Social Sustainability in Project Management: Case Study

The study aims to identify and analyse criteria of social sustainability in project management based on the dynamic capabilities framework, sustainability concept and the analysis of the international standards for project management. The authors used four most widely recognised standards that deeply adopted sustainability in project management, namely the GPM P5, ICB4 Reference Guide in Sustainable Project Management, PMBOK guide, and PRINCE2 standard. The study states the following research questions: - How do the most known international standards of project management comprise social responsibility? - How does the project team realign the structure and culture of the parent organisation to meet the social sustainability requirements? - How to appraise social sustainability in project management? Based on the dynamic capabilities schema “SENSE” (identify the opportunities), “SEIZE” (design and refine business model, commit resources) and “TRANSFORM” (realign structure and culture) the authors focused on the third step and applied it to the project social sustainability criteria. As a result, the authors identified and described ten groups of criteria of social sustainability in project management, such as Respect for human rights; Poverty reduction; Ethical behavior; Availability of training opportunities for project team members; Fairness and effectiveness of the evaluation system for project team members; Equal opportunities for career growth; Creating conditions for socio-psychological and emotional protection of staff; Project culture; Partnership relations in projects; Relations with project stakeholders. To verify the proposed set of criteria, the research implies the case study of social sustainability of the HoReCa construction project. The research shows that all identified criteria can be applied to the chosen project, proving its social sustainability. The study can be considered as a step to further research to develop a comprehensive assessment model of social sustainability and conduct the research based on the social sustainability assessment model.