Sabini, L. orcid.org/0000-0002-7417-157X and Alderman, N. (2021) The Paradoxical Profession: Project Management and the Contradictory Nature of Sustainable Project Objectives. Project Management Journal, 52 (4). pp. 379-393. ISSN 8756-9728
Abstract
Professions are undergoing a significant change in how they integrate environmental and social objectives into their core values. This article examines the situation in which those working in the project management profession are expected to work under contradictory sustainability constraints. In this article, we investigate the tensions project managers experience when addressing sustainable objectives. Results show that when tensions arise over sustainable objectives (temporality of objectives, organizational barriers, and lack of control), they are addressed only when anchored to an economic one in the form of a business case for sustainability. We also find that when matching traditional project objectives with sustainable ones is not possible, practitioners enact a set of reactions characterized as greenwashing, it can’t be one person, no space for sustainability in my job, other actors involved, or pushing back, depending on the specific project context. Adopting the paradox theory lens, we provide an alternative approach to the business case for sustainability. The practical contribution of this article lies in suggesting the need to find strategies to embrace paradoxical situations and we provide some suggestions to illustrate this.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 Project Management Institute, Inc. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | paradox theory, project management, sustainability, paradoxical profession, sustainable project management |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Jan 2025 11:43 |
Last Modified: | 22 Jan 2025 11:43 |
Published Version: | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/875697282... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/87569728211007660 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:222054 |