010 onwards from a sustainability concept, which simply raises awareness for sustainable issues without taking further action. The publications distance from those, who simply pay lip service (Crawford 2013 ) and see sustainability as ‘nice to have’ or needing extra effort (Gareis et al. 2011 ). The so-called ‘Greenwashing’ can also be located here, as it is more about documenting and monitoring than taking sustainability actions and, as Silvius ( 2015 , p. 311) mentions, “’greenwashing’ […] is not a solution”. In the following we will not focus any further on the analysis of this differentiation but recommend it for further research.

Then we tried to find similarities within the remaining codes and further condensed them during the axial coding, by finding synonyms and codes that have a similar focus on sustainability (such as the impact of sustainability on project success, sustainability as an investment, benefits to introduce sustainability, sustainability as a risk, etc.). In doing so, we were able to develop first categories. We then clustered the categories in a concept matrix and assigned the existing codes to those categories. In this way and by going back and forth in the literature, new categories emerged (such as a pressure to introduce sustainability, sustainability as a challenge, a business case for sustainability, sustainability as improvement, etc.). During this process, we discovered that some categories seem to assign a more positive connotation and value to sustainability while others allocate a more negative value. Out of this, we were able to define the first major category of ‘Sustainability as a constraint’, in which more negative than positive value is assigned to sustainability. When reviewing the literature for the positively connoted value to sustainability, we had to make a distinction. On the one hand, sustainability is seen in the literature as an instrument to reach a specific goal or gain (business) benefits by for example cost reduction or synergies, but not as a genuine goal. On the other hand, sustainability aspects are seen as an intrinsic value and all sustainability dimensions are described as equal (genuine) goals. Out of these two different views, we were able to synthesise the other two major categories of ‘Sustainability as instrumental value’ and “Sustainability as intrinsic value’.

These three major categories ‘Sustainability as a constraint’, ‘Sustainability as instrumental value’ and “Sustainability as intrinsic value’ reflect the different interpretations of the role of sustainability and will be described in the following.

4.2.1 Sustainability as a constraint

When analysing the literature, we saw ‘Sustainability as a constraint’ as a first interpretation of the role of sustainability in project management. Here sustainability is seen as something that hinders the actual project goal or as a potential risk. As such, sustainability has a negative connotation in this regard. The aspects of sustainability come from outside of the project. Thus there exists always an extrinsic motivation for the interpretation of the role of sustainability as a constraint. After reviewing the current state of research, many of the statements and interpretations mentioned in Sect. 2 seem to follow sustainability as a constraint: By seeing sustainability as a cost (Otegi-Olaso et al. 2015 ), as a challenge (Toljaga-Nikolić et al. 2016 ), even as “a major challenge, especially in large projects” (Martens and Carvalho 2016 , p. 29), as a constraint (de Magalhães et al. 2019 ; Verrier et al. 2014 ), as a risk (Chawla et al. 2018 ; Fernández-Sánchez and Rodríguez-López 2010 ; Goedknegt 2013a ; Silvius and Schipper 2014 ; Tharp 2012 ) or as something that creates “tensions and contradictions” (Gluch and Räisänen 2012 , p. 136). In this category, we also include studies that identify a pressure to incorporate sustainability (Misopoulos et al. 2018 ; Taylor 2010 ); this pressure might arise from very different sources (Martens et al. 2016 ; Schieg 2009 ; Senner 2011 ). In conventional project management, major constraints already exist as defined in the iron triangle of time, cost and scope. Multiple authors have researched the relationship between sustainability and the other constraints in the iron triangle (Atkinson 1999 ; de Silva 2015 ; Ebbesen and Hope 2013 ; Grevelman and Kluiwstra 2010 ; Mishra et al. 2011 ; Otegi-Olaso et al. 2015 ; Tharp 2012 ; Zdanytė and Neverauskas 2012 ).

4.2.2 Sustainability as instrumental value

As another interpretation, we identified ‘Sustainability as instrumental value’. In contrast to the first interpretation, sustainability is seen less as a constraint that needs to be satisfied and more as an instrument that supports the actual project goal. Many of the aforementioned statements in Sect. 2 assign an instrumental value to sustainability in their interpretations.

Sustainability is interpreted as an opportunity (Bachour and Chasteen 2010 ; Crawford 2013 ; Fernández-Sánchez and Rodríguez-López 2010 ) that leads to synergies (Byggeth and Hochschorner 2006 ) or that makes an organisational structure like a project more competitive (Obradović et al. 2018 ) and can increase its market value (Ghosh et al. 2014 ). Sustainability is seen as an investment (Robichaud and Anantatmula 2008 ) to decrease costs (Bachour and Chasteen 2010 ; Eid 2002 ), as an economic benefit (Fiksel et al. 1999 ) or a chance for financial success (Robichaud and Anantatmula 2008 ). Among these interpretations it is commonplace that the actual organisational/project goal and as such the conventional project management approach remains and sustainability is seen as a possibility through which to better achieve the goal. In other words, sustainability contributes to the project success (Adriana and Ioana-Maria 2013 ; Carvalho and Rabechini 2017 ). As such, sustainability can also be seen in general as an improvement (Silvius et al. 2017 ), as something that leads to an improved reputation (Jugend and Figueiredo 2017 ) or “that considering SD [sustainable development; author’s note] principles results in an improved quality” (Gareis 2013 , p. 129). However, sustainability can also bring about multiple other benefits such as reductions in waste generation (Verrier et al. 2014 ), energy efficiency (Lapinski et al. 2006 ), “improved compliance, competitive advantage, improved financial returns, and greater access to capital” (Kohl 2016 , p. 21) and improved budget control (Hand et al. 2015 ).

Finally, this interpretation of the role of sustainability in project management as a supporting instrument can be further elaborated and analysed in an additional business case of sustainability: How can sustainability requirements support/fit the project’s goal?

4.2.3 Sustainability as intrinsic value

We synthesised a final interpretation called ‘Sustainability as intrinsic value’ in the current state of research. Here sustainability is interpreted as a genuine goal (Marnewick 2017 ); interpretations in this category go beyond the conventional project management by focusing on multi-dimensional economic, environmental and social sustainability goals in the project. All sustainable dimensions are ascribed such a high value that they are seen not as a constraint, instrument or secondary requirement to reach, but as equal goals in the very centre of the project. It is important that those environmental, social and economic goals are balanced and harmonised (Marnewick 2017 ; Silvius et al. 2017 ). There is no hierarchy of such goals, they exist on the same level with a holistic approach.

Sustainability is seen here as a part or dimension of project success (Silvius and de Graaf 2019 ) and not as a contributing element. Researchers encourage projects and project managers to address sustainable aspects (Goedknegt and Silvius 2012 ; Helgadóttir 2008 ; Valdes-Vasquez and Klotz 2013 ; Xu and Hua 2011 ) or call it an imperative for project management (Ghosh et al. 2014 ), with an intrinsically motivated pattern (Marnewick et al. 2019 ) where "the project manager is intrinsically motivated to work on a sustainable project, and to achieve sustainable results" (Goedknegt 2013b , p. 279). It is even argued that”the intrinsic type of project owners’ motivation is more effective than the extrinsic type” (Zhang et al. 2019 , p. 651) in which “projects can contribute significantly to the mission of sustainable development” (Yao et al. 2011 ) and that projects are conducive to sustainable development (Silvius et al. 2017 ; Silvius 2017 ). As a result, the business case also changes in comparison to conventional project management (Goedknegt 2013a ; Silvius and Schipper 2012 ) as sustainability should be part of the business case (Silvius and Schipper 2012 ). It is thus a business case for sustainability (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002 ; Eid 2002 ) rather than of sustainability, which Schaltegger and Wagner ( 2006 ) already described alongside a project management focus and which contained holistic, multidimensional components where each dimension is represented on the same level in one case.

At the beginning of the following section, we assign the literature to the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management for further analysis. In the last step, we then show the results of our selective coding, on the basis of which we ordered the different interpretations to a stage model and set a new definition of sustainable project management.

5 Discussion

5.1 deductive verification in the literature.

We have assigned the 293 identified publications to the synthesised interpretations described in Sect. 4.2 . The literature was not discontinuously assigned, as one publication can contain multiple interpretations. Although 94% of the publications defining sustainability follow the same definition of sustainability (Brundtland Report), there exist different interpretations of the role of sustainability in the literature. With the help of an area diagram, the distribution of the interpretations found were shown over the course of time starting from 2007 before too few publications were found to draw conclusions (Fig. 3 ).

Interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management/publications by year (own source)

The interpretations in the research field are not equally distributed over the course of time. Although there are fluctuations, no clear trend can be derived in the relative distribution of interpretations over time, but also in relation to the number of publications over time shown in the descriptive record of search results in Sect. 4.1 . As a first result, we can therefore state that the synthesised interpretations of the role of sustainability can be found in the literature. The distribution of these interpretation seems to remain relatively constant over time.

However, as previously mentioned we assigned the discontinuous literature not disjunct, because one publication can contain multiple interpretations. Additionally, we noted one yet crucial attribute of the distribution of the interpretations.

Approximately 50% of the publications (in total 150) exclusively follow a single interpretation of the role of sustainability either as a constraint (22), instrumental value (30) or intrinsic value (98). For the other half of the publications (in total 143), we found two (95) or even all three interpretations (48) within one publication. We do not want to preclude that one publication cannot contain multiple interpretations. For example, a publication can list the benefits and disadvantages of including sustainability (Hwang and Tan 2012 ). Furthermore, some publications explicitly distance other interpretations from their point of view just as they distance themselves from sustainability as not relevant or as mere lip service. As such, they, for example, mainly follow the interpretation of the role of sustainability as instrumental value but explicitly distance it from others, “viewing it as a cost and not fully examining the potential long-term and difficult-to-measure benefits” (Rogers et al. 2013 , p. 974) or state that others “still consider environmental issues as a constraint or a low priority, instead of using them as a real opportunity for progress” (Verrier et al. 2014 , p. 88). Certain publications even describe the attitudes and perspectives on sustainability of different actors in project management (Sabini et al. 2017 ). Still, all those publications explicitly distinguish the different interpretations of the role of sustainability.

But publications where this happens implicitly, so for example highlighting the intrinsic value of sustainability in one paragraph and in the next paragraph describing it as a high constraint in project management, can lead to irritations and misunderstandings during the reading (though it does not necessarily have to have a direct impact on the research result of those publications).

Overall, it is important for the research field to reflect on the different interpretations in order to gain an understanding of the research subject and among each other’s work. Different interpretations make it difficult to compare and evaluate results. It also prevents researchers from building on the study results of others and complicates communication between researchers. It is therefore vital to pay attention when analysing a publication which interpretation is currently addressed. It is also important to determine which interpretation one wants to follow before writing a publication or to explicitly name (or distance from) other interpretations within the publication. The same applies to communications between researchers.

