Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. Companies are increasingly considering sustainability in their products, processes and policies, and projects play a pivotal role in the realization of more sustainable business practices. The relationship between sustainability and project management is therefore being addressed in a growing number of studies and publications and sustainability can be considered one of the recent trends in project management.

As the literature on this topic is evolving, Gilbert Silvius, one of the most prolific authors on the topic, will discuss in the defining characteristic of sustainability as a new ‘school of thought’ in project management. The presentation builds upon earlier work on schools of project management research, in which nine schools were identified. The question whether sustainability should be considered a new school of project management is answered by deriving the criteria for recognition as a school and performing a structured literature review on the publications on sustainability in project management.

Gilbert will also address the current state of the research on sustainability in project management and a possible agenda for further research.