Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. How can we develop prosperity, without compromising the life of future generations? Companies are integrating ideas of sustainability in their marketing, corporate communication, annual reports and in their actions. The concept of sustainability has more recently also been linked to project management. Studies show that considering sustainability should not be regarded a responsibility of just the project sponsor or executive, also the project manager has a strong influence on the sustainability aspects of a project. This paper explores the concept of sustainability and its impact on the competences of the project manager. The paper also reports an analysis of 56 case studies on the integration of the concepts of sustainability in the way organizations initiate, develop and manage projects. This study showed that the average level of sustainability consideration in the actual situation of 25.9%. For the desired situation, this score is almost 10 percent higher, showing an ambition to take sustainability more into consideration. The study also showed that the way sustainability currently is considered in projects, should be categorized as the traditional ‘less bad’ approach to sustainability integration and not a more modern social responsibility approach
Regional sustainability networks in the Netherlands are rooted in regionalculture and have an emphasis on social learning and effective collaboration between multiple actors. The national ‘Duurzaam Door’ (Moving Forward Sustainably) Policy Programme regards these networks as generative governance arrangements where new knowledge, actions and relations can co-evolve together with new insights in governance and learning within sustainability transitions. In order to understand the dynamics of the learning in these networks we have monitored emergent properties of social learning between 2014 and 2016. Our focus is particularly on the interrelated role of trust, commitment, reframing and reflexivity. Our aim is to better understand the role and the dynamics of these emergent properties and to see which actors and roles can foster the effectiveness of social learning in regional transitions towards more sustainable ways of living. We used a retrospective analysis with Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA), which we combined with the Most Significant Change approach. We found that reflexivity in particularis a critical property at moments that can make or break the process.
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Presented at Conference: IPMA World Conference 2014, At Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Volume: 28 A taxonomy is used for classifying things in general. For the purpose of this paper it is a systematic classification of competences into hierarchical groups where each sublevel constitutes a breakdown of the higher level. Although a vast amount of research has been done in project management competences, there is no standard set of project management competences used (Nijhuis, 2012). Important reasons for constructing a taxonomy for project management competences are found in comparing previous research and in identifying key fields for project management education in higher education. First a definition of competence is given, secondly the rationale of this research is given by discussing recent research. Several different published taxonomies of competences are reviewed. Finally a proposed taxonomy for project management competences is presented.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
i-DEMO aims at supporting EU tourism professionals in acquiring and developing key competences in game-based tourism in order to foster innovation and improve overall tourism organizations’ performance by: enhancing specific skills and competences in game-based tourism; designing an i-DEMO course "Game-based Tourism"; creating an i-DEMO toolkit to apply gamification to tourism; enhancing the application and replicability potential of innovative game-based solutions.Societal IssueThe tourism and hospitality industry has rapidly evolved with technological advancements, especially through ICT and the rise of the sharing economy. Digital platforms, social media, and mobile technologies have popularized gamification in tourism, creating engaging experiences and enhancing consumer loyalty. Gamification immerses tourists in simulated travel worlds, improving satisfaction, behavior, and involvement. Benefits include increased visitor engagement, loyalty, improved marketing, and support for sustainable tourism. However, despite its potential, gamification adoption remains limited in tourism. To address this, initiatives like i-DEMO aim to enhance skills and competences, improving employability in the evolving tourism market.Benefit to societyThe benefits that gamification can offer in the travel and tourism industry are: 1: More Engaged Visitors: we must not underestimate the immersion level that games can offer to travelers; 2: Increased Visitor Loyalty: when somebody is truly satisfied with their experience, they are much more likely to come back; 3: Improved Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism: tourism and hospitality have been the biggest ones impacted by all of the lockdown restrictions; consequently they are using all kinds of marketing methods to motivate people to start travelling; 4: Sustainability: gamification could help promote more environmentally, socially and culturally sustainable forms of tourism, supporting the twin green and digital transition.
INEDIT creates an open innovation European DIT ecosystem for sustainable furniture co-creation. It channels the creativity of consumers, shapes it through designers' professional skills, and makes it viable by leveraging on the expertise of production specialists in order to deliver sustainable, smart and personalized new products in a shorter time to market. INEDIT intends to demonstrate the capacity to turn the well-known 'Do It Yourself' (DIY) approach applied by individuals within FabLabs into a professional approach named 'Do It Together' (DIT).The DIT approach will be applied by customers and professional producers, especially SMEs, for conveying higher customer satisfaction through customer-driven production. DIT is a novel approach capitalizing on the knowledge, creativity and ideas of design and engineering conceptualized by interdisciplinary stakeholders and sometimes even new actors. It is powered by existing European innovation ecosystems shaping new products across EU countries.INEDIT demonstrates the approach through four cross use cases with high societal impact: sustainable wood panels manufacturing and 3D-printing of wood, 3D printing of recycled plastic and 'smartification'.Sustainability and consideration of individual preferences, especially of women and men, will be our guiding thread. INEDIT addresses societal challenges such as contribution to reduce the amount of produced CO2 in focusing on European-wide production, creation and maintenance of EU-wide job opportunities. This will lead to new business opportunities supported by business model innovation.Moreover, these innovative networked local manufacturing competences and production facilities across the EU will solve ethical concerns within the manufacturing network. INEDIT intends to demonstrate, through its twin - digital and physical - platform, the potential innovation around social manufacturing within the circular economy in designing globally while producing locally.