5.2 Selective coding and stage model

As the final step of our synthesis, we conducted selective coding with the interpretations found to define an order among them. We synthesised as a common theoretical basis the term ‘value ascribed to sustainability aspects in project management’ as the main theoretical characteristic for the interpretation of the role of sustainability in the research field. In this section, we will further describe this value characteristic in the sustainability context.

In the extant literature, various aspects were identified of what is of value in project management, so for instance the process outcome, the return on investment, the level of (stakeholder) satisfaction and so on (Thomas and Mullaly 2007 ). Sustainability aspects would enhance this view on value for project management. The more a sustainable development, situation or outcome is desired by a project organisation, the more value the organisation ascribes to it.

Value refers to the project sponsor, as well as to other stakeholders of a project. We understand the project sponsor as one of the main drivers (Project Management Institute 2013 ) and (as ‘Executive’ in PRINCE2) main responsible (AXELOS 2017 ) of the business case, including the stakeholders’ interests in such way as to reach the main project goal(s) and a stakeholder as “an individual, group, or organization who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project” (Project Management Institute 2013 , p. 29). In traditional project management, the project manager is responsible for the project goals and the fulfilment of the business case(s).

Value ascribed to sustainable development can be positive or negative and must be considered for the entire period of a project (and product) life cycle (Shen et al. 2002 ). On the one hand, this value ascription becomes manifested in the investment by an organisation to reach the required sustainable situation or outcome. The more value an organisation ascribes to sustainability, the more this organisation invests. This investment might occur largely in monetary terms but could also include social or environmental capital. On the other hand, it is not only about the value invested, it is especially about the value gained as an organisation from sustainability as well. Currently organisations ascribe the most value to monetary factors (Dinu 2017 ) and value profit above the sustainability dimensions (Marnewick 2017 ). Despite this, assigning value to sustainability does not only mean assigning value to economic but also to social and environmental interests. Thus, an organisation has to decide the most valuable benefits that could be gained. One can gain value by tangible benefits, like cost savings, for example by the reduction of waste/energy costs, lower lending rates and attracting green investors or an increase in sales by attracting green consumers, as well as by intangible benefits, for example through a better reputation, through the avoidance of an unproductive relationship with activist groups or the government, the avoidance of lawsuits and fines, negative headlines and possible decreases in sales or higher employer involvement. Still, there is value creation that one cannot attribute directly to the organisation like a healthy environment (Aarseth et al. 2017 ) or social impact out of the organisational scope (Atkinson 1999 ). Therefore, an organisation has to decide which value creation it includes in its considerations for how much value is invested into sustainability actions. It also has to be considered that actions and value for sustainable development are difficult to quantify in monetary terms (Sánchez 2015 ). This makes the ratio of investment and benefit in monetary terms very difficult to determine.

As stated previously, it is our goal to systematise our results and reflect if there is a structural order of the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management. Therefore, we reflected upon the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management based on the aforementioned characteristic of ‘value ascribed to sustainability aspects in project management’.

For the interpretation of ‘Sustainability as a constraint’, there is value ascribed to sustainability but with a negative connotation. Sustainability is seen as a risk or cost that hinders the project goal, which is ascribed the prime value. Although sustainability broadens the field of stakeholders, following the interpretation of the role of sustainability as a constraint the responsibility of the project manager still seems to be focused towards the project sponsor.

Regarding the interpretation of ‘Sustainability as instrumental value’, there is positive value ascribed to sustainability in project management and thus sustainability is more highly valued than the interpretation of ‘Sustainability as a constraint’. It is seen as a benefit, opportunity or instrument that supports the actual project goal. It remains, however, an instrument and not in the centre of the project.

Finally, for the interpretation of ‘Sustainability as intrinsic value’, there is significant value ascribed to sustainability, which is seen as a dimension of project success or genuine goal to maximise in the very centre of the project and thus sustainability is even more valued than the other interpretations. The project is based on a business case for sustainability rather than a business case of sustainability being created. Furthermore, the responsibility of the project manager seems to be shifted from the project sponsor towards an extended set of stakeholders.

Since each interpretation ascribes a different value to sustainability, they can be ordered along this value dimension. To represent this order, a stage model is most reasonable. The order in our stage model reflects the ascending value ascribed to sustainability aspects in project management by each interpretation and starts with ‘Sustainability not explicitly considered’ where no value is ascribed to sustainability aspects in the project management (Fig. 4 ).

Stage model interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management (own source)

In the literature, as mentioned in Sect. 2 , extant stage models have a practical focus on the integration of sustainability, which is of great value for the research field. Our stage model concentrates on the different interpretations of the role of sustainability, with a focus on the more conceptual structure of the scientific literature and the communication between researchers and also practitioners. Though our stage model is not based on the others, it enhances these by adding the dimension of the access to the term sustainability; it broadens the view of how deep sustainability in general is integrated to how deep the different interpretations of the role of sustainability are integrated in project management aspects. This way the level of integration can be much more clearly reflected, which is why our stage model is also beneficial for the research field. It also shows that by including sustainability into project management the complexity increases, which confirms the findings of previous literature reviews and thus links directly to the latest research on sustainability as described in Sect. 2 .

In the following section, we will base our definition of sustainable project management on the synthesised term of value ascribed to sustainability in project management.

5.3 New definition of sustainable project management

All the definitions mentioned in Sect. 2 place the sustainability dimensions in the centre of their definition, which is why they have a particularly holistic view. They include all interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management which we extracted from the publications in the research field. In our opinion, however, a definition of sustainable project management should have a more differentiating focus on these interpretations.

On the one hand, the interpretations of the role of sustainability as a constraint and as instrumental value lead to the management of sustainability in traditional project management . Sustainability interpreted as a constraint would be managed as a possible risk or issue, while sustainability interpreted as instrumental value and realised by a business case of sustainability would be managed as an opportunity or benefit. On the other hand, when sustainability is interpreted as intrinsic value, sustainability lies at the very centre of a project, seen as a dimension of project success with a business case for sustainability and thus creating sustainable project management . Additionally, the development of these different interpretations is no short-term trend but instead remains relatively stable over time.

Therefore, we suggest a more value-oriented definition of sustainable project management to distinguish from traditional/conventional project management. We base this definition on the synthesised term of value ascribed to sustainability in project management and the interpretation of the role of sustainability as intrinsic value that underlines sustainable project management as a paradigm shift: Sustainable project management is a project management approach of ascribing intrinsic value to sustainability aspects by including all sustainability dimensions as equal parts of the project’s success and therefore creating a business case for sustainability.

As we have now discussed our results, we will outline a short summary and conclude our study.

6 Conclusion

Integrating sustainability into project management is a relatively new, but very relevant and growing field of research. Still, it seems that different interpretations of the role of sustainability exist in the research field. This is a challenge as it is difficult to put scientific publications into context and accordingly communication issues might arise. The aim of our research was to give researchers and practitioners guidance regarding the identification and order of the varying interpretations, as well as the development of a new definition for sustainable project management.

The SLR as our research method was necessary to develop those interpretations and to assign them back to the literature. We found more than 293 publications that we included in our analysis. Using this dataset, we identified three different interpretations that reflected the publications’ understanding of sustainability: ‘Sustainability as a constraint’, where sustainability is seen as a restriction, ‘Sustainability as instrumental value’, where sustainability is seen as an instrument that supports the actual project goal, as well as ‘Sustainability as intrinsic value’, where sustainability is interpreted as a genuine goal for creating a business case for sustainability. We also identified that the literature sets itself apart from a project management concept where sustainability aspects are not considered and sustainability is paid as mere lip service, where awareness is only raised for sustainable issues without taking further action. It is therefore important to identify in a publication or in communication what interpretation is addressed and determine which interpretation oneself wants to follow in one’s work.

We then synthesised the main theoretical characteristic, ‘value ascribed to sustainability aspects in project management’, as a common theoretical basis for the different interpretations of the role of sustainability. Based on this characteristic, the different interpretations of the role of sustainability were reflected and ordered in a stage model. In the final step, we reviewed the existing definitions of sustainable project management and compared them to our results. On the one hand, the interpretations of the role of sustainability as a constraint and as instrumental value lead to the management of sustainability in traditional project management. On the other hand, sustainability interpreted as intrinsic value led to a business case for sustainability and thus to sustainable project management. Because the existing definitions do not reflect this circumstance, we redefined sustainable project management.

The theoretical contribution of this study is its guidance for researchers in the field of sustainability in project management. We identified different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management through which the literature on sustainable project management can be conceptually structured. This allows existing contributions to be better connected and communication in the research field to be clarified. The development of the interpretations over time was illustrated using an area diagram and the interpretations were ordered in a stage model. In addition, recommendations were given for the interpretation of existing literature, the writing of new publications and communications between each other. Finally, the definition of sustainable project management in contrast to traditional project management can be used as guidance in the research field.

Based on our study, we created an agenda for future research to further develop the field of sustainable project management. First, the identified interpretations were extracted from the existing scientific literature. To better identify practical implications, it would be of value for future research to analyse by interviews if the interpretations are also present in practice and if the stage model can be transferred or if a different model appears. Especially between the stages of sustainability as a constraint and as instrumental value it could be researched if other interpretations exist in practice, which we did not find in the literature and how a transition between the stages might occur. Based on this, as an outlook for future research for the different interpretations synthesised, it could be of interest to analyse by another literature review the citation of the publications in the research field. Using this method, the different streams that follow the same interpretation and that exist in the research field could be observed. Within the newly defined sustainable project management, it would be of high value then to investigate the exact definitions and responsibilities of project management roles, as well as the possible remaining roles of the construct of the iron triangle, as well as the relationship between traditional/conventional and sustainable project management. As the business case in sustainable project management within our definition is expanded by multidimensional components, we would encourage future research to further define the responsibility for the business cases for/of sustainability and the fulfilment thereof.

In addition, during our research we identified the absence of a separation between agile project management and traditional (waterfall) project management in the publications. Future research could examine by interviews how this separation could affect the inclusion of sustainability into project management. From a methodological point of view, more literature reviews than empirical work exist in our finding of the current state of research, which confirms the findings by Khalifeh et al. ( 2019 ) and which is why we would encourage future researchers to use empirical methods such as interviews, surveys, case-studies, or experiments. Finally, there exist several open fields of discussion concerning how to define the project frame for multidimensional goals, e.g. how to measure progress (Hwang and Ng 2013 ; Xu and Hua 2011 ), the motivation of the project manager to include sustainability and how to define the project end because of the holistic approach or the distinction between weak and strong sustainability in project management.

We see several limitations of our study. The first regards the inclusion criteria in the search as we only focused on English literature. There is also a language and country bias (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ) by which we might have missed relevant literature in other languages. Although we selected the keywords regarding our research question and defined the search strings with great care, it cannot be guaranteed that all relevant literature was found. The same applies to the selection of databases, search engines and websites, as well as the exclusion criteria according to the type of literature and content.

