Importance of Integrating Sustainability Principles into Project Management Competency Standards

The balance between economic growth and social wellbeing has been around as a political and managerial challenge for many years, and the concept of sustainability has grown in recognition and importance. The pressure on companies to broaden its economic and sustainability performance reporting and accountability to shareholders has increased. The integration of the concepts of sustainability in projects and project management became very significant. Today modern companies have to implement the principles of sustainability in their operational activities, and this process requires changers including: finance, marketing, manufacturing, communications. Project managers are regarded in organizations as �change agents� who have a strong influence on the sustainability of organizations. Translating the principles of sustainability into strategic and operational reality project managers need to obtain some competencies that provide them with the necessary tools and abilities to manage such important changes and to integrate sustainability standards and ideas into company�s day-to-day operations. However, the standards of project management fail to address the role that project managers play in realizing sustainable development, and project managers are lacking competencies to consider the sustainability aspects of their projects. This �competency gap� of the project manager has appeared in the standards of project management competencies. Many scientific scholars and practitioners are aware of strong importance of engaging sustainability into the modern models of project managers� competencies, to prepare project managers for their pivotal role in realizing sustainability of organizations. The central question of this paper is: Which new competencies should be added to the standards of project management competencies? This paper also reports a literature-based analysis of the coverage of the competencies required for considering sustainability aspects, in the standards of project management competencies. In this article the authors present a review of different scientific approaches to the sustainability competencies of project managers and make an attempt to establish the significance of closing the gap between the set of project managers� competences and the required competencies from the point of sustainability.