Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a major role in the development of societies. In the last decades, there has been an increasing interest on the commercialisation of knowledge by universities for economic development that lead to the emergence of the term “Entrepreneurial University”. This study aims to report the sustainability efforts of the University of Gävle, Sweden by applying a systematic tool, Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities (GASU). This study highlights sustainability reporting as a way to improve communication practices between universities and stakeholder. The systematic and holistic assessment of HEIs gives insights of collaboration opportunities and by that foster their entrepreneurial journey.

This paper presents the most recent port expansion and the major dredging and land creation project that has been undertaken in the Port of Gävle since 2007. This project has seen the deepening and widening of the fairway to accommodate larger vessels, as well as the construction of a new cargo terminal area due to open in late 2019. This land creation work has been undertaken using contaminated sediments dredged from deepening the shipping channel.

Governments need to decide how to allocate their public expenditure, which is commonly misconstrued as simply targeting social issues. Most scientific literature highlights that the role of public spending is to enhance social welfare and fight poverty and inequality. Nonetheless, public expenditure also includes spending on environmental issues. This paper analyses relations between public participation, support for public expenditure, and pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) intentions in the English Channel region. An online public survey was developed to investigate public use of the English and French sides and the public's willingness to change their behaviour to better protect the Channel region. The survey was undertaken in the summer of 2014 and was answered by 2000 respondents. The Channel region public is willing to participate more in behaviour that involves direct changes or switches between buying/purchasing choices. In contrast, there is less willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviour intentions that involve more active engagement activities. French respondents were slightly less inclined to change their consumer behaviour intentions, while women and older people were slightly more likely to do so. This research shows that pro-environmental behaviour could positively affect support for proposed public expenditure on environmental issues.

Circular Economy (CE) has become one of the most recent ways to address environmental sustainability. CE activities focus exclusively on one of three levels (macro-level, meso-level, and micro-level). The majority of CE research has focused on the macro- and meso-levels, while research on the micro-level has been limited. This paper focusses on the latter by analysing how organisations have implemented the four Rs (reduction, repairing, remanufacturing, and recycling). A survey was sent to a database of 5,299 contacts from different organisations, from whom 256 complete responses were obtained. The results show that organisations focus on reducing and recycling more than repairing and remanufacturing, and in particular on internal CE efforts. Some organisations that engage with the 4Rs do not do it under the CE umbrella, whereas some that claim to apply CE have low levels of engagement with the 4Rs. The results indicate that organisations are using the four Rs to contribute to CE, but not all of them are aware that they are applying CE principles. The paper highlights that organisations need to improve their four Rs efforts to contribute more to CE by better linking its theory with practice. CE also has to be implemented outside the organisations, in a more holistic way, e.g. through better collaboration with stakeholders on CE efforts and activities. This research stresses that the gap between CE theory and practice needs to be closed to make Circular Economy circular.

Purpose

Government-owned companies (GOCs), such as ports, have engaged in efforts to become more sustainable. Most of such efforts have been technological and policy ones and mainly focusing on the environment, with limited research on organisational change management. This paper aims to provide insights into how ports have been addressing sustainability change forces and pressures.

Design/methodology/approach

Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with top-level directors and sustainability managers, representing ports across Europe’s maritime regions and a range of port types and sizes. The interviews were analysed using grounded theory’s constant comparative analysis.

Findings

The findings highlighted that the ports’ success in their process to become more sustainable depends on how they take advantage of the thrust forces and reduce the drag ones. The findings serve to develop the “ports’ sustainability change management framework”, with five stages: reactive, proactive, transactive, interactive, and sustainable port.

Practical implications

Ports, and other GOCs, should capitalise on their private–public nature in their contribution to making societies more sustainable by adopting a holistic perspective and interactive changes.

Originality/value

This paper provides a dynamic perspective on corporate sustainability efforts, particularly on GOCs, through organisational change management complementing technocentric and managerial approaches.

