Designing a More Sustainable Higher Education Institution: Studies and Strategies

Although the concept of sustainable development (SD) was defined in the eighteenth century and pushed to more audiences by the Brundtland Report in 1987, in the literature, the impact of organisations on society and the environment has always been a central issue. Several studies have investigated how firms create value for and with a broad range of stakeholders, not just shareholders and investors. A specific stream of research has focused on higher education institutions (HEIs) due to their key role in promoting the principles of SD in society. However, a strategic framework for interpreting and measuring how HEIs incorporate sustainability to gain a competitive advantage is still lacking. This chapter aims to address these issues by, first, examining how the principles of sustainability have appeared and evolved in the literature, with a specific focus on Italian business studies. Second, this chapter intends to analyse how sustainability has been considered and which tools have been used by the strategic management of HEIs over time to understand whether the meaning of sustainability has evolved concomitantly with the role of HEIs. Third, following a strategic perspective, a conceptual framework for the diagnosis of sustainability integration into the different elements of an HEI’s business model is proposed. From a theoretical point of view, this chapter contributes to increasing the understanding of how to adopt a strategic approach to integrate sustainability into HEIs systematically, whereas from a practical point of view, it helps HEI management, at least potentially, to implement sustainability holistically and assess the sustainability performance of HEIs.