The citation or reference bias exists when publications that support a beneficial effect are more often cited than unsupportive ones (Song et al. 2000 ). For our backward search, we see the possibility of this bias, but as we also searched directly in databases, websites and search engines we minimised the risk of being affected by the bias. Particularly as the search and synthesis was completed by one person, we see the risk of limited reliability. Therefore, during our research we frequently presented and discussed our approach and findings within a doctoral colloquium. Though this procedure does not substitute the benefit of multiple researchers working on this publication, it reduced the limitation.

Availability of data and materials

All relevant data is included in the manuscript, a detailed list of literature is available upon request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

The full list of databases is available under http://info.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/fach_liste.html?fach=wiwi

The detailed list of publications is available to the readers upon request to the authors.

Aarseth W, Ahola T, Aaltonen K, Økland A, Andersena B (2017) Project sustainability strategies: a systematic literature review. Int J Proj Manag 35(6):1071–1083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.11.006

Article Google Scholar

Adriana T-T, Ioana-Maria D (2013) Project success by integrating sustainability in project management. In: Silvius AJG, Tharp J (eds) Sustainability integration for effective project management. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 106–127. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4177-8.ch007

Chapter Google Scholar

Ali F, Boks C, Bey N (2016) Design for sustainability and project management literature—a review. Procedia CIRP 48:28–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2016.04.185

Armenia S, Dangelico RM, Nonino F, Pompei A (2019) Sustainable project management: a conceptualization-oriented review and a framework proposal for future studies. Sustainability 11(9):2664. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092664

Atkinson R (1999) Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. Int J Proj Manag 17(6):337–342. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(98)00069-6

AXELOS (2017) Managing successful projects with PRINCE2. The Stationery Office Ltd, London (UK)

Bachour N, Chasteen L (2010) Optimizing the value of green it projects within organizations. In: 2010 IEEE green technologies conference, Grapevine, TX (USA), 15–16 April 2010

Bandara W, Furtmueller E, Gorbacheva E, Miskon S, Beekhuyzen J (2015) Achieving rigor in literature reviews: insights from qualitative data analysis and tool-support. Commun Assoc Inf Syst (CAIS) 37:8. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.03708

Barnes M (2007) Some origins of modern project management. PM World Today II(XI)

Böckel A, Hörisch J, Tenner I (2020) A systematic literature review of crowdfunding and sustainability: highlighting what really matters. Manag Rev Q 138(2):1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-020-00189-3

Brent AC, Labuschagne C (2004) Sustainable life cycle management: indicators to assess the sustainability of engineering projects and technologies. In: 2004 IEEE international engineering management conference, Singapore (SG), 18–21 October 2004. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ (US), pp 99–103. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEMC.2004.1407084

Brent AC, Petrick W (2007) Environmental impact assessment during project execution phases: towards a stage-gate project management model for the raw materials processing industry of the energy sector. Impact Assess Proj Apprais 25(2):111–122. https://doi.org/10.3152/146155107X205832

Brereton P, Kitchenham BA, Budgen D, Turner M, Khalil M (2007) Lessons from applying the systematic literature review process within the software engineering domain. J Syst Softw 80(4):571–583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2006.07.009

Byggeth S, Hochschorner E (2006) Handling trade-offs in Ecodesign tools for sustainable product development and procurement. J Clean Prod 14(15–16):1420–1430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2005.03.024

Carboni J, Gonzalez M, Hodgkinson J (2013) PRISM: projects integrating sustainable development. The GPM reference guide to sustainability in Project Management. GPM Global, Detroit, MI (US)

Carvalho MM, Rabechini R (2017) Can project sustainability management impact project success? An empirical study applying a contingent approach. Int J Proj Manag 35(6):1120–1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.02.018

Chawla VK, Chanda AK, Angra S, Chawla GR (2018) The sustainable project management: a review and future possibilities. J Proj Manag 3(3):157–170. https://doi.org/10.5267/j.jpm.2018.2.001

Chofreh AG, Goni FA, Malik MN, Khan HH, Klemeš JJ (2019) The imperative and research directions of sustainable project management. J Clean Prod 238(117810):1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117810

Crawford L (2013) Leading sustainability through projects. In: Silvius AJG, Tharp J (eds) Sustainability integration for effective project management. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 235–244. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4177-8.ch014

Cronin P, Ryan F, Coughlan M (2008) Undertaking a literature review: a step-by-step approach. Br J Nurs 17(1):38–43. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjon.2008.17.1.28059

Dai AN, Xu D (2011) The study of green project management. In: 2011 IEEE 18th international conference on industrial engineering and engineering management, Changchun (CN), 3–5 September 2011. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ (US), pp 267–271. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIEEM.2011.6035155

Daneshpour H (2015) Integrating sustainability into management of project. Int J Environ Sci Dev 6(4):321–325. https://doi.org/10.7763/IJESD.2015.V6.611

de Brucker K, Macharis C, Verbeke A (2013) Multi-criteria analysis and the resolution of sustainable development dilemmas: a stakeholder management approach. Eur J Oper Res 224(1):122–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2012.02.021

de Magalhães RF, de Danilevicz A, M. F., Palazzo J, (2019) Managing trade-offs in complex scenarios: a decision-making tool for sustainability projects. J Clean Prod 212:447–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.12.023

de Silva RG (2015) Introducing the fourth constraint in project management: project carbon footprint management. In: APIIT business and technology conference, April 2015, Colombo (LK), 9 April 2015, pp 1–6

de Toledo RF, Miranda Junior HL, Farias Filho JR, Costa HG (2019) A scientometric review of global research on sustainability and project management dataset. Data Brief 25:104312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2019.104312

Denyer D, Tranfield D (2009) Producing a systematic review. In: Buchanan DA, Bryman A (eds) The Sage handbook of organizational research methods. Sage Publications, London, pp 671–689

Google Scholar

Dinu FA (2017) The architecture of a decision support software system for sustainable projects selection. Glob Econ Obs 5(1):224–233

Dyllick T, Hockerts K (2002) Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Bus Strategy Environ 11(2):130–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.323

Easterbrook PJ, Gopalan R, Berlin JA, Matthews DR (1991) Publication bias in clinical research. Lancet 337(8746):867–872. https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-6736(91)90201-Y

Ebbesen JB, Hope A (2013) Re-imagining the iron triangle: embedding sustainability into project constraints. PM World J II(III):1–13

Eid M (2000) A review of “project management” and “sustainable development” for construction projects. Edinb Archit Res J 27:37–66

Eid M (2002) A sustainable approach to the project management odyssey. In: PMI® research conference 2002: frontiers of project management research and applications, Seattle, WA (US), 14–17 July 2002. Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA (US)

Eid M (2004) Rethinking relationships in the construction industry: integrating sustainable development into project management processes

Elkington J (1997) Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business. Capstone Publishing, Oxford

Eskerod P, Huemann M (2013) Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: what standards say. Int J Manag Proj Bus 6(1):36–50. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371311291017

Fernández-Sánchez G, Rodríguez-López F (2010) A methodology to identify sustainability indicators in construction project management—application to infrastructure projects in Spain. Ecol Indic 10(6):1193–1201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2010.04.009

Figge F, Hahn T, Schaltegger S, Wagner M (2002) The Sustainability balanced scorecard—linking sustainability management to business strategy. Bus Strategy Environ 11(5):269–284. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.339

Fiksel JR, McDaniel JS, Mendenhall C (1999) Measuring progress towards sustainability principles, process, and best practices. In: Proceedings of the 8th international network conference. greening of industry network, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 14–17 November 1999

Fisch C, Block J (2018) Six tips for your (systematic) literature review in business and management research. Manag Rev Q 68:103–106. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-018-0142-x

Gareis R (2013) Re-thinking project initiation and project management by considering principles of sustainable development. In: Silvius AJG, Tharp J (eds) Sustainability integration for effective project management. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 129–143. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4177-8.ch008

Gareis R, Huemann M, Martinuzzi A (2011) What can project management learn from considering sustainability principles. Project Perspect 33:60–65

Ghosh S, Buckler L, Skibniewski MJ, Negahban S, Kwak YH (2014) Organizational governance to integrate sustainability projects: a case study. Technol Econ Dev Econ 20(1):1–24. https://doi.org/10.3846/20294913.2014.850755

Glaser BG, Strauss AL (1967) The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine publishing company, Chicago

Gluch P, Räisänen C (2012) What tensions obstruct an alignment between project and environmental management practices? Eng Constr Archit Manag 19(2):127–140. https://doi.org/10.1108/09699981211206070

Goedknegt D (2013a) Responsibility for adhering to sustainability in project management. In: 7th nordic conference on construction economics and organization, Trondheim (NO), 12–14 June 2013, pp 145–154

Goedknegt D (2013b) Sustainability in project management: perceptions of responsibility. In: Silvius AJG, Tharp J (eds) Sustainability integration for effective project management. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 279–287. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-4177-8.ch017

Goedknegt D, Silvius AJG (2012) The implementation of sustainability principles in project management. In: Proceedings of the 26th IPMA world congress, Crete (GR), 29–31 October 2012, pp 875–882

Goel A, Ganesh LS, Kaur A (2019) Sustainability integration in the management of construction projects: a morphological analysis of over two decades’ research literature. J Clean Prod 236:117676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117676

Green Project Management® (2019) The GPM P5™ standard for sustainability in project management. https://www.greenprojectmanagement.org/gpm-standards/the-p5-standard-for-sustainability-in-project-management . Accessed 8 Aug 2019

Grevelman L, Kluiwstra M (2010) Sustainability in project management: a case study on Enexis (Paper presented at the Happy Projects conference 2010, Vienna). PM World Today XII(VII):1–19

Hand A, Zuo J, Xia B, Jin X, Wu P (2015) Are green project management practices applicable to traditional projects? In: Shen LY, Ye K, Mao C (eds) Proceedings of the 19th international symposium on advancement of construction management and real estate. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (DE), pp 291–301. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46994-1_25

Haniff A, Salama M (2016) Project management. Goodfellow Publishers, Oxford

Hart C (1998) Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination. Sage Publications, London

He Q, Chen X, Wang G, Zhu J, Yang D, Liu X, Li Y (2019) Managing social responsibility for sustainability in megaprojects: an innovation transitions perspective on success. J Clean Prod 241:118395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118395

Heidingsfelder J, Beckmann M (2020) A governance puzzle to be solved? A systematic literature review of fragmented sustainability governance. Manag Rev Q 70(3):355–390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-019-00170-9

Helgadóttir H (2008) The ethical dimension of project management. Int J Proj Manag 26(7):743–748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2007.11.002

Ho YC, Fan LC (2014) Achieving quality performance and environmental sustainability through the genius loci of quality management systems. Int J Qual Reliab Manag 31(2):144–165. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJQRM-11-2011-0147