Ports have been working towards becoming more sustainable. Although gender equality (SDG5) is very important within the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it is ranked almost at the bottom of port priorities. The aim of this research is to provide insights into how ports have been addressing gender equality in their efforts to contribute to sustainability. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with directors and sustainability managers from six European countries. The responses from interviewees were analysed using Grounded Theory’s constant comparative analysis.

The findings show that European ports have engaged in measures aimed at contributing to sustainability through gender equality classified in five stages: (1) Gender segregation, which needs to be overcome, and is, in many cases, the starting point; (2) Compliance with national laws and regulation, e.g. in recruitment and salaries; (3) Gender equity, reducing barriers to entry and compensate for the historical and social disadvantages that women had previously suffered from; (4) Gender equality, guaranteeing the equal treatment of men and women in all processes; and (5) More sustainable ports. Achieving gender equality is a sine qua non to make ports more sustainable, i.e. integrating social issues of sustainability with economic and environmental ones. Internal and external forces affect each of the stages, where thrust forces help ports reduce gender segregation and advance towards becoming more sustainability and drag forces slow or block the efforts and may lead to returning to a previous stage. The findings were used to develop a “Gender equality for sustainability in ports” framework.

This research is especially related to SDG5, target 5.1 (End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere), and 5.5 (Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life). 

Ports, and other traditionally male-dominated industries, could capitalise on women’s holistic perspective and higher engagement to better contribute to accelerating the progress to make Europe more sustainable, especially in these testing times.

Ports have increasingly been addressing sustainability issues; however, gender equality has been a low priority in such efforts. This paper is aimed at providing insights into how ports have been addressing gender equality to contribute to sustainability. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with top-level port managers from six European countries. The responses from the interviewees were analysed using Grounded Theory’s constant comparative analysis. The findings show that European ports have engaged in gender equality measures aimed at contributing to sustainability through gender equality in five stages: (1) Gender segregation, which needs to be overcome, and is, in many cases, the starting point; (2) Compliance with national laws and regulation; (3) Gender equity; (4) Gender equality; and (5) More sustainable ports. Internal and external forces affect each of the stages, where thrust forces help ports reduce gender segregation and advance towards becoming more sustainable and drag forces slow or block the efforts and may lead to returning to a previous stage of the framework. The findings were integrated to develop a “Gender equality for sustainability in ports” framework. Gender equality is a sine qua non for ports, and other male oriented industries, in becoming more sustainable.

The COVID-19 outbreak has affected societies and organisations in an unprecedented way. This has resulted in negative impacts to economic and social issues, but it is a “blessing in disguise” for environmental issues. This paper analyses how the outbreak has affected organisations’ sustainability priorities. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, such priorities were on the economic dimension followed by the environmental and social dimensions. A survey was sent to 11,657 organisations to analyse such changes, with a 5.60% response rate. The results show that for organisations, the main priority is now on the social dimension, followed by the economic one; however, the environmental dimension has suffered a negative impact in prioritisation, regardless of organisation type, country where they are based, organisation size, or the time they have been working on sustainability. We are currently facing an environmental conundrum, where air quality has improved and pollution has decreased in societies, but organisations are starting to neglect such environmental issues. The COVID-19 outbreak is an opportunity for organisations to better contribute to sustainability by ensuring that the efforts that have been undertaken in the last three decades are not forgotten, and that societies and organisations are better coupled to face such crises and avert rebound effects.

