Advancing resilient and sustainable project portfolio management

Environmental disruptions, economic volatility, digital transformation, resource constraints, and increasing sustainability pressures have fundamentally reshaped the strategic role of project portfolio management (PPM). As organizations seek to balance long-term value creation with adaptability under uncertainty, resilience and sustainability have become critical portfolio capabilities. Despite growing scholarly interest, research in this area remains fragmented across project management, sustainability, strategic management, and risk management, limiting a comprehensive understanding of its intellectual development. This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric, science mapping, and thematic synthesis of resilient and sustainable PPM research published between 2006 and 2026. Following a PRISMA-guided screening process, 277 journal articles were retrieved from the Scopus database and analysed using bibliometric performance analysis, bibliographic coupling, country collaboration, and keyword co-occurrence techniques. The findings reveal a marked acceleration of research after 2020 and identify three major knowledge domains shaping the field: portfolio decision analytics, risk, uncertainty and portfolio resilience, and strategic portfolio adaptation. The review also demonstrates a conceptual shift from traditional portfolio optimisation towards adaptive governance, resilience, sustainability, and data-driven portfolio decision-making. By integrating fragmented research into a coherent intellectual structure, the study advances theoretical understanding of resilient and sustainable PPM, identifies key research gaps, and proposes a future research agenda. The findings further provide portfolio managers and policymakers with evidence-based insights for designing more adaptive, resilient, and sustainable project portfolios in increasingly uncertain environments.