Hwang BG, Ng WJ (2013) Project management knowledge and skills for green construction: overcoming challenges. Int J Proj Manag 31(2):272–284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2012.05.004

Hwang B-G, Tan JS (2012) Green building project management: obstacles and solutions for sustainable development. Sustain Dev 20(5):335–349. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.492

Jugend D, Figueiredo J (2017) Integrating environmental sustainability and project portfolio management: case study in an energy firm. Gest Prod 24(3):526–537. https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-530X3451-16

Kampf CE, Thomsen C (2008) Managing projects with CSR in mind: CSR knowledge communication in project management. In: Proceedings of the conference on corporate communication 2008, Baruch College/CUNY, Wroxton (GB), 06–09 June 2008, pp 217–228

Kerzner HR (2013) Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling, 11th edn. Wiley, New York

Khalifeh A, Farrell P, Al-edenat M (2019) The impact of project sustainability management (PSM) on project success. J Manag Dev. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-02-2019-0045

Khalili-Damghani K, Sadi-Nezhad S (2013) A hybrid fuzzy multiple criteria group decision making approach for sustainable project selection. Appl Soft Comput 13(1):339–352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2012.07.030

Kirchhof S, Brandtweiner R (2011) Sustainability in projects: an analysis of relevant sustainability aspects in the project management process based on the three pillars model. WIT Trans Ecol Environ 150:527–535. https://doi.org/10.2495/SDP110441

Kivilä J, Martinsuo M, Vuorinen L (2017) Sustainable project management through project control in infrastructure projects. Int J Proj Manag 35(6):1167–1183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.02.009

Kohl K (2016) Becoming a sustainable organization: a project and portfolio management approach. CRC Press, Boca Raton

Book Google Scholar

Labuschagne C, Brent AC (2004) Sustainable project life cycle management: aligning project management methodologies with the principles of sustainable development. In: Proceedings of the PMSA international conference, Johannesburg (ZA), 10–12 May 2004, pp 104–115

Labuschagne C, Brent AC (2005) Sustainable project life cycle management: the need to integrate life cycles in the manufacturing sector. Int J Proj Manag 23(2):159–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2004.06.003

Labuschagne C, Brent AC (2008) An industry perspective of the completeness and relevance of a social assessment framework for project and technology management in the manufacturing sector. J Clean Prod 16(3):253–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2006.07.028

Lapinski AR, Horman MJ, Riley DR (2006) Lean processes for sustainable project delivery. J Constr Eng Manag 132(10):1083–1091. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2006)132:10(1083)

Levy Y, Ellis TJ (2006) A systems approach to conduct an effective literature review in support of information systems research. Inf Sci 9:181–212. https://doi.org/10.28945/479

Lotz M, Brent AC, Steyn H (2009) Addressing the need for a clean development mechanism (CDM) specific project management strategy. S Afr J Econ Manag Sci 12(2):228–241. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajems.v12i2.278

Maltzman R, Shirley D (2010) Green project management. CRC Press, Boca Raton

Marcelino-Sádaba S, González-Jaen LF, Pérez-Ezcurdia A (2015) Using project management as a way to sustainability. from a comprehensive review to a framework definition. J Clean Prod 99:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.03.020

Marnewick C (2017) Information system project’s sustainability capabality levels. Int J Proj Manag 35(6):1151–1166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.02.014

Marnewick C, Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ (2019) Exploring patterns of sustainability stimuli of project managers. Sustainability 11(18):5016. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11185016

Martens ML, Carvalho MM (2014) A conceptual framework of sustainability in project management oriented to success. In: 25th annual conference—production operations management society (POMS), Atlanta, GA (US), 9–12 May 2014

Martens ML, Carvalho MM (2016) The challenge of introducing sustainability into project management function: multiple-case studies. J Clean Prod 117:29–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.12.039

Martens ML, Carvalho MM, Martens CDP (2016) Sustainability and success in project management: a forum with academic experts. In: 25th international association for management of technology (IAMOT) conference proceedings: technology-future thinking, Orlando, FL (US), 15–19 May 2016, pp 1347–1360

Mishra P, Dangayach GS, Mittal ML (2011) An ethical approach towards sustainable project Success. Procedia Soc Behav Sci 25:338–344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.552

Misopoulos F, Michaelides R, Salehuddin M, Manthou V, Michaelides Z (2018) Addressing organisational pressures as drivers towards sustainability in manufacturing projects and project management methodologies. Sustainability 10(6):1–28. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10062098

Moehler R, Hope A, Algeo C (2018) Sustainable project management: revolution or evolution? Acad Manag Proc 218(1):13583. https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2018.13583abstract

Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG (2009) Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Med 6(7):e1000097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097

Molina-Azorín JF, Tarí JJ, Claver-Cortés E, López-Gamero MD (2009) Quality management, environmental management and firm performance: a review of empirical studies and issues of integration. Int J Manag Rev 11(2):197–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2008.00238.x

Morfaw J (2014) Fundamentals of project sustainability. In: PMI global congress 2014—North America, Phoenix, AZ (US), 25–28 October 2014. Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA (US)

Morioka SM, Carvalho MM (2016) A systematic literature review towards a conceptual framework for integrating sustainability performance into business. J Clean Prod 136:134–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.01.104

Müller A-L (2014) Sustainability and customer relationship management: current state of research and future research opportunities. Manag Rev Q 64(4):201–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-014-0104-x

Nightingale A (2009) A guide to systematic literature reviews. Surg Infect (larchmt) 27(9):381–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mpsur.2009.07.005

Obradović V, Todorović M, Bushuyev S (2018) Sustainability and agility in project management: contradictory or complementary? In: Shakhovska N, Medykovskyy MO (eds) Advances in intelligent systems and computing III. Springer, Cham, pp 522–532. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01069-0_37

Ojeda O, Reusch P (2013) Sustainable procurement—extending project procurement concepts and processes based on PMBOK. In: 2013 IEEE 7th international conference on intelligent data acquisition and advanced computing systems, Berlin (DE), 12–14 September 2013. IEEE, pp 530–536. https://doi.org/10.1109/IDAACS.2013.6662981

Økland A (2015) Gap analysis for incorporating sustainability in project management. Procedia Comput Sci 64:103–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.08.469

Okoli C (2015a) A guide to conducting a standalone systematic literature review. Commun Assoc Inf Syst 37(43):879–910. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2699362

Okoli C (2015b) The view from giants’ shoulders: developing theory with theory-mining systematic literature reviews. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2699362 . Accessed 27. June 2020. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2699362

Otegi-Olaso JR, Aguilar-Fernández ME, Cruz-Villazón C, Fuentes-Ardeo L (2015) Towards sustainable project management: a literature review. In: 19th international congress on project management and engineering, Granada (ES), 15–17 July 2015, pp 43–56

Petticrew M, Roberts H (2006) Systematic reviews in the social sciences: a practical guide. Blackwell, Oxford

Poon C, Silvius G (2019) Factors that stimulate project managers to consider sustainability; exploring the stimulus patterns of canadian project managers. J Mgmt Sustain 9(2):90–214. https://doi.org/10.5539/jms.v9n2p90

Pope J, Annandale D, Morrison-Saunders A (2004) Conceptualising sustainability assessment. Environ Impact Assess Rev 24(6):595–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2004.03.001

Project Management Institute (2013) A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK® guide, 5th edn. Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA (US)

Rahman MM, Ali M, Malik N, Ahmad MS, Asmi F (2017) Essential skills for project stakeholders identification: sustainability perspective. Int J Bus Manag Soc Res 7(8):43–55. https://doi.org/10.18533/ijbsr.v7i8.1061

Robichaud LB, Anantatmula VS (2008) The greening of project management: Adapting project management practices to deliver cost efficient green building construction. In: PMI research conference: defining the future of project management, Warsaw (PL), 13–16 July 2008. Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA (US)

Rodríguez-Olalla A, Avilés-Palacios C (2017) Integrating sustainability in organisations: an activity-based sustainability model. Sustainability 9(6):1072. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9061072

Rogers K, Jenkin TA, Corbett J, Webster J (2013) The effects of ‘green’ on IT/S projects: recycling the garbage can model. In: 46th Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Wailea, HI (US), 07–10 January 2013. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ (US), pp 974–983. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2013.518

Rousseau DM, Manning J, Denyer D (2008) Evidence in management and organizational science: assembling the field’s full weight of scientific knowledge through syntheses. Acad Manag Ann 2(1):475–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520802211651

Rusinko CA (2005) Using quality management as a bridge in educating for sustainability in a business school. Int J Sustain High Educ 6(4):340–350. https://doi.org/10.1108/14676370510623838

Sabini L, Muzio D, Alderman N (2017) Integrating sustainability into project management practices: the perspective of professional institutions. In: International research network on organizing by projects (IRNOP) 2017, Boston University (US), 11–14 June 2017. UTS, ePRESS, Sydney, NSW (AU), pp 1–17. https://doi.org/10.5130/pmrp.irnop2017.5661

Sam AG, Khanna M, Innes R (2009) Voluntary pollution reduction programs, environmental management, and environmental performance: an empirical study. Land Econ 85(4):692–711. https://doi.org/10.3368/le.85.4.692

Sánchez MA (2015) Integrating sustainability issues into project management. J Clean Prod 96:319–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.087

Schaltegger S, Wagner M (2006) Managing the business case for sustainability: the integration of social, environmental and economic performance. Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield

Schieg M (2009) The model of corporate social responsibility in project management. Bus Theory Pract 10(4):315–321. https://doi.org/10.3846/1648-0627.2009.10.315-321

Schipper RPJ, Silvius AJG (2017) The sustainable project management canvas. J Mod Proj Manag 4(3):51–59. https://doi.org/10.19225/JMPM01206

Schweizer ML, Nair R (2017) A practical guide to systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses in infection prevention: planning, challenges, and execution. Am J Infect Control 45(11):1292–1294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2017.08.004

Senner R (2011) Appraising the sustainability of project alternatives: an increasing role for cumulative effects assessment. Environ Impact Assess Rev 31(5):502–505. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2011.01.013

Shen LY, Wu M, Wang JY (2002) A model for assessing the feasibility of construction project in contributing to the attainment of sustainable development. J Constr Res 03(02):255–269. https://doi.org/10.1142/S1609945102000151

Siew RYJ, Balatbat MCA, Carmichael DG (2016) Measuring project sustainability maturity level-a fuzzy-based approach. Int J Sustain Dev 19(1):76–100. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJSD.2016.073680

Silvius AJG (2015) Considering sustainability in project management processes. In: Thomas KD (ed) Handbook of research on sustainable development and economics. Business science reference. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 311–334. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8433-1.ch014

Silvius AJG (2017) Sustainability as a new school of thought in project management. J Clean Prod 166:1479–1493. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.08.121