Sustainable development and sustainability have appeared as concepts to help address the economic,environmental, and social impacts from previous generations, on this generation, and future ones through a holistic perspective. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become the international framework for sustainability policy. The 17 SDGs and 169 targets were agreed upon by the 193 member states of the UN in2015 and are to be achieved by 2030. It should be noted that the SDGs were designed by governments for governments. These are based on the principles of: (1) a statement of a social-political priority (goal), (2) a time-bound quantitative aspect to be achieved (target), and (3) the measurement to monitor its progress(indicator). Since the SDGs (i.e. the macro level) are fairly new there is very limited research yet on how organisations (i.e. the micro level) contribute to them, or how such contributions could be advanced.Organisations civil society; companies; and public sector organisations (PSOs) have been instrumental in driving sustainability. In the last lustrum, there has been an increasing interest in organisational sustainability, where the importance of sustainability’s dimensions depends on an organisation’s nature and purpose. The contributions of organisations to sustainability, and by implication to the SDGs, have been proposed by a number of authors,where the most complete definition states that: such contributions entail the continuous incorporation and integration of sustainability issues in the organisation’s system elements (operations and production, strategy and management, governance, organisational systems, service provision, and assessment and reporting), as well as change processes and their rate of change. In this research, we will present some case studies of organisations contributing to the SDGs. The research group is an international leader and responsible for several publications in the field of sustainability, organizational change management, sustainable business models, sustainability assessment and reporting, circular economy, collaboration for sustainability, or education for sustainable development, among others. The multidisciplinary character of the group is a strength that defines our priority research area, mainly focused on sustainability. In this regard, case studies such as the contribution of HigherEducation Institutions to the SDGs or organizational change management in companies will be presented. The results presented will further the discussions on how organisations contribute to the SDGs, and how the micro and macro-level can be better connected.

Public participation is crucial for policy-making and can contribute to strengthening democracies and decision-making. Public participation can help to address sustainability challenges and plays a key role in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the SDGs are policy concepts, there has been limited research conducted on how the public perceives the SDGs. Public participation in scientific research has been carried out through citizen science (CS). This paper analyzes the public's perception of the SDGs through CS and how the public can participate in their implementation. The paper uses the OSDG community platform, a citizen science platform with >2000 participants, to analyze public perception of the SDGs. A set of 40,062 excerpts of text (v2023-01-01), a topic modeling and agreement scores by using CorTexT Manager software, was analyzed. The results show that some SDGs, e.g. health (SDG3) or life below water (SDG14), have higher levels of agreement from the public, whilst for other SDGs the public disagree on their perception, (e.g. zero hunger). The paper shows that issues affecting citizens' daily lives (e.g. in People related goals) tend to have a higher level of agreement among volunteers, while economic issues and directives have greater discrepancies. The results provide an overview of the differences in public perception on the SDGs and their implementation. The misperceptions regarding the SDGs should be reduced to achieve a better implementation, improve public participation, and help policy-making processes.

Sustainability has been proposed to address societal challenges. A number of efforts have been undertaken to implement sustainability, particularly through frameworks such as tools, initiatives and approaches (TIAs). Most of the research on the implementation efforts has been in the corporate context. This paper is aimed at analysing the implementation of TIAs in academic research. A bibliometric analysis of twenty TIAs during the period 1961–2020 was carried out to analyse their implementation in academic research. The results highlight that there has been research published on all the TIAs analysed. The TIAs have a better balance and interrelations between the sustainability dimensions in their implementation than in the theory. The results show that for a better implementation of TIAs in academic research it is necessary to address sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and time) in a holistic and balanced way considering alignment of general and specific efforts, i.e. TIAs, and congruence (linking ‘theory’ and ‘implementation’). The results were integrated to propose a ‘Sustainability Implementation Framework’ (SIF), which is divided into three levels (i.e., Initiatives, Approaches, and Tools). The TIAs implementation should follow more strictly the definitions, or, perhaps, the TIAs definitions should be redefined to encompass the insights from their implementation.

