Education for Sustainable Development: Emerging Themes from Adopters of a Declaration

Ambika Zutshi, Andrew Creed and Brian L. Connelly
Additional contact information
Ambika Zutshi: Department of Management, Deakin University, Geelong, 3220, Australia
Andrew Creed: Department of Management, Deakin University, Geelong, 3220, Australia
Brian L. Connelly: Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, Auburn University, Auburn, 36849, USA

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Universities that sign the Talloires Declaration signify their commitment to education for sustainable development. This research explores whether the signification is a strategic desire to be seen to be doing the right thing, or a genuine commitment to enhancing sustainability and helping the environment. This semi-structured interview research involves communication with the sustainability managers in the majority of Talloires signified universities in Australia. Since Australia has a comparably high rate of commitment to the Talloires Declaration, the findings represent rich and deep insight into reasons and motivations that can inform the adoption process around the world. Applying institutional theory and related concepts of structuration, isomorphism, and signaling, the findings are analyzed to reveal the range of environmental initiatives and the underlying explanation of themes. Current strategies and future directions for universities are indicated. Findings are that higher education is a key mechanism in business and society for finding and harnessing knowledge-based solutions. The challenge is that institutionalization has created resistance to change through coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphism, along with rhetoric. Structuration factors should be considered in the context of making positive changes for sustainability in the university sector.

Keywords: Talloires Declaration; universities; environmental management; interviews; institutional theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/156/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/156/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2018:i:1:p:156-:d:193793

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().