Silvius AJG, de Graaf M (2019) Exploring the project manager’s intention to address sustainability in the project board. J Clean Prod 208:1226–1240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.10.115

Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ (2010) A maturity model for integrating sustainability in projects and project management. In: 24th world congress of the international project management association (IPMA), Istanbul (TR), 1–3 November 2010

Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ (2012) Sustainability in the business case. In: Proceedings of the 26th IPMA world congress, Crete (GR), 29–31 October 2012, pp 1062–1069

Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ (2014) Sustainability in project management: a literature review and impact analysis. Soc Bus 4(1):63–96. https://doi.org/10.1362/204440814X13948909253866

Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ (2018) Four strategic postures for sustainability in the project-based organization. In: Tsai SB, Liu B, Li Y (eds) Green production strategies for sustainability. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 259–280. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-3537-9.ch014

Silvius AJG, Schipper RPJ, Planko J, van den Brink J, Köhler A (2012a) Sustainability in project management. Gower Publishing, Farnham

Silvius AJG, van den Brink J, Köhler A (2012b) The impact of sustainability on Project Management. In: Linger H, Owen J (eds) The project as a social system: Asia-Pacific perspectives on project management. Monash University Publishing, Victoria (AU), pp 183–200

Silvius AJG, Kampinga M, Paniagua S, Mooi H (2017) Considering sustainability in project management decision making; an investigation using Q-methodology. Int J Proj Manag 35(6):1133–1150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.01.011

Song F, Eastwood AJ, Gilbody S, Duley L, Sutton AJ (2000) Publication and related biases. Health Technol Assess 4(10):1–115. https://doi.org/10.3310/hta4100

Sutton AJ, Abrams KR, Jones DR, Sheldon TA, Song F (1998) Systematic reviews of trials and other studies. Health Technol Assess 2(19):1–276. https://doi.org/10.3310/hta2190

Talbot J, Venkataraman R (2011) Integration of sustainability principles into project baselines using a comprehensive indicator set. Int Bus Econ Res J 10(9):29–40. https://doi.org/10.19030/iber.v10i9.5624

Tam G (2010) Sustainability competence requirements for project manager. In: Knoepfel H (ed) Proceedings of the IPMA international expert seminar: survival and sustainability as challenges for projects, Zurich (CH), 18–19 February 2010, pp 175–185

Taylor T (2010) Sustainability interventions: for managers of projects and programmes—with some serious opportunities, challenges and dilemmas. dashdot Enterprises Ltd, London

Tharp J (2012) Project management and global sustainability. In: PMI® global congress 2012-EMEA, Marsailles (FR), 7–9 May 2012. Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, PA (US)

Thomas J, Mullaly M (2007) Understanding the value of project management: first steps on an international investigation in search of value. Proj Manag J 38(3):74–89. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.20007

Toljaga-Nikolić D, Todorović M, Bjelica D (2016) Sustainability and project management—where is the linkage? In: Jaško O, Marinković S (eds) Reshaping the future through sustainable business development and entrepreneurship, Zlatibor (RS), 10–13 June 2016. University of Belgrade: Faculty of organizational sciences, Belgrade (RS), pp 1088–1093

Torraco RJ (2016) Writing integrative literature reviews. Hum Resour Dev Rev 15(4):404–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484316671606

Tranfield D, Denyer D, Smart P (2003) Towards a methodology for developing evidence-informed management knowledge by means of systematic review. Br J Manag 14(3):207–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00375

Tufinio SP, Mooi H, Ravestijn W, Bakker H, Boorsma M (2013) Sustainability in project management: where are we? Ann Fac Eng Hunedoara Int J Eng 11(1):91–100

Turner RJ, Huemann M, Anbari FT, Bredillet CN (2010) Perspectives on projects. Routledge, New York

United Nations (2016) Global sustainable development report 2016. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, NY (US)

Valdes-Vasquez R, Klotz LE (2013) Social sustainability considerations during planning and design: framework of processes for construction projects. J Constr Eng Manag 139(1):80–89. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000566

Vatalis KI, Manoliadis OG, Mavridis DG (2012) Project Performance indicators as an innovative tool for identifying sustainability perspectives in green public procurement. Proc Econ Finance 1:401–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2212-5671(12)00046-9

Verrier B, Rose B, Caillaud E, Remita H (2014) Combining organizational performance with sustainable development issues: the Lean and Green project benchmarking repository. J Clean Prod 85:83–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.023

Wang N, Wei K, Sun H (2014) Whole life project management approach to sustainability. J Manag Eng 30(2):246–255. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000185

Webster J, Watson RT (2002) Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: writing a literature review. Manag Inf Syst Q 26(2):xiii–xxiii

Wilkins H (2003) The need for subjectivity in EIA: discourse as a tool for sustainable development. Environ Impact Assess Rev 23(4):401–414. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0195-9255(03)00044-1

Wolfswinkel JF, Furtmueller-Ettinger E, Wilderom CPM (2013) Using grounded theory as a method for rigorously reviewing literature. Eur J Inf Syst 22:45–55. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.51

World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our common future

Xiao Y, Watson M (2017) Guidance on conducting a systematic literature review. J Plan Educ Res 39(1):93–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X17723971

Xu D, Hua X (2011) The applications of sustainability in project management. In: Li W (ed) Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE international conference on emergency management and management sciences, Beijing (CN), 8–10 August 2011. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ (US), pp 693–697. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICEMMS.2011.6015776

Yao H, Shen L, Tan Y, Hao J (2011) Simulating the impacts of policy scenarios on the sustainability performance of infrastructure projects. Autom Constr 20(8):1060–1069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2011.04.007

Zdanytė K, Neverauskas B (2012) Selection appropriate project management tool for advanced organization. Econ Manag 17(2):782–787. https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.2.2213

Zhang J, Li H, Olanipekun AO, Bai L (2019) A successful delivery process of green buildings: the project owners’ view, motivation and commitment. Renew Energy 138:651–658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.02.002

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the participants of the doctoral colloquium at the chair of Corporate Sustainability Management, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg for their constructive comments.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Corporate Sustainability Management, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Findelgasse 7, 90402, Nuremberg, Germany

Kevin Friedrich

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kevin Friedrich .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest, additional information, publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Friedrich, K. A systematic literature review concerning the different interpretations of the role of sustainability in project management. Manag Rev Q 73 , 31–60 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-021-00230-z

Download citation

Received : 03 December 2020

Accepted : 17 July 2021

Published : 31 July 2021

Issue Date : February 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-021-00230-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Sustainable project management
Systematic literature review
Sustainability
Project management

JEL Classifications

Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

Write my thesis
Thesis writers
Buy thesis papers
Bachelor thesis
Master's thesis
Thesis editing services
Thesis proofreading services
Buy a thesis online
Write my dissertation
Dissertation proposal help
Pay for dissertation
Custom dissertation
Dissertation help online
Buy dissertation online
Cheap dissertation
Dissertation editing services
Write my research paper
Buy research paper online
Pay for research paper
Research paper help
Order research paper
Custom research paper
Cheap research paper
Research papers for sale
Thesis subjects
How It Works

187 Sustainability Topics For Research Papers In 2023

If you are a student of environmental science or even technology, sustainability is a very important topic for your research papers. These topics help you study the impact of mankind on the environment and different options that are available to prevent further deterioration of the planet. There is a lot of scope for research on this subject, making it one of the most common topics for dissertation or thesis writing. Here is a list of some of the best environmental sustainability research topics that will help you get started on your research paper and project.

The topics below are practical and easy because you can find a lot of information about them. Whether you are writing an informative or argumentative paper, these topics are the perfect starting point for you.

Environmental Sustainability Research Topics

These sustainability research topics are suitable for in-depth data and analysis. They are ideal for lengthy writing assignments.

Draw a comparison between different non-profit groups that are dedicated to improving sustainability.
Can custom sustainable designs for classrooms improve learning?
Is adding better natural lighting a sustainable way of saving on energy costs in large organizations?
What are the different technological innovations that are focused on reducing environmental pollution?
Does veganism help protect the environment?
Are hand dryers instead of paper towels a good idea for public restrooms?
How is pollution related to a country’s GDP?
Why do developing nations find it difficult to start recycling programs?
What are some political challenges that the environment faces globally?
Is American politics affecting the environment?
What are the benefits of choosing a vegan diet?
Do developed countries have the responsibility of helping third-world nations become more sustainable?
Are your current local environmental policies effective enough?
Should high schools and colleges ban the use of plastic?
How does food consumption affect the environment?
Why is Sweden so different from other countries when it comes to protecting the environment?
What are some technological advancements that help us reduce waste?
Why have we failed to reduce food wastage across the globe?
Is better recycling technology the solution to reducing waste in landfills?
How are plastic straws a threat to the environment of the Earth?
Can increased taxes items meant for single-use reduce waste from piling up in landfills?
Why do some states succeed in banning plastic bags while others fail?
How is overpopulation related to pollution?
In the next fifty years, how will the population impact the environment?
Do we have enough natural resources to support the exploding population across the globe?
What role does the government play in improving food resources?

Easy Sustainability Topics For Research

These sustainability topics for research are commonly used by students because they are practical in terms of research and the availability of data.

Is banning plastic a suitable solution to reduce environmental pollution?
What are the options available to make cutlery sustainable?
Should metros ban the use of plastic straws completely?
Why is our ecosystem so dependent on sea life?
Does any carbon footprint come from farm animals and how?
Why is it the need of the hour to prevent waste from being dumped into oceans?
How does getting fair-trade certificates to benefit university campuses?
Why should we increase the consumption of local produce?
How does supporting local businesses improve sustainability?
Should food donation programs be imposed in cities?
How has the emergence of farmers’ markets helped various communities?
Is buffet-style dining beneficial or harmful for efforts toward sustainability?
How can taxes be used to improve sustainability efforts?
How can leftovers from hotels and restaurants be disposed of sustainably?
What are the various benefits of food programs for the community?
Explain the process of growing vegan produce and its effect on the environment
How have sustainability efforts been affected globally as a result of the pandemic?
Is zero-waste living ideal?
What does sustainability mean in the 21st century?
How is supporting local food markets sustainable?
How does the greenhouse effect change as a result of less meat consumption?
Does eating red meat improve the quality of the air?
What are some benefits of switching to a plant-based diet?
Should school cafeterias increase the options for vegan food?
How do slaughterhouses impact the environment negatively?
What if all restaurants switched to buffet-style meals?

Best Sustainability Topics For Research Papers

Looking for sustainability topics for research that can ensure better grades. Here is a list of some of the best topics on sustainability that you can choose from.

