What is Stewardship?
This principle highlights the responsibility to execute activities with integrity, care, and trustworthiness while maintaining compliance with internal and external guidelines. Stewardship manages resources and requires ethical conduct, making considerate decisions, and respecting the impacts of one’s actions. A steward is diligent, respectful, and caring, ensuring that every choice contributes to the organization’s long-term success while respecting the interests of stakeholders, the environment, and society.
When applied, it means guiding with integrity, fairness, and empathy, managing organizational assets responsibly, and being transparent and trusting with the people you work with. Stewards are expected to maintain laws and ethical standards, protecting stakeholder interests, and balance project objectives with consideration of environmental and social concerns. By practicing these applications, project managers will be able to demonstrate care, diligence, and gain respect not only for their teams and organization but also for the communities and environment affected by their work.
In project management, stewardship also involves modeling professionalism and respect within the team. It’s about being transparent in how decisions are made, safeguarding information, and supporting an environment where everyone can contribute responsibly.
Practicing stewardship helps build trust, maintain credibility, and create results that deliver lasting value.
Interview
Professor Arun Aryal, CIS 4370
For this project, I interviewed Dr. Arun Aryal, a professor here at Cal State LA who teaches in the Information Systems department. Many of us have taken his classes, so his perspective on professionalism and ethics made him a perfect fit for this principle. He shared how being a diligent, respectful, and caring steward starts with integrity and everyday actions that build trust over time.
Main Points
1. What does it mean to be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward in your work?
Dr. Aryal said, “Being punctual, being truthful, and willing to help others are the signs of diligence and respectfulness.”
He added that professionalism means being ethical, accountable, and helpful because people expect integrity in any environment.
2. Can you share an example where those values guided an important decision or interaction?
He shared a story from early in his career when he helped a colleague without expecting anything in return.
Later, after being laid off, that same colleague recommended him for a new job opportunity.
This experience showed him how genuine collaboration and respect can create long-term trust and unexpected rewards.
3. What challenges come with trying to maintain that sense of stewardship? Dr. Aryal explained that being ethical and helpful doesn’t always bring immediate rewards.
“Challenges come from the culture of the organization,” he noted.In highly competitive workplaces, it can be harder to maintain those values, but he emphasized that staying true to them always pays off in the long run.
4. What advice would you give students who want to develop that same sense of responsibility and care in their future IT or management roles?
He shared a story from early in his career when he helped a colleague without expecting anything in return.
He reminded us that in the IT field, ethics must always come first.
“Technology is powerful and can be used for good or harm,” he said.
Acting with integrity, accountability, and care ensures that we use technology for the greater good.
Case Study
Televerde - A Case study in respect through PMI Principles
In “The Importance of Business Ethics through a PMP Professional”, we analyze the prospect of respect.
“Owed respect” is defined as the respect due to all members of a work group or organization, as well as the universal need to feel included, and recognizing that everyone plays a role and is valuable in that role.
“Earned respect” refers to the recognition of individual employees who display specific traits or behaviors within an organization. This type of value fosters respect across the board for project managers and their teams. It builds relationships and fosters care, also it builds morale amongst the team and make sure that everyone does their best.
In the case of Televerde, a marketing firm based in Arizona and Indiana, it hires incarcerated women inmates.
After conducting interviews with some of them, they noticed that respect and care from upper management to workers was sought throughout the workplace. The stigma of inmates is usually how they are not seen as human throughout society, even after their sentence has ended.
However, this company made it a point to ensure that these women were treated as such, and as a result, it fostered lasting relationships with its staff, as well as increased morale in the workplace among upper management and employees.
This quote here mentions that “Just as Televerde has empowered women to transform their business through trust and respect, project managers can increase teamwork and engagement by respecting those around them.”Citation: Burrows, James. “The Importance of Business Ethics as a Project Management Professional.” Liberty University Digital Commons, spring 2021, digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2124&context=honors.
Interactive
Scenario 1
You are managing a project that needs materials from different suppliers.
One supplier is cheaper but does not follow fair labor or environmental regulations.
The other supplier costs more but is ethical and responsible.
Question: What is the best choice for a diligent, respectful, and caring steward?
- A) Pick the cheaper supplier to save money
- B) Buy your own supplies
- C) Choose the responsible supplier and explain to stakeholders about the decision
- D) Wait for someone else to make the decision
Scenario 2
A team member finds out that a report you sent has wrong numbers but it makes the project look better than what it really is.
Question: What should you do as a responsible steward?
- A) Fix the mistake and tell stakeholders the truth
- B) Ignore it so it helps make the project look successful
- C) Wait until the project is finished to fix it
- D) Ask the team member to keep it a secret
Scenario 3
Your project might cause short-term problems for a local community but will bring benefits later on.
Question: How can you show care and respect as a good steward?
- A) Continue without talking to the community
- B) Focus only on the technical work
- C) Avoid involving the community
- D) Talk with the community, explain the project, and find ways to reduce problems
Scenario 4
A sponsor asks you to skip a required safety or compliance step to save time and money.
Question: What should you do as a diligent steward?
- A) Do what the sponsor says to meet the deadline
- B) Explain why compliance is important and suggest better ways to stay on schedule
- C) Skip the step and make sure no one knows
- D) Delay the project without explaining why
Question
Based on the case study, what action did Televerde’s management take that reflected the PMI principle of being a diligent, respectful, and caring steward?
- A) Ignore the incarcerated women
- B) Treating the incarcerated women just like any other employees with kindness, fairness, and trust
- C) Focus only on profit and efficiency
- D) Restrict interactions between management and employees
Lessons Learned
Being a diligent, respectful, and caring steward in project management means acting with integrity, care, and trustworthiness while maintaining compliance with internal and external guidelines.
It involves managing financial, technical, social, and environmental impacts of the project. A good steward ensures that success is not measured in project outcomes but goes beyond just completing the project.