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The UN proclamation of 2005–2014 as the decade of education for sustainable development has been instrumental in creating awareness and driving higher education institutions (HEIs) in integrating sustainability into their system. The purpose of this paper is to explore and encapsulate practices adopted by universities and colleges across the globe in integrating sustainability in education (here refers to curriculum and pedagogy), research, campus operations and outreach programs.

The review analyzed 229 peer-reviewed research studies in the time period 2005–2018 selected from 44 journals. The literature review was done in phases. The first phase was the selection of the database, the second phase was refining the database by eliminating irrelevant studies and the last phase was distributing selected studies on the basis of the journal, year and country of publication, research paradigm, sustainability integration in higher education, teaching techniques adopted by HEIs and research focus in publications.

This study contributes to the literature review of sustainability in higher education. From the literature review, it is evident that sustainability has made inroads into HEIs, but only a few universities have been successful in implementing it holistically, integrating all the triple bottom line dimensions in balance.

The study has practical implications for HEIs planning to integrate sustainability into teaching and learning and other aspects of educational practices. The findings and the examples of successful implementation of sustainable education by institutions around the world would help universities and colleges in formulating policies, strategies and practices that would promote sustainability on campuses.

The literature reviews on sustainability in higher education so far have focused either on curricula, pedagogical approaches, assessment and reporting or barriers and solutions. This study attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the initiatives adopted by the institutions in incorporating sustainability in education, research, campus operations and outreach programs.

This study aims to describe the development and validation of a scale that measures the self-reported sustainable behavior of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) regarding their knowledge on incorporating sustainability into education, research and outreach, mediated by the attitude toward the triple bottom line.

The scale was applied to students from HEIs, with a total of 759 valid cases and respondents from various countries. The technique used was structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis using the SmartPLS software.

Respondents’ self-reported sustainable behavior scale was affected by their economic attitude and the knowledge about sustainability that they assimilated. However, the economic dimension received more attention from the participating students. Both for the total sample and for respondents older than the study average, environmental attitude and social attitude did not affect the self-reported sustainable behavior.

The study’s limitations can offer opportunities for future research, as more constructs should be inserted into the model to check the existence of differences in relation to self-reported sustainable behavior, such as beliefs in the affective stage.

The practical implication is on the fact that HEIs can use the scale of self-reported sustainable behavior to evaluate the incorporation of sustainability in the students behavior. Thus, with appropriate guidelines, HEIs will be able to analyze the results looking for to achieve balance in the incorporation of sustainability in education, research and outreach in a transdisciplinary way, improving HEI program and preparing future decision-makers to collaborate for sustainable development.

The originality of the study is on the verification of the influence of sustainability teaching in higher institutions through self-reported sustainable behavior scale, based on the sustainable development goals in three dimensions – cognitive, affective and conative.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) offer courses and programmes focusing on sustainability in economics, as courses on sustainable development (SD), which examine the economic, social and environmental dimensions of SD. This paper aims to examine sustainability integration in economics degree programmes.

Through an extensive literature review in Web of Science (WoS) and information search in Google, conducting to 28 relevant case studies, this paper elucidates the emphasis given to sustainability as part of economics degree programmes in HEIs.

The results suggest that, whereas the inclusion of sustainability components in this field is a growing trend, much still needs to be done to ensure that matters related to SD are part of the routine of university students studying economics.

It is worth noting that the literature review conducted in WoS was primarily aimed at assisting in the selection of university case studies. The 28 university case studies scrutinised in this study may lack sufficient representation from numerous developing countries.

This study highlights challenges in integrating the SD into economics degree programmes, suggesting the need for curriculum adjustments as underscoring operational issues, acting as barriers. The inclusion of sustainability in economics programmes must navigate operational issues stemming from packed timetables and busy schedules, requiring innovative solutions.

As far as the authors are aware, this study holds substantial importance in its emphasis on implementing sustainability within HEIs’ economics programmes, assisting in pursuing SD.

The novelty of this study lies in addressing sustainability with the specific economics focus programmes within the HEIs context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mission statements from 30 leading Brazilian universities, evaluating the statements based on a sustainable model that involves an environmental management system, public participation and social responsibility, and sustainable education and research.

Content analysis was conducted on the mission statements. The points used were based on the campus sustainability model of Alshuwaikhat and Abubakar. After grading, the Pearson correlation was verified for indicator and ranking points.

The authors find few universities with clear sustainability aspects in their mission statements; just 10 percent of institutions achieve five points out of a maximum of nine points.

This study analyses only mission statements, which do not provide substantiated real sustainable action as much as reporting does.

Higher education managers should review the universities’ mission statements in terms of a sustainability overview and improve the statements.

The authors criticize the real mission stated by leading Brazilian universities and their true role in society.

Studies frequently focus on reporting and this work instead focusses on mission statements, which are important for guiding reporting and acting as a strategic tool. The results highlight aspects that have only been rarely addressed by Brazilian universities.

As one of the five concrete actions recommended for implementing sustainable development at universities (internal operations, institutional framework, research, education and capacity building), capacity building has received the least research attention. Although capacity building can be a tangible implementation of outreach that offers empowerment to universities, it is currently unclear how capacity building can be operationalised in concrete activities and which parties represent the university and the community. The purpose of this study is to provide the idea that capacity building can be organised through student training projects.

To provide support for our suggestion that student training projects can act as an implementation method for capacity building, an illustrative case study is presented. The case study concerns an academic consultancy training project for students in the domain of sustainable development.

The case study analysis reveals that, as an implementation method, student training projects can provide benefits for both universities and communities. It appears that student training projects do not depend on individual engagement, on individual university staff members or on research grants and that they provide community members with access to resources, expertise and experiences of academics. Moