Analytical Framework to Investigate Ethics, Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Engineering Project Management

Project management is part of the Engineering curricula worldwide. Frequently, project management courses are goal-centered in the pursue of a balance in the triple constrain formed by quality, cost and schedule. However, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability play a crucial role on the development of projects since their success relies on compliance with laws, regulations and local culture and values. This paper presents an in-depth analysis on the treatment of ethics, social responsibility and sustainability according to two widely-used project management standards, Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBoK) and Individual Competence Baseline for Project, Program & Portfolio Management (ICB). We design an analytical framework to carry out a desk research to these two project management standards. Particularly, we count the number of times of appearance, present the definition, if any, determine the appearance in the different knowledge areas and process groups for PMBoK and in the different competences for ICB, and identify the proposed techniques or tools for ethics, social responsibility and sustainability management. The findings of the research demonstrate that ICB treats the three concepts more in deep than PMBoK. PMBoK refers more often to ethics and only proposes one tool for sustainability. ICB introduces the concepts throughout the standard, with repeated references to their significance. Nevertheless, the detail that standards provide can be further elaborated. As a result, we also suggest improvement proposals that could enhance the important role of these topics for students and practitioners involved in project management.