Project Initiation Process And Sustainable Development

Increasing interest in the topic of sustainable development is observable in business context (Porter & Kramer, 2011). The necessity to integrate sustainability principles into core processes of a company to receive performance benefits are widely discussed (Wagner 2007). During the last years increasing attention on the consideration of sustainability principles in projects was provided in the research as well as practice community. Projects strongly contribute to value creation in companies and societies, as a significant part of the global gross domestic product is initiated by projects (Turner et al 2010). The PMI sponsored research project SustPM – Sustainable Development & Project Management has started integrating sustainability principles such as economic, ecologic, social-orientation, short, mid, long term-orientation, local, regional, global-orientation and values-based into project initiation and project management, based on the assumption that the consideration of sustainability principles improves the quality of the project initiation and of the project management process (Gareis, et al 2012). While the project was started with focus on project management, in the course of the project the importance of considering sustainability principles as early as possible, especially when describing and analyzing the investment and defining the project and its context became evident. The project initiation process is considered as most relevant for integrating sustainability principles as in this early phase the most influence can be taken (Gareis et al 2012).