Sustainable Development and Value Creation, an Approach from the Perspective of Project Management

Abstract

The discipline of project management has been maturing over time, integrating positively with some organizational approaches, such as strategy and sustainable development, to meet current needs without risking future capabilities. In this sense, it is observed that measuring the success of a project only from the classic mechanistic perspective of the triple constraint: scope, time, and budget, is insufficient; this opens a space for a new variable of social progress: the creation of value. Thus, the objective of this study is to identify the degree of relationship between the success of the projects and the sustainable development approach, managing to determine through the results obtained some opportunities for improvement in light of the economic and organizational context. As a starting point for this research, a review of the literature associated with topics, such as sustainable development, value creation, and modern trends in project management, was carried out. The second step was to design and apply a structured survey to 148 Colombian companies that develop projects in different sectors, such as technology, infrastructure, and services. With the information collected, a structural equation modeling—SEM model was applied to determine the relationship between the selected variables. Finally, the results of this research showed that the success of a project that is carried out under a sustainable development approach has a positive tendency toward the creation of value. In conclusion, it is found that the four dimensions studied: impact, relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency, allow us to explain to a greater or lesser extent the success of the projects through their approach to sustainable development and value creation.