Sustainable development and project stakeholder management: what standards say

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how various approaches to stakeholder management, as well as sustainable development principles, are included in internationally‐used project management standards; and to consider the demands these approaches and principles place on project stakeholder management.Design/methodology/approach – An analytical framework was developed based on stakeholder theory within general management, as well as on sustainability research. Desk research was carried out by applying the analytical framework to three project management standards: ICB, PMBOK and PRINCE2.Findings – The research findings suggest that stakeholder issues are treated superficially in the project management standards, while putting stakeholder management in the context of sustainable development would ask for a paradigm shift in the underpinning values. The current project stakeholder practices represent mainly a management‐of‐stakeholders approach, i.e. making stakeholders comply to project needs, w...