In recent years, there have been a considerable number of efforts to integrate sustainability into Higher Education Institutions (HEIs); however, there are still challenges that need to be overcome. A process that has received an increasing attention has been the Organisational Change Management for Sustainability. This article is aimed at reviewing the main drivers of the integration of sustainable practices and the barriers to change slowing or stopping it. A systematic literature review was carried out using Web of Science de Thomson Reuters and in Scopus databases focusing on retrieving all papers on sustainability in HEIs published between 2000 and 2016. The drivers of and barriers found for the integration of sustainability in HEIs were compared to those previously described for companies. The similarities on drivers to change found in HEIs and companies were greater for external ones. A lower number of barriers to change were reported in the literature for HEIs than those reported for corporations, nonetheless, it was found that HEIs and companies have several common barriers to change. The article proposes a list of main drivers of and barriers to change, some general and others context specific. The findings on the drivers of the integration of sustainable practices in HEIs can serve to identify additional good practices at companies and vice versa. The barriers to change detected for the process of integration can help into anticipating, preventing and overcoming them. This knowledge can help institutions better plan and use their resources in working to becoming more sustainable.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been steadily progressing towards the integrationof sustainable practices in their structures and operations. Several studies have reported the varietyof drivers of change and the barriers to change that universities have found in the integrationprocess. The present investigation is aimed at further characterizing and ranking the drivers for,and barriers of, sustainability integration in HEIs within their structures and operating functions.Open-ended expert opinion interviews of key sustainability leaders appointed at 45 HEIs from10 Latin-American countries were conducted in order to learn lessons from their diverse experiencesof the process. Additionally, a thematic workshop on HEI sustainability was organized to facilitatefurther discussions between 23 sustainability scholars and/or national coordinators of universitynetworks from 11 Latin American countries. As a result, 15 barriers were identified as hinderingthe institutionalization of sustainability in HEIs. This study also examined the relationship betweenthese reported barriers with 13 main drivers that were identified to be facilitating the integration ofsustainable practices within the organizational and academic structures at the universities. The strongcorrespondence between the several observed drivers for, and barriers to, change highlights theimportance of strategic planning that offers integrated actions. The findings of this paper can serveas a reference to assist HEIs in identifying drivers of, and barriers to, sustainability, so that the formercan be fostered and the latter addressed effectively. This can help identify and plan targeted actionsto make the transition towards sustainability in HEIs more natural and effective.

Ports are an important player in the world, due to their role in global production and distributions systems. Theyare major intermodal transport hubs, linking the sea to the land. For all ports, a key requirement for commercialand economic viability is to retain ships using them and to remain accessible to those ships. Ports need to findapproaches to help them remain open. They must ensure their continued economic viability. At the same time,they face increasing pressure to become more environmentally and socially conscious. This paper examines theapproach taken by the Port of Gävle, Sweden, which used contaminated dredged materials to create new landusing principles of Circular Economy. The paper demonstrates that using Circular Economy principles can be aviable way of securing a port's future and contributing to its sustainability, and that of the city/region where itoperates.

Sustainability reporting is an important tool for the assessment and communication of sustainability performance in the corporate world; however, it is still in its early stages in higher education. Only a limited number of universities around the world have published sustainability reports, and there is still a lack of empirical evidence of how the sustainability reporting process is organized and how it contributes to sustainability integration in higher education. The aim of this paper is to provide in-depth insights into the complexities of the sustainability reporting process. A case study is presented on sustainability reporting in The University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, covering the period of 2008–2014. The case consists of document analysis and interviews with the internal actors of the sustainability reporting process at UBC. In the study, it was found that even in an institution with a deliberate sustainability strategy and integration process, sustainability reporting is a complex undertaking. Some of the key elements adding complexity to the reporting process are the search for suitable lead authors and relevant content for the reports in consecutive reporting cycles; the different aims that reporting tries to achieve simultaneously for the sustainability integration process; and suitably addressing the different internal stakeholders that are involved in the reporting process in higher education. In order to reduce complexity in universities, assigning an internal hybrid actor to facilitate the reporting process could be helpful. Unfolding the key complexities arising when undertaking consecutive reporting cycles can help internal actors of other institutions to better design and implement the process of sustainability reporting and integration in their universities. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Sustainability Reporting has become a key element in different organisations. Although there have been a number of academic publications discussing the adoption of sustainability reports in the public sector, their numbers have been quite low when compared to those focussing on corporate reports. Additionally, there has been little research on the link between sustainability reporting in Public Sector Organisations (PSOs) and Organisational Change Management for Sustainability (OCMS). This paper focuses on the contribution of sustainability reporting to OCMS. A survey was sent to all PSOs that have published at least one sustainability report based on the GRI guidelines. The study provides a critical analysis of the relation between sustainability reporting and OCMS in PSOs, including the drivers for reporting, the impacts on organisation change management, and the role of stakeholders in the process. Despite still lagging in sustainability reporting journey, PSOs are starting to use sustainability reporting as a communication tool, and this could drive organisational changes for sustainability.

