Dissertation: Successful portfolio management can tackle the sustainability challenge in Finland
Finland is competing within the Nordic region to obtain a high ranking in sustainable development. According to Hosein Daneshpour’s doctoral thesis, the new portfolio management techniques could help to realize the sustainability objectives.
"In order to be pioneer, Finnish infrastructure projects require to be more agile, and this can happen through open innovative environment that facilitated the co-creation mechanism rigorously", says Daneshpour who will defend his thesis at the University of Vaasa, Finland.
The general challenge in the achievement of sustainable development is that the definition of sustainability is outdated. Daneshpour introduces a more practical definition of sustainability that could help the decision makers to realize the sustainability in the projects, organizations, country or international level.
He defines the key drivers of sustainable management as efficiency, environmental improvement, development of innovative environment, and stakeholder’s co-creation mechanism.
Finland needs to achieve a higher ranking in eco-efficiency
The overall sustainability trend in Finland has not shown a significant rise since year 2008. Daneshpour has measured the sustainable development in EU15 countries and in Finland by applying eco-efficiency analysis. This analysis entails the ratio of Gross domestic product and environmental impacts such as CO2 emissions. Finland is not among the top countries, therefore further improvement or changes are still required. For this analysis the Eurostat database has been used.
Daneshpour has evaluated the energy consumption and energy related emission in Finnish industrial infrastructures 2000–2009. During that time, the energy consumption has increased by seven percent. According to the research, the main reasons for the increase are the following sectors: electricity, gas and water supply, coke, refined petroleum and nuclear fuel. On the other hand, energy consumption of pulp and paper, printing and publishing industries have significantly decreased. Luckily energy intensity (efficiency) has improved and this has played a vital role in the reduction of Co2 in Finland. For this analysis the WIOD (world input output database) database has been utilized.
This doctoral study provides a new multilevel methodology to govern the project portfolio in a way that supports the sustainable development objectives. The discrepancy among the current measures to manage the projects and sustainable development objectives has been remarked as a barrier.
"Change management is a requirement for sustainability in project management, to assure the competitive advantages and long term achievements", says Daneshpour.
A critical gap that is covered in this study is that so far the main attentions in management of sustainability has occurred in the micro level like individuals or projects, but higher layers such as institutions, national or international levels, and moreover the interactions between them has not been explored properly.
The new perspective presented in this doctoral dissertation will help to shift from current horizontal project management, towards vertical approach in the governance of portfolio. Moreover, from research policy point of view this research presents how a new scientific discipline in project management can be developed and implemented.
The public defence
The public examination of M.Sc. Hosein Daneshpour´s dissertation in the field of Industrial Management ”Towards sustainable project governance; a multisystem and multilevel analysis will be held on Wednesday, 27th June 2018 at 12 o’clock in Auditorium Kurtén (Tervahovi, University of Vaasa).
PhD Gilbert Silvius (LOI University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands) and professor (emer.) Tuomo Kässi (Lappeenranta University of Technology) will act as opponents and professor Josu Takala as a custos.
Further information
Hosein Daneshpour, tel. +358 46 847 2857, e-mail: hosein.daneshpour(at)uwasa.fi
Hosein Daneshpour was born in Tehran, Iran in 1983. He accomplished his Master Degree in Environmental Energy Technology in Lappeenranta University of Technology in 2014. Daneshpour has several years of working experience as a project management officer.
- Daneshpour, Hosein (2018), Towards Sustainable Project Governance: A Multisystem and Multilevel Analysis. Acta Wasaensia 405. Väitöskirja. Vaasan yliopisto.
- Publication pdf and orders: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-476-817-7
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