Governance and sustainable development at higher education institutions

Filho, Walter Leal; Salvia, Amanda Lange; Frankenberger, Fernanda; Akib, Noor Adelyna Mohammed; Sen, Salil K.; Sivapalan, Subarna; Novo-Corti, Isabel; Venkatesan, Madhavi; Emblen-Perry, Kay

doi:10.1007/s10668-020-00859-y

Cited by 46 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(85 reference statements)

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“…For example, some companies have sustainability-related policy statements, as companies have investigated that expressing how they aim to address social expectations may play a key role in dealing with internal and external stakeholders (Hahn, 2013). The participation of several stakeholders and the commitment of leaders is helpful in making HEIs' policies more sustainable (Leal Filho et al, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysing the Governance Factors for Sustainability in Organisations and Their Inter-Relations

2021

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Governance is instrumental to the implementing sustainability in organisations (civil society, companies, and public sector ones). Seven governance factors have been identified to achieve this: vision and mission, policies, reporting, communication, board of directors, department, and person in charge. However, their importance and interrelations are still under-researched. A survey was sent to 5,299 organisations, with 305 responses. The responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, rankings, comparison between organisation types, correlations, and centrality. The results provide the ranking of the factors, where vision and mission, person in charge, and reporting were highest ranked. The analysis also reveals that the seven factors are interrelated, albeit some more than others. The research provides a comparison of the rankings and interrelations between the organisation types. Each factor and its relation to other factors can contribute to better governance for sustainability, and better governance can contribute to a more holistic implementation of sustainability in organisations.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These results offer a broader perspective on governance in companies (see Aras and Crowther, 2008;Petrini and Pozzebon, 2010) and a new insights on civil society and PSOs (c.f. Fuente et al, 2017;Niedlich et al, 2020;Leal Filho et al, 2021).…”

Section: Companies Psosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing the Governance Factors for Sustainability in Organisations and Their Inter-Relations

2021

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“…With a growing interest in the role of higher education in contributing to a more sustainable future there is a concurrent interest in sustainability governance in universities (e.g., Bauer et al, 2018;Leal Filho et al, 2020;Niedlich et al, 2020a,b) and in understanding the challenges, processes, and barriers to amplifying the sustainability contributions of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) (e.g., Hoover and Harder, 2015). Governance structures form a basis for institutional action, management decisions, and regulations made within organisations and can affect the way in which sustainability is perceived and practiced in higher education (Leal Filho et al, 2020). Sustainability governance encompasses many different elements, from formal organisational staffing and reporting structures, to sustainability assessment tools, resourcing, training, communication and participation structures as well as external structures including funding sources.…”

Section: Governance For Sustainability In Universitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to these elements of sustainability governance, there are many different important attributes of sustainability governance in universities, including reliability and accountability, and adequate resourcing, long-term planning, staff support and the commitment of senior management (Vaughter et al, 2016;Leal Filho et al, 2020). Other important attributes of sustainability governance include participation and dialogue, the inclusion of diverse stakeholders, and co-creative processes (see Niedlich et al, 2020b).…”

Section: Governance For Sustainability In Universitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The role of committed and motivated individuals, often referred to as "sustainability champions, " is also highlighted by many writers as being an evident part of university change processes towards sustainability (e.g., Lozano, 2006;Newman, 2007). Despite the plethora of emerging literature on mechanisms and attributes to drive sustainability (Leal Filho et al, 2020), there is a relative lack of literature exploring the overarching structures for sustainability governance in universities (Hoover and Harder, 2015), the impact of organisational culture on sustainability governance (Niedlich et al, 2020b), the link to organisational learning and change theory (Cebrián et al, 2013;Sylvestre and Wright, 2016), and the extent to which the resilience of sustainability governance can be leveraged for universities' transformations towards sustainability.…”

Section: Governance For Sustainability In Universitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How to Repurpose the University: A Resilience Lens on Sustainability Governance

Robinson¹,

Pedersen²

2021

Front. Sustain.

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Universities have an important role in moving society towards a more sustainable future. However, this will require us to repurpose universities, reorienting and refocusing the different university domains (education, research, campus, and outreach) towards sustainability. The governance structures and processes used to embed sustainability into the activities and operations of the institution are critical to achieving the required transformation. Our current university systems which are seen as contributing to socio-ecological system unsustainability are resilient to change due to slow variables such as organisational and sector-wide prevailing paradigms and culture. Therefore, to repurpose a university requires us to destabilise our prevailing system, crossing a threshold into a new stable system of a ‘sustainable university' across all its domains. This paper utilises an adaptation of Biggs et al. (2012) resilience principles for the governance of social-ecological systems to provide a framework to consider aspects of university governance for sustainability that can be utilised to repurpose universities towards sustainability, and destabilize unsustainable elements of the system. This paper draws out examples relating to sustainability governance within universities with regards to the four principles of (i) managing diversity and redundancy, (ii) managing connectivity, (iii) managing slow variables and feedbacks, and (iv) encouraging learning and experimentation within the context of complex adaptive systems. In this article, we have shown that using resilience in a non-normative way is possible (to decrease resilience of an unsustainable system), and that it can also be valuable to help understand how to shift organisational governance towards a particular end-state (in this case, university governance that advances sustainability). This paper provides an example of how to operationalise resilience principles of relevance to the resilience literature as well as providing a practical framework to guide higher education institution governance for sustainability.

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Sustainable development practices in public higher education: A new conceptual framework for nurturing student satisfaction and reinforcing attractiveness to international students

Pedro,

Alves,

Leitão

2023

Sustainable Development

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Using a multi‐layer review based on stakeholder, institutional and legitimacy theories, the current study presents and empirically analyses a novel conceptual framework addressing the relationship between sustainable development practices, internationalization and students' satisfaction in public higher education institutions. Based on participants' self‐perception, a questionnaire was distributed to 738 students at seven Portuguese public higher education institutions. Structural equation modeling was utilized to estimate the multivariate causal relationships. The evidence shows that SDP are positively, directly, and significantly related to internationalization and students' satisfaction. Students' satisfaction is directly and significantly associated with internationalization, also revealing a moderating effect on the relationship between sustainable development practices and internationalization. To achieve legitimacy among their stakeholders, public higher education institutions must build an institutional commitment to sustainability by adopting and disseminating sustainable development practices with actions on a livable campus.

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Governance and sustainable development at higher education institutions

Cited by 46 publications

References 43 publications

Analysing the Governance Factors for Sustainability in Organisations and Their Inter-Relations

Analysing the Governance Factors for Sustainability in Organisations and Their Inter-Relations

How to Repurpose the University: A Resilience Lens on Sustainability Governance

Sustainable development practices in public higher education: A new conceptual framework for nurturing student satisfaction and reinforcing attractiveness to international students

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