Higher Education Sustainability Governance: The Bidirectional Flow of Ideas, Influence, and Power in University Sustainability Efforts

Abstract

Given our present sustainability crisis, there is a need for actors across levels to become actively involved in sustainability action if meaningful changes are to be made. Past work has noted that universities recognize their important societal role as sustainability actors and research has also begun to emerge which investigates the role and impact of universities in sustainability. While the literature is evolving in this area, research on the role of universities and the international organizations which govern them in the broader context of global sustainability governance remains a relatively unexplored area of study. As such, this dissertation explores the two-way exchange of global sustainability governance agendas between international groups and universities. It asks: Across various levels of governance, how and why do universities engage with global sustainability agendas and regimes and what are the implications for universities’ priorities and actions in sustainability? This dissertation adopts a multiple manuscript approach which includes three empirical articles, each of which answers a piece of the above question. Both individually and taken together, these chapters make a substantial contribution to the field of higher education sustainability governance. The first manuscript combines a thematic policy analysis with executive interviews to investigate the sustainability priorities and drivers of these priorities in universities across Canada. The second manuscript offers a quantitative evaluation of the submission patterns of 1,960 universities to the largest global higher education ranking organization, the Times Higher Education Impact ranking. The third combines a discourse analysis of sustainability reports and surveys to investigate discursive transfer between universities and the largest global university sustainability rating program the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS). Together the findings from these manuscripts point to two major contributions to the higher education sustainability governance literature: 1) International organizations and directives have an impact on universities’ sustainability action through soft governance; and 2) Global higher education sustainability governance is not solely determined by one organization, and priority areas and action in sustainability are not just top down, but also reflect universities’ input, interpretation and responses to global higher education sustainability governance. This dissertation provides important context to the way that global governance is carried out in the higher education sustainability governance context and also explores the unique two-way and contested flow of norms and rules between actors and global sustainability agendas. This work will be of interest to scholars of global governance, higher education and sustainability, as well as practitioners and policy makers in the higher education and sustainability spaces.