Give a detailed plan for a sustainable restaurant.
Why do large cities struggle with reducing air pollution?
Should cities make it mandatory to reduce food waste in community gardens?
What are some of the primary benefits of improving public transportation systems?
Should rainwater harvesting become compulsory for large buildings?
Has technology benefited or harmed the environment?
Will reducing our dependence on technology help sustain the environment?
Are smaller classrooms beneficial or harmful to the environment?
How has the pandemic affected the environment positively?
What is the negative impact of the pandemic on the environment?
Can reducing the number of school days improve sustainability efforts?
How do school campuses contribute to environmental deterioration? How can it be reduced?
What are the best ways to teach children about non-renewable and renewable resources?
What are some immediate changes that you can make in your life to become more sustainable?
Create a detailed sustainability plan for your family
Can maintaining a constant temperature at home reduce energy costs? Support your argument with data.
Chart out a detailed zero-waste living plan that can be implemented easily.
What is the relationship between community health and the environment?
Case studies of the impact of pollution on the health of people.
How do developing nations improve their access to water resources?
Can government policies truly help the environment?
Will creating better public spaces like riverbeds and parks improve sustainability?
What are some measures that can be used to improve access to clean water in developing nations?
What are some measures taken by Denmark to reduce food waste?
Discuss Sweden’s efforts to use waste for heating and energy.
How can we reduce pollution and improve the quality of care at the same time?

Environmental Research Topics for College Students

These sustainability topics for research papers are perfect for college students as they are most relevant and extremely interesting as well.

What are the best ways to deal with medical waste?
How has awareness about recycling improved sustainability efforts?
Is global warming false as some world leaders claim?
What are some ecological challenges that the US will face in the coming decades?
Will green universities improve students’ mental health?
How can growing your food help in improving sustainability?
What are the best measures that communities can take to prevent waste
What are the best ways to use landscaping sustainably?
Is gardening around the house a good way of improving the quality of air amidst growing pollution rates?
Should fireworks be banned?
How can we raise cattle sustainably?
How is the fashion industry impacting the environment?
Discuss the importance of sustainable fashion in the world we live in.
How can community gardens help cities become more sustainable?
How can you measure the success of a smart city by the well-being of its inhabitants?
What are smart cities? Can you provide examples?
How can digitization be used to pursue a sustainability agenda?
What are the various ecological dimensions of sustainability?
Should governments provide more grants for research on sustainability?
Discuss some sustainable measures that we can learn from our ancestors.
What is the impact of America’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement?
What are the Paris Climate Agreement and its important terms?
How can changing policies from a macro level to a micro level improve sustainability efforts?
What are the best measures taken by the UN to improve sustainability?
Greta Thunberg: The poster child of climate change or a publicity stunt?
The most impactful environmentalists over the last decade.

Sustainability Topics for All Levels

These sustainability research paper topics are perfect for you whether you are writing a high school paper or a college paper. They are versatile and easy to compile.

How will our carbon footprint impact the generations to come?
What are the different types of sustainability?
What does sustainability education mean?
How can your school or college improve its regulations to make the campus sustainable?
Are there any sustainability programs that have been implemented in your school or college?
Do solar panels on buildings help reduce energy costs?
What are the benefits of including sustainability education in the school curriculum?
How does non-plastic waste in the oceans impact the environment?
How to prevent the greenhouse effect from agriculture?
Should governments support and invest in more solar technologies?
How can a home become energy efficient with solar energy?
How does an improved ventilation system improve sustainability?
What are the measures taken by modern schools and colleges in improving sustainability?
How can modern classrooms make use of natural light for better sustainability?
How can we save on energy by setting systems off when they are still idle.
What are the various benefits of changing classroom timings to optimize the use of natural lighting?
Is it possible to apply a game theory to manage challenges with sustainability?
What is the difference between biocapacity and carbon footprint in various regions?
What are some challenges faced by companies when it comes to conserving energy?
Can you name some environmental groups that have been most effective in cleaning up plastic from the oceans and how they have achieved their goals?
What are some positive effects of reducing computer screen brightness?
Name some countries with the poorest environmental laws?
A case study of the most sustainable nations in the world.
The effect of plastic on the environment in detail.
What are some effective measures of saving water?
A study of oil spills and their effect on marine life over the last decade.

Environmental Project Topics

Have an environmental sustainability topic due? This sustainability topics list is all you need to present projects that grab the attention of your audience.

What are some barriers and drivers of sustainability research?
How does on-campus sustainable research help increase practical solutions for environmental sustainability?
Provide a business case to install new lighting systems
What are some lighting systems available today that are most sustainable?
Needs luxury led to an unsustainable environment?
What are the benefits of using electric cars?
The most impactful evidence to prove that global warming is real.
Do political agendas suppress sustainability efforts? How?
What are some of the major threats of climate change?
The importance of teaching children about sustainability
What are some of the most common examples of wasteful living that you see around you?
The relationship between undernutrition, obesity, and climate change.
Why has ice loss across the Himalayas become rapid over the last 40 years?
How quickly are we depleting natural resources?
How does the medical industry contribute to global warming?
What is the Lancet Countdown on climate change and health?
Does climate change impact the health of newborn children?
How has industrialization helped and harmed the environment?
The use of heating and cooling systems and their impact on the environment.
The harmful impact of the film industry on the environment
Celebrities who have successfully endorsed anti-climate change campaigns
KFC and the Amazon Rainforests: What was the chaos about?
How has the fast-food industry impacted the environment?
The contribution of the aviation industry toward global warming
What is a carbon tax and how can it help improve efforts towards sustainability?
Write about the development of waste streams over the last few decades.
Are newspapers viable in times of sustainability?
The importance of enhancing biodiversity to reduce environmental deterioration.
Can improving safety regulations for cyclists contribute to sustainability?
What are some of the most sustainable multi-national companies? Discuss their strategies.

Sustainable Development Topics

Development is a very important topic for research paper writing for students of environmental studies. Here are some sustainability topics for research related to development to help you get started.

How has economic globalization impacted the environment?
What is the relationship between autocracy, democracy, wars, and natural resources?
How does a finite environmental capacity impact political and economic development?
Changing human behavior and the use of natural resources.
Adaptation and mitigation policies to solve environmental issues.
The difference between the approach of a political institution and market-based requirements towards sustainability.
How has the automobile industry taken steps towards sustainability?
What are some effects of Green Technology on the economy?
What is the advantage of using Green Technology in organizations?
A detailed study of the Global Environmental Sustainability Framework to technology.
How can digitization be used to improve awareness about sustainability?
Is it practical to implement Green technology in developing countries? What are the best measures that can be taken?
How can construction become sustainable?
How can Green Thinking help improve sustainability?
What is the perception of green energy and sustainability in multinational organizations?
What are some sustainability policies that have helped developing nations?
The impact of digitization on sustainability
What are the current trends in Green Technology?
Should builders receive incentives for constructing sustainable structures?
Incentives for sustainability in industrial settings.
The most effective option for disposing of electronic waste.
How advancement in medical technology has impacted the environment
The relationship between motorsports and the environment.
Do large public events like concerts and sports events impact sustainability?
The impact of styrofoam cups on the environment.
Advancements in technology have contributed to sustainability.
Scientists who have contributed effectively towards sustainability.

If you still need assistance with thesis writing , our experts can help you find a fast and cost-effective solution. Get in touch with us now for expert writers and top-notch papers that will surely improve your grades.

Sustainability Dissertation Topics

Students can use the campus to test solutions to real-world sustainability challenges as part of a Living Lab project. Here are some sustainability dissertation ideas.

19 November 2022

Dissertation topics

Living lab for a positive climate .

Our goal is to have net zero-arbon buildings by 2024 and to be a net zero-carbon institution by 2030.

Research topics include:

Review UCL buildings for climate change resilience and implement adaptation measures
Research into enhancing video conferencing for large events
Sourcing renewable energy providers for gas to enable a zero-carbon heating supply
Research on academic travel reduction initiatives
Research on UCL’s new Climate Accountability Scheme (combining a carbon price with behavioural nudges) to incentivise climate action by departments.
Reducing the climate impact of UCL’s hospitality

Living lab on reducing waste and consumption

Our goal is to reduce waste per person by 20% and to become a single-use plastic-free campus by 2024.

How to eliminate plastic across UCL
How to increase recycling at UCL (campaign)
Labels and messaging on food

Consumers are becoming more aware of sustainability considerations in food production and consumption. In addition to the traditional dietary and nutritional requirements, consumers are seeking labels and certifications to know where and how food is made, what it is made from, its carbon footprint and sustainability credentials. UCL would like to investigate what information we should supply, how this should be displayed, communicated and marketed, to allow our communities to make informed decisions and promote a flexitarian diet. It is anticipated this would require the following activity:

Developing questionnaires for opinions on carbon footprinting, carbon pricing and other sustainability information they want to know about, to inform point-of-sale purchasing choices in outlets.
Comparing marketing of food as “vegan” or “plant-based” and the impacts on consumer’s perceptions.
Investigating the notion of “label fatigue “where consumers are overwhelmed by information on packaging, and the impact of the project on this.
Baselining data on food choices.
Developing a labelling system for packaging/ refectory display boards – using data and survey responses.
Trialling the labelling system.
Surveying responses.
Recording food choices and comparing to baseline, to identify behavioural change.

Living lab on biodiversity

Our aim is to create 10,0000m2 of extra biodiverse space by 2024 – equivalent to more than one and a half football pitches as well as increasing health and wellbeing for the Bloomsbury community.

Research topics include:

Research on different types of green infrastructure e.g. green walls, roofs, community gardens, and where UCL could implement them.
Research on biodiversity and wildlife across UCL’s estate.
Research on air pollution levels across UCL’s estate

Dissertation guide

Step 1: choose your topic.

Take a look at the sustainability research topics list to see if they interest you.
If you require data on energy, travel, procurement, UCL’s sustainability engagement programmes or water please email Sustainable UCL to request this.
If you have alternative research topic ideas for a sustainable living lab dissertation or project please contact us.

Step 2: Discuss with your department

Speak with your supervisor or someone in your department about undertaking a living lab dissertation and refining your topic.
They can advise you on scales, time scales and marking criteria.

Step 3: Contact Sustainable UCL

Arrange a meeting with Sustainable UCL to ensure your project can make a valuable contribution to UCL.
Sustainable UCL can provide data and put you in touch with relevant operational staff such as catering members and plumbers to test out your ideas.
You can invite your supervisor to this meeting, but it is not a requirement.

Step 4: Undertake your dissertation

Sustainable UCL can meet a further 2 times or 2 hours maximum to support your dissertation or project.

Step 5: Sharing data and findings

One of the principles of the Living Lab Project is to make available any additional data you generate for others to build on, so the work can keep ‘living’
Once your dissertation is completed, we require a concise 2-3 page briefing or presentation on your findings so that we can implement your ideas onto campus or future students and staff can build on your research. Living Lab projects usually spark plenty of ideas for further research, including aspects you were not able to cover during the project.

Sustainable Education

Green Office Model online course
Case studies
Membership Programme for Green Offices
Ambassador Track
Green Office Alumni Network
GOM Sustainability Network
Vision of the Movement

80 sustainability research topics for students to explore green campus issues

You’re planning your thesis, paper or capstone? You want to do a student research project with impact. We have outlined a range of sustainability research topics for you. The list specifically focuses on how to green your campus . Take action to make your university more sustainable!

Our list of sustainability research topics helps students investigate green campus issues.

Sustainability research topics: Education

Some sustainability research topics on education for sustainable development :

What are the strengths and weaknesses of different definitions of sustainability education? Which definition could your university adopt?
To what extent is sustainability education already implemented in the curriculum of your university?
What are the strengths and limitations of advancing sustainability education within your curriculum?
Where does your university stand with regards to sustainability education compared to other institutions of higher education?
What is the demand among students for more, different or better sustainability education?
How can existing sustainability projects on campus be used for educational purposes, e.g. visit solar cells on rooftops as part of engineering classes?

Sign-up to the FREE online course to establish your Green Office

5 weeks. One email per week. Unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our data policy .

What definition of sustainability research should your university embrace?
To what extent is sustainability research already practised at your university?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the institution’s sustainability research portfolio compared to other institutions of higher education?
What are the drivers of and barriers to sustainability research at your university?
How could sustainability research help students to study sustainability issues on campus and inform practical change projects?
What are the opportunities and costs associated with promoting sustainability research? What could a plan of action look like to strategically advance it?

Some sustainability research topics on community engagement and awareness:

What are the perceptions of and attitudes towards sustainability by students and staff?
What are ways to promote sustainable lifestyles among students?
To what extent are students and staff aware of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ?
How aware are students and staff about the institution’s sustainability ambitions?
What are the benefits and disadvantages of approaches to communicate the university’s sustainability efforts better?
What are the challenges to involve students and staff in the university’s sustainability efforts?
Which ways to increase the engagement of the campus community exist, for example by organising sustainability events ?

For inspiration, read our post on 10 projects to engage students on the SDGs .

Explore sustainability topics for research papers on different issues related to greening campus operations:

What are the opportunities and costs of improving the building insulations to save energy?
What lighting systems exist on the market that are more energy efficient?
What would a business case look like to install a new lighting system?
Where are the main consumers of energy on campus?
What innovative energy technologies are developed at the institution itself? To what extent could those be directly installed and tested in buildings?
What lux values are sufficient for work and study places so that places are appropriately lit without wasting too much electricity?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of different sustainable building standards?
Which building standards would be most appropriate to inform the institution’s sustainable building policy?
What are the costs and benefits associated with different types of green roofs?
On which buildings could green roofs be installed?
To what extent are catering and food products certified as organic or fair trade food?
How much and why do students attach importance to organic and fair trade products sold in the cafeteria?
How can students and employees be made more aware of the multiple benefits – e.g. health, environment, economics – of sustainable (organic, fair trade, local) food ?
How much are students willing to pay for more organic or fair trade products?
What types and amounts of waste are produced by whom and where at the institution?
How did waste streams develop over the last years?
What are innovative practices in reducing waste going to landfill or incineration? How could those be applied?
What are the costs and benefits associated with waste recycling ?
What options exist to switch from paper-based to more digital forms of working and studying to reduce paper consumption?
What are the environmental, economic, and social benefits and disadvantages of different options to advance more digital working and studying?

More sustainability research topics on campus operations:

Biodiversity

What species live at different campus locations?
To what extent do students, faculty and staff value this biodiversity?
What are ways to enhance biodiversity on campus?

Greenhouse-gase (GHG)

What are the pros and cons of different GHG accounting standards?
Which standard should the institution use to develop a GHG emissions inventory ?
Where are GHG emissions released at the institution?
How big is the institution’s GHG footprint?

Procurement

What does sustainable procurement mean in the context of a university?
How is procurement currently organised? To what extent are sustainability criteria already applied in tenders?
To what extent could the university implement sustainability criteria that go beyond the legal minimum to advance the environmental, economic and social benefits of tenders?
What are the largest consumers of water?
What is the direct and indirect water-footprint of the institution?
What are opportunities and costs to reduce water usage?

Transportation and mobility

How do students and staff currently travel to the university and as part of their study or work?
What is the environmental impact of these travel behaviours? How could the impact be reduced?
What best practices exist among companies and other institutions of higher education to reduce staff travel or incentivize different travel behaviours?

Behaviour change

What is the potential to reduce resource consumption through behaviour change?
What are the best practices of behaviour change interventions at institutions of higher education?
To what extent could these projects be also applied at your university?

Sustainability research topics on governance, strategy and reporting

Sustainability research topics on governance issues:

What does sustainability mean for institutions of higher education?
How does a comprehensive concept of a sustainable institution of higher education look like?
How could the university’s long-term sustainability vision look like? How could this vision be realized through a roadmap?
What are innovative ways to develop sustainability strategies for a university through a bottom-up approach?
What ethical imperatives would demand that institutions of higher education care for their impact on the planet, people and profit?
What are the responsibilities of institutions of higher education to contribute to global challenges, such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change?

Monitoring and reporting

What data is important to monitor the institution’s environmental impact? How can this data be collected and analysed?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of different sustainability reporting standards?
Which sustainability reporting standards should the university adhere to?
What are efficient ways to organize sustainability reporting within the organization?
What is the best way to communicate results among students, staff and outside actors?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of different methodologies (e.g. payback or Net Present Value) to calculate the financial costs and benefits of sustainability investments?
Which methodology should the institution apply?
To what extent could sustainability projects be financed through a revolving loan fund?
What are the possibilities to involve outside organizations through energy contracting?
What subsidies are available at the European, national and city level to develop a green campus?
How could the university use these financing options to advance its energy transition?
What are approaches to integrate negative externalities into the accounting schemes of the university?
What would be the opportunities, benefits and risks associated with establishing an energy company that’s owned by the university?
What are the best practices to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at public institutions around the world?
How can incentive schemes be changed so that energy end-users directly benefit from reductions in energy usage?

We hope this list inspired you to find a sustainability topic for research papers.

12 sustainability documentaries to educate yourself and get inspired
Green guide: 15 tips for a sustainable student lifestyle
12 sustainability teaching resources about green campuses

+44 7897 053596
[email protected]

Get an experienced writer start working

Review our examples before placing an order, learn how to draft academic papers, top 43+ environmental sustainability dissertation topics in 2024.

Economics Dissertation Topics

Fashion Dissertation Topics & Ideas 2024 | 35+ Free Topics

Dissertation Topics

Environmental-Sustainability-Dissertation-Topics

Environmental sustainability refers to the responsible use and conservation of natural resources to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. It covers a wide range of topics, allowing students to explore issues related to the environment, conservation, and sustainable practices. Thus, students must choose the best environmental sustainability dissertation topics for their research.

Sustainability Dissertation Examples

Premier Dissertations has developed a list of 43+ exciting environment and sustainability research topics for researchers.

You can WhatsApp or email us if you would like to select any of the listed business administration topics.

3-Step Dissertation Process!

Get 3+ Topics

Dissertation Proposal

Get Final Dissertation

Latest dissertation topics in environmental sustainability 2024, list of environmental sustainability research topics.

Testimonials

Very satisfied students

This is our reason for working. We want to make all students happy, every day. Review us on Sitejabber

Fill the Form

Writer Starts Working

3+ Topics Emailed!

What is environmental sustainability and why is it important.

Today, the world is facing the worst implications of climate change in the form of global warming, rising sea levels, droughts and desertification. Environmental sustainability involves responsible and ethical practices that seek to preserve and protect the Earth's natural resources and ecosystems for present and future generations within the framework of environmental law . Human-induced factors, such as the extensive consumption of fossil fuels, have flamed environmental change at a rapid pace . By promoting sustainable practices, we aim to maintain a balance between human activities and the health of the planet, ensuring that our actions do not compromise the well-being of ecosystems or the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

How to Write a Good Environmental Sustainability Dissertation Topic?

To craft a good environmental sustainability dissertation topic, start by exploring relevant environmental science paper topics and research project ideas. It encompasses a broad spectrum of environmental research topics, including environmental engineering dissertation topics, environmental research paper ideas, environmental science research topics, research papers on environment al issues and problems, environmental science project topics, thesis topics and environmental sustainability dissertation topics . Ensure these topics contribute to the ongoing dialogue on sustainability, offering innovative perspectives or solutions. By integrating these elements, your environmental science dissertation topics can make a meaningful impact in the field of environmental science, addressing key challenges and advancing understanding of sustainable practices.

How to Write a Winning Dissertation Topic

Be sure to check our website frequently because our expert writers will add to the list of topics. They are free for students to read and get an idea for their dissertations. GOOD LUCK!

Get an Immediate Response

Discuss your requirements with our writers

Get 3+ Free Environmental Sustainability Dissertation Topics within 24 hours?

Your Number

Academic Level Select Academic Level Undergraduate Masters PhD

Area of Research

Discover More:

100+ Correlational Research Topics

180+ ABM Research Topics For Students | 2024

Ideas for research projects

Here at the University of Leeds all students can integrate sustainability into their degree . One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing this is through your dissertation or other research projects.

The Sustainability Service has a library of case studies and potential research projects for students. We can also support you in developing your research through the Leeds Living Lab .

Why do a sustainability research project?

There are lots of reasons for incorporating sustainability into your studies.

Here are just a few:

Increase your employability by developing new skills and demonstrating knowledge and awareness of key global challenges faced by employers and society.
Sustainability is interdisciplinary, so most students can integrate it into their research in a way that aligns with their interests – from exploring low carbon energy in rural areas, to investigating the social impact of the arts on ethical purchasing.
 Tailor your research project to address a sustainability challenge that can drive action, deliver change and have a positive impact on society.
 You could showcase your work and share your learning at the annual University of Leeds Student Sustainability Research Conference or even enter the University of Leeds Annual Sustainability Awards .

How do I develop a sustainability research project?

First up, you need to decide what you want to research. You might already have a topic in mind. You might even be ready to crack on without any support from the Sustainability Service. That’s great and if so please do let us know what you are doing and email us at [email protected] .

If you need a bit more inspiration, we have a list of research project ideas below. We can help you think about how you could research these through your degree.

You could also carry out your research as a Leeds Living Lab , using the University as your test bed and driving real sustainable change to your own place of study. We can provide support for these projects and set up collaborations with teams both within the University, such as Estates Services, or externally with partners in the city.

If you are still unsure and need some support, discuss with your supervisor or module leader before contacting us at [email protected] .

Research project ideas

Air quality.

An analysis of air quality of specific locations on campus (i.e. car park) and recommendations for improvement.
Air quality studies of the University campus.

Biodiversity

Identifying the long-term social value of greenspaces in the workplace at the University of Leeds.
Creating cultural change around campus green spaces. How to ensure staff use green spaces during work hours in a hybrid working environment.
Estimating the amenity value of student, staff and community engagement with the Roger Stevens pond.
Review of the City’s biodiversity strategy and what it means for the University of Leeds.
Evaluation of the success of the Roger Stevens Pond in increasing campus biodiversity (Urban Water Living Lab)
Natural Flood Management trials at the Brownlee Centre site.
The unavoidable hypocrisy of the climate change researcher?
Exploring student engagement with the University of Leeds Climate Plan.
Building community cohesion in the LS6 postcode region of Leeds amongst rising conflict and tensions between students and permanent residents.
Twenty years on from "studentification". Are students still impacting communities for the better and worse?
The COVID effect. What have been and what are the main impacts on student, university and Leeds communities relationships?
Community engagement opportunities of the Sustainable Garden and Roger Stevens Pond.
Student's attitudes and behaviours to Changeover.

Environmental management policy

Identification and analysis potential gaps in environmental governance after the Brexit transition period at the University of Leeds.
Identifying applicable environmental compliance obligations for the University in a particular area.
Assessing the knowledge and engagement of the University Environmental Management System amongst staff and developing recommendations for improvement.

Ethical consumption

Investigating ways of galvanising University students for fair trade and trade justice.
Understanding differences in student perceptions towards Fairtrade as a standard, and fair trade as a movement.
Exploring the influences that determine student participation in purchasing Fairtrade products.
Encouraging consumer behaviour change around reducing food waste in the University of Leeds restaurants and cafes.

Single use plastic

Identification and removal of single-use plastics in packaging waste, using the University of Leeds as a study.
Identifying alternatives to black plastic plant pots and conducting a feasibility assessment for use by University Ground and Gardens.
Lifecycle analysis of particular single-use plastic items and/or comparisons of the lifecycle impacts of single-use plastic alternatives.
How to achieve systematic change in an organisation to achieve a reduction in plastic production, consumption or waste management with specific recommendations for the University of Leeds.
Achieving behaviour change around the use of single-use plastics including recommendations for the University of Leeds.
Achieving behaviour change around the use of reusable products including recommendations for the University of Leeds.
Identification of single-use plastics in a School or specific area (i.e. teaching/labs/events) and feasibility assessment of alternatives.
The impacts of creating centralised stores at the University on packaging.

Sustainable curriculum

Leeds Sustainable Curriculum: Review of staff training and resources offered by other institutions including recommendations for the University of Leeds.
Enhancing educational engagement in the Sustainable Garden and Roger Stevens Pond.
Sustainable graduations at the University of Leeds.
Sustainability of teaching practice at the University of Leeds.

Sustainable design and engineering

Sustainable solutions to subsidence of embankment supporting a large 3G pitch

Sustainable transport

An assessment of urban cycling infrastructure good practice and and solutions for the University of Leeds campus.
An assessment of how politics affects the development of transport infrastructure and the impacts of this on University of Leeds Sustainable Travel targets.
Assessing the impacts of the University's new and improved Cycle to Work Scheme on equality and inclusion.
From climate principles to climate action: developing a net-zero university travel policy

Volunteering

A review of sustainability volunteering and resources offered by other institutions including recommendations for the University of Leeds.
Review of the City’s waste strategy and what it means for the University of Leeds.

Each year the Sustainability Service supports dissertations and research projects by students across a whole range of disciplines. Here are a couple of examples:

A water consumption study on the University of Leeds Western Campus, Madeleine Eaves – School of Civil Engineering, 2019
Single-use plastic reduction at UK higher learning institutions: Motivations and best practice, David Burt – MSc Climate Change and Environmental Policy, 2019

If you have completed a sustainability-themed dissertation or research project and would like to share your findings with us please send them to [email protected]

Useful resources:

UN Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics
NUS ‘From Art to Zoo Management: embedding sustainability in UK higher and further education’
University of Leeds Library Final Chapter
Skills@Library also host workshops and events

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Find out more about our impact on the SDGs .

Get Certified
Download our free P5 Standard
Get the Sustainable Project Management Book
Our Online On-Demand Courses

Sustainable or Regenerative Development?

Our focus at GPM is on Regenerative development. Everything we do is from the lens of regeneration. Understanding that there are a lot of terms out there it can be confusing. Sustainability is a household term and so we have decided to use it to describe our work but how we go about is not how the mainstream commonly understands it. Here is the difference.

Sustainable development is an approach to economic growth and development that seeks to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It aims to balance environmental, social, and economic concerns in order to achieve a healthy and prosperous society that can continue into the future.

Regenerative development , on the other hand, goes beyond sustainability by actively working to restore and improve the natural systems upon which human society depends. It aims to repair and revitalize ecosystems rather than simply using them in a sustainable way. This approach seeks to not only preserve the environment for future generations but to leave it in a better state than it was found.

In general, regenerative development is seen as a more proactive and transformative approach to addressing environmental and social issues, while sustainable development is more focused on maintaining the status quo. GPM uses regenerative approaches in all of our work.

Green Project Management®

Green Project Management® or Sustainable Project Management is the application of methods, tools, and techniques to achieve a stated objective while considering the project outcome’s entire lifecycle to ensure a net positive environmental, social, and economic impact. As the project management profession matures, it is changing its view of what project success is. The profession is now moving beyond its traditional focus on time, cost, and scope to place the emphasis on delivering the objectives in the business case while maintaining an asset lifecycle focus. The next step in the evolutionary process is to adopt a sustainability ethos where projects do not come at the expense of the planet and its limited resources. Project management must make greater efforts to address each project’s social and environmental impacts so that the world we live in and that we are borrowing from future generations can regenerate and be sustained. In order to take this step, project management must move to a wider and well-rounded view of the project’s impact and value as illustrated below.

What are Sustainable Projects?

GPM defines a project as “an investment that requires a set of coordinated activities performed over a finite period of time in order to accomplish a unique result in support of the desired outcome.” In order for a project to be sustainable, the focus must be placed on value creation. Project requirements and constraints must include mitigation of negative environmental, social, and economic impacts and attainment of the benefits outlined in the business case.

A sustainable project will also adhere to GPM’s six principles for sustainable projects:

Sustainable or Green Project Manager

A sustainable or green project manager is an individual who manages a project by employing a collection of diverse but integrated competencies to deliver on the objectives detailed in the business case. This is done by using and tailoring the appropriate methods, tools, and techniques for leading the project team, engaging stakeholders, and progressing the project while still safeguarding society, the environment, and human rights.

Sustainable project managers contribute to organizational goals while navigating complex cultures and dynamics to create benefits that support short- and long-term business strategies while simultaneously addressing our planetary constraints. As such, sustainable project managers have an important role to play as advocates, advisors, ambassadors, and architects of a better world.

To learn more, get a copy of our standard here.

Sustainability: Sustainability Research Topics

Find Journal Articles
Databases for Sustainabilty Research
Carbon Footprint
Climate Change
Green Building & Infrastructure
Green Economy/Technology
Materials, Waste & Recycling
Social Sustainability
Sustainability in Higher Education
Global Environment Overview

Click on any of the topics above for more topic-specific resources.

Related Guides

Climate Change This guide presents selected resources related to climate change and global warming.
Life Cycle Assessment Guide This guide provides selected resources related to LCA, which is a technique to assess the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals This guide presents resources related to the themes of the 17 SDGs.
Latin American and Caribbean Studies - Environment & Sustainability This guide provides selected resources on the topics of the environment and sustainability as they relate to these regions. Each resource category provides sources on a regional and country basis.
Earth Day 2023 This guide presents selected resources such as books, journals, films & videos on Earth Day topics.
Sustainability resources on JSTOR A research guide to the wide range of journals, ebooks, and more than 5,400 Open Access research reports in the field of sustainability. The subjects of resilience and sustainability are explored broadly, covering research on environmental stresses and their impact on society.
<< Previous: Databases for Sustainabilty Research
Next: Carbon Footprint >>
Last Updated: Aug 3, 2023 8:47 AM
URL: https://libguides.wpi.edu/sustainability

How can we help?

[email protected]
Consultation
508-831-5410

Home » Blog » Dissertation » Topics » Project Management » Project Management Dissertation Topics (28 Examples) For Research

Project Management Dissertation Topics (28 Examples) For Research

Mark Aug 17, 2021 Aug 12, 2021 Project Management No Comments

Project management refers to the processes, knowledge, methods, experience, and skills utilized to achieve the planned strategic project goals. If you are looking for dissertation topics on project management, you have visited the right site. We have gathered and listed some very interesting and workable project management dissertations topics and research topics on project management. […]

We have gathered and listed some very interesting and workable project management dissertations topics and research topics on project management. you can take help from our expert writers to meet your requirements and deadlines. To begin with, you can select any topic from the list of project management dissertation topics and start writing a brief proposal. It will help in choosing the best topic that you find interesting to work on.

A list Of Project Management Dissertation Topic

A review on building project management skills – a look at current and past practices.

Exploring the major findings on trends related to project complexity

Analysing the process theory for accumulating project management knowledge.

To study the impact of implementation of project management on the success of construction projects.

Comparing and contrasting the different project management techniques – Agile, Scrum, and Waterfall.

A literature review on the advantages of different project risk management tools.

Studying the strategies and approaches related to sustainable project management.

Identifying and investigating the political risk management strategies related to international construction projects.

Exploring the major reasons behind delays in construction projects.

A literature review on the stakeholder theory in project management.

A bibliometric analysis of the project management success.

Examining the success criteria and critical success factors in project management.

A study on exploring the increasing project management involvement in pre-execution phases of projects.

Studying the strategies to manage different types of risks related to construction projects.

How do macro-environmental factors affect the success of construction projects?

To study the project management practices related to enterprise resource planning system projects.

Impact of different leadership styles on the success of projects.

Exploring the emerging technological trends in the context of project management.

Analysing the growing role of women in project management – a future perspective.

How to identify a suitable sustainable project management approach?

Exploring the relationship between project management and entrepreneurship.

Revisiting information systems in the context of project management success in the contemporary and modern era.

Studying the development models in the IT sector from 2008 to 2018 considering its impact on project management.

Analysing the people-oriented principles and values in the context of agile project management.

A review of the evolution of the relationship between knowledge management and project management.

Evaluation of the factors behind the failure of project management practices.

How to address and manage conflicts during project management.

Studying the increasing demand for experienced and skilled project managers and project management techniques.

Topic With Mini-Proposal (Paid Service)

Along with a topic, you will also get;

An explanation why we choose this topic.
2-3 research questions.
Key literature resources identification.
Suitable methodology with identification of raw sample size, and data collection method
View a sample of topic consultation service

Get expert dissertation writing help to achieve good grades

Writer consultation before payment to ensure your work is in safe hands.
Free topic if you don't have one
Draft submissions to check the quality of the work as per supervisor's feedback
Free revisions
Complete privacy
Plagiarism Free work
Guaranteed 2:1 (With help of your supervisor's feedback)
2 Instalments plan
Special discounts