“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, organised citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead)
Our Purpose
We are on a journey to explore what responsibility means in the context of projects and project management. Project professionals, educators and researchers from a range of industries and disciplines, including economics, science, ethics, environmental law and sustainable development, as well as project management, are contributing to the discussions. You are invited to join us on this journey.
Our aim is to transform beliefs about project management. Achieving project success is increasingly challenging and ensuring a project is successful requires attention to the project context as well as the parameters of cost, time and quality. New understandings and new competencies are needed for project professionals to navigate the complexities of the social, environmental and economic context of a project. Our purpose is to contribute ideas, events and resources to support development of the profession of Project Management.
Alignment with the UN’s 17 Sustainable development goals
Projects drives change across the world. All members of the United Nations have signed up to 17 Sustainable Development Goals and these provide the foundation of our approach.
17 SDGs organised into six categories for project management
professionalisation of project management
Project Management associations, many project organisations, and project management academics around the world are seeking to address professionalisation of the practice of project management. Being professional means accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions on wider society and conveys a set of responsibilities beyond delivering against objectives set by others. We aim to contribute to this debate and are engaging with the profession in ways that support the professionalisation of Project Management.
social learning approach
We take the view that no one yet knows how we can all live together, on one planet, in harmony. This is the overarching aim of sustainaibility. A simple definition is “enough for everyone, forever”. All our decsions are about the future, yet research looks at the past. Text books do not have the answers, although they may incorporate some useful ideas. We recognise that we need to innovate and we need to learn together.
We adopted a social learning approach to free us up from conventional thinking and approaches. Research on projects and project management has been widely criticised, not least for lack of relevance to practice, and there have been calls to hear from practitioners about what they actually do. Accordingly we have brought together practitioners and researchers from a range of industries.
Project management is not an island. Projects always have a context with organisational, social, environmental, political and many other dimensions. There have been calls for research on projects and project management to import theory from other disciplines. So we have been keen to hear from economists, environmental lawyers, scientists and many others. Our approach is inclusive.
results of our advocacy
We are engaging with a growing number of project professionals and project management academics around the world, as can be seen in the list of signatories to the Manifesto for Responsible Project Management. We are delighted that the Manifesto has been translated into 14 different languages. Our Guide to Responsible Project Management is in use as an educational resource in many universities in the UK, Europe and around the world. Our events are attracting an increasing number of participants and we have collected some excellent case studies. We invite you to join us.