Purpose

This paper aims to conceptualize impacts of higher education institutions (HEIs) on sustainable development (SD), complementing previous literature reviews by broadening the perspective from what HEIs do in pursuit of SD to how these activities impact society, the environment and the economy.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2005 and 2017. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify major themes and impact areas addressed in the literature to develop a conceptual framework detailing the relationship between HEIs’ activities and their impacts on SD.

Findings

The paper identifies six impact areas where direct and indirect impacts of HEIs on SD may occur. The findings indicate a strong focus on case studies dealing with specific projects and a lack of studies analyzing impacts from a more holistic perspective.

Practical implications

This systematic literature review enables decision-makers in HEIs, researchers and educators to better understand how their activities may affect society, the environment and the economy, and it provides a solid foundation to tackle these impacts.

Social implications

The review highlights that HEIs have an inherent responsibility to make societies more sustainable. HEIs must embed SD into their systems while considering their impacts on society.

Originality/value

This paper provides a holistic conceptualization of HEIs’ impacts on SD. The conceptual framework can be useful for future research that attempts to analyze HEIs’ impacts on SD from a holistic perspective.

Many higher education institutions (HEIs) have started to incorporate sustainable development (SD) into their system. A variety of sustainability assessment tools (SATs) have been developed to support HEIs to systematically measure, audit, benchmark, and communicate SD efforts. In recent years, stakeholders have increasingly asked HEIs to demonstrate their impacts on SD. These impacts are the direct and indirect effects an HEI has outside of its organizational boundaries on society, the natural environment, and the economy. This study analyzes to what extent SATs are capable of measuring the impacts that HEIs have on SD. A mixed-method approach, using descriptive statistics and an inductive content analysis, was used to examine 1134 indicators for sustainability assessment derived from 19 SATs explicitly designed for application by HEIs. The findings reveal that SATs largely neglect the impacts HEIs have outside their organizational boundaries. SATs primarily use proxy indicators based on internally available data to assess impacts and thus tend to focus on themes concerning the natural environment and the contribution to the local economy. Updating existing SATs and developing new ones may enable HEIs to fully realize their potential to contribute to SD. 

Companies have been under increasing pressure to engage with stakeholders to advance their sustainability engagement. Collaboration has been recognised as a key element in such efforts. While the need for collaboration among organisations is increasingly recognised, there is still a need to better understand with whom companies collaborate, and how stakeholders might influence the process. This study analyses how companies collaborate in regards to sustainability and highlights the need to differentiate between influence on stakeholders and importance when establishing collaboration partnerships. This research proposes a collaboration for sustainability model including internal and external stakeholders on the vertical and horizontal level.

Seaports are major transport hubs of the global economy. Their activities pose negative impacts on the environment, the social, and the economic dimensions of sustainability. Seaports are complex systems with unique characteristics and their sustainability efforts are dependent on the local context, ownership structure, size, and operations. A number of ports have started to assess and report their sustainability efforts; however, there is limited information on the coverage of sustainability issues and the performance of port sustainability activities. This paper assesses the indicator coverage of 24 sustainability reports of seaports from worldwide that follow the GRI guidelines using the Holistic Assessment of Sustainability Performance in Seaports (HASPS) framework. The HASPS was developed by the authors based on a literature review and expands the GRI guidelines with port-specific indicators and interlinking issues. The results show that there is a great variety of coverage of information disclosed regarding all five dimensions of the HASPS (economic, environmental, social, port system, and interlinking issues). Ports that use the GRI guidelines, management systems and certifications, have a good coverage of sustainability issues; coverage however is better in ports that have developed additional port-specific indicators. The paper highlights the importance of a harmonised port sustainability assessment, which can be used by all ports regardless of their unique characteristics.

