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building blocks of a project management profession have been laid in Iceland. Research in project
management was formalized in 2000, when an academic position in project management was created at
the University of Iceland. A body of knowledge in the Icelandic language on project management was
published for the first time in 2001, however, as early as 1997 there were project managers who had
sought a certification in project management in collaboration with IPMA. The year 2005 was a critical
milestone in this development, when a graduate level program – the Master of Project Management
(MPM) - was offered for the first time. The program was well received, and more than 350 people have
graduated and have brought, and will continue to bring, their knowledge to work within the Icelandic
society.

As of today, the application of project management has become widespread in all sectors of the
Icelandic society. Today there is a wider choice of educational programs, there is a sound body of
knowledge on project management, the qualifications of project managers have been defined, and a
certification system is run under the umbrella of IPMA. As a matter of fact, Iceland has the highest
number of certifications per capita in all of the IPMA member associations. This indicates a clear trend,
and that organizations in Iceland really value the international confirmation of knowledge of project
management concepts - represented by the lower level certification - and of real project management
experience - represented by the higher-level certifications.

There are, however, some crucial elements missing. Firstly, we can state that project management has
gained some political and social recognition in Icelandic society through the years. But in many
countries, the project governance frameworks have been catalytic in moving the project management
forward as a professional discipline (Samset, et al., 2016). This has not happened in Iceland, as
references to project management best practices are less evident in the Icelandic governance legislation
than in many other developed countries (Fridgeirsson, 2015).

VSF publishes their Code of Ethics - a code of professional conduct for certified individuals ("Siðareglur |
Verkefnastjórnunarfélag Íslands", 2017) on its web page. The application form for certification includes a
checkbox where applicants are asked to confirm that they have read the Code. The way this document
was developed is not explained. Personal communication with present and past leaders of the
association, however, reveals that it is a translation of ethical guidelines from the UK and Scandinavia,
which was published on the web page before 2006 and has remained unchanged ever since (Ottosson T,
personal communication, March 16, 2017), (Albertsson O., personal communication, March 16, 2017),
(Imsland O., personal communication, March 16, 2017). The relevance of the Code of Ethics is thus very
limited, and by reference to Morris et al (2006) it can be said that project management in Iceland draws
little of its legitimacy by reference by virtue of its contribution to the public good or by adherence to an
overarching ethical code.

In order to quantify the status of project management in Iceland, on its path to a profession, we offer a
simple benchmark. We use the different attributes for a profession, as defined in the theoretical section,
and grade each of them on a scale 1 to 4. The exercise was performed in December 2017 by the authors
of this paper, and a group of 35 master students in project management (MPM) at Reykjavik University,