Crop residues represent more than half of the world's agricultural phytomass. Residual biomass, from agriculture or forestry, can be converted into synthesis gas (syngas) to generate energy (electrical or thermal) or chemicals. The paper uses eco-efficiency as a tool to compare these two options. A basis of 1000 kg/hour of residual pecan nut shell residue was considered to estimate the material flow of chemicals that can be produced, as well as the power that can be generated through residual biomass gasification. This study compares two alternate routes: (1) gasification with air, which renders a gas stream with hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and other hydrocarbons, as well as nitrogen; and (2) gasification with steam, where a residual biomass amount is used as fuel, rendering a gas stream like the first route, but without nitrogen. The eco-efficiency index shows that a decrease of environmental influence leads to a high output material flow for the alternative process with higher economic values, thus a higher proportion of input raw materials can be transformed into chemical products. The paper highlights that eco-efficiency can be used as a decision-making tool to choose between transformation processes by combining scientific and technical issues with economic ones. This can help to move towards a better and more sustainable use of natural resources through the utilisation of residual biomass.

The special volume on green and sustainable chemistry and engineering has fourteen papers that were considered relevant to the present day issues and discussion, such as adequate use of raw materials and efficient energy, besides considering renewable sources for materials and energy; and changing economical canons towards circular economy. Businesses, governments and Society are facing a number of challenges to tread the sustainability path and provide wellbeing for future generations. This special volume relevance provides discussions and contributions to foster that desirable future. Chemicals are ubiquitous in everyday activities. Their widespread presence provides benefits to societies’ wellbeing, but can have some deleterious effects. To counteract such effect, green engineering and sustainable assessment in industrial processes have been gathering momentum in the last thirty years. Green chemistry, green engineering, eco-efficiency, and sustainability are becoming a necessity for assessing and managing products and processes in the chemical industry. This special volume presents fourteen articles related to sustainable resource and energy use (five articles), circular economy (one article), cleaner production and sustainable process assessment (five article), and innovation in chemical products (three articles). Green and sustainable chemistry, as well as sustainable chemical engineering and renewable energy sources are required to foster and consolidate a transition towards more sustainable societies. This special volume present current trends in chemistry and chemical engineering, such as sustainable resource and energy use, circular economy, cleaner production and sustainable process assessment, and innovation in chemical products. This special volume provides insights in this direction and complementing other efforts towards such transition.

Energy is key in achieving sustainable societies. There have been great efforts towards improving energy access worldwide. Despite the advances in energy access, energy poverty remains a major problem in many parts of the world, particularly in rural communities. Modern energy, in particular electricity, can help rural communities develop through improving education and health. During the last two decades, there have been improvements on bioenergy technological innovations, e.g. electricity generation from bioenergy from residual biomass from several agricultural crops in biorefineries. Most research has focussed on large biorefineries, with limited research on small-scale gasifiers' location and contribution to energy poverty. This paper is aimed at assessing technological options to generate electricity in situ from biomass to reduce energy poverty of rural communities. This is done using four analysis methods: (1) crops availability data; (2) poverty and marginalisation data; (3) electricity provision/distribution; and, (4) GIS/Geographical latitude and longitude to locate municipalities in Mexico. The results shows that the generating potential for electricity using residual biomass with gasifiers could improve the welfare of almost 10 million people communities using residual biomass from crops harvested in such communities. This research provides location solutions on the best places to locate small-scale biorefineries. The research also provides systemic analysis to reduce energy poverty through in situ electricity generation using cheap accessible small plant technologies and biomass as raw material, as well as their location. Generating electricity in a decentralised way through agricultural residual biomass can help lift rural communities from poverty and improve their well-being, and, thus, make societies more sustainable

There has been increasing interest on how organisations address the four dimensions of sustainability. Despite calls for a holistic perspective, empirical research on sustainable organisations has been carried out on (1) engagement efforts, focussing inside the organisation, i.e., the system elements engage with sustainability, or (2) efforts to contribute to sustainability, focussing outside the organisation, i.e., how the organisation as a whole impacts sustainability. A survey was developed to investigate engagement of the system elements and their contribution to sustainability, from which 210 full responses were obtained. The data were analysed using descriptive analysis, Friedman test to rank the engagement of the organisation system elements with sustainability, ratio analyses (positive to negative) and ANOVAs regarding organisation type and size. The results show that the organisation system elements most engaged with sustainability are research and management, and strategy, and the least are operations and production, products, procurement, and supply chain. The impact ratios are highest from research, services, and management and strategy. The ANOVA test results demonstrate that the type of organisation does not affect how the system elements engage with and impact sustainability, with some exceptions. The paper proves that the inside and outside sustainability efforts of an organisation are not separated but intertwined through a series of connections. The results are integrated into for the “organisation system elements engagement and impact to sustainability” model. Organisations must take a holistic a systems perspective that considers the system elements engagement and how each of these contribute to sustainability and its dimensions.

Interest in sustainability from the corporate sector is evidenced by over 13,000 companiesin 160 countries that have signed the United Nations Global Compact. In thiscontext, a number of tools, initiatives, and approaches (TIAs), e.g., circular economy,corporate social responsibility, eco-efficiency, life cycle assessment, and sustainabilityreporting have been developed by and for corporations to engage and promote sustainabilitywithin their systems. Each of the TIAs has advantages when addressingsustainability issues and the company system's elements, but it has disadvantages indealing with their complexities and interactions. Relying only on one TIA results in alimited contribution to sustainability, whereas using too many TIAs wastes resourcesand energy. The Corporate and Industrial Voluntary Initiatives for Sustainability(CIVIS) has been proposed to better combine the TIAs. A survey was developed toinvestigate the use of 24 TIAs. The survey was sent to a database of 5,299 organisations(of which 3,603 were companies), from which 202 responses were obtained.The responses were analysed using ratio analysis, principal component analysis, andcluster analysis. The responses show that some TIAs are well known and providegood results when used, for example, corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability,and Global Reporting Initiative reports. The analyses show a number ofgroups of the TIAs that can help to better combine them. The paper updates theCIVIS framework in order to provide clearer guidance on how to combine the TIAs. Acombination of between four and six initiatives appears to be most effective way topromote sustainability. The TIAs can help to promote sustainability in corporations,but they need to be combined correctly in order to address holistically the fourdimensions of sustainability, the system elements, and stakeholders, while avoidingduplication of tasks and wasting resources.

Although several drivers for and barriers to sustainability have been recognised in Higher Education Institutions, there has been limited research on analysing which are considered to be the most important. Two survey were sent to analyse this. The first survey was answered by nineteen respondents, whilst the second by eleven. The survey responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, rankings in order of importance, and comparison between types of drivers and barriers. This paper provides depth to the drivers for and barriers to sustainability in HEIs’ discussion by: 1) providing the importance of each driver and barrier; 3) offering a ranking of the drivers and barriers; 4) and analysing the relations between drivers and barriers to categorise them.

Organisations (civil society, companies, and public-sector organisations (PSOs)) have beeninstrumental in driving sustainability. In the last five years, there has been an increasing interest inorganisational sustainability, where the importance of sustainability’s dimensions depends on anorganisation’s nature and purpose. A large body of literature on organisational sustainability hasfocused on companies, followed by education institutions, in particular higher education. Limited,yet increasing, attention has been directed to PSOs and other civil society organisations. Althoughthere have been some attempts to define a sustainable organisation, there is still a need to defineand establish the principles of how organisations can address and contribute to sustainability.The sustainability efforts in the different types of organisations were reviewed and then analysedin this paper by using hermeneutics. This was complemented with a survey on sustainabilitychanges. The survey was sent to a database of 1574 contacts from different organisations. In addition,106 anonymous links were sent out. From the total list of emails, 118 full responses were obtained,with 39 from civil society (37 from higher education and 2 NGOs), 66 corporations, and 13 PSOs.This research distils the key system elements of the efforts in each of the organisations in order tosynthesise and propose a definition and a conceptual framework of organisational sustainability.These can help organisations understand where their efforts are and how they could better embedsustainability into their systems, thus contributing to the well-being of societies and the environmentfor this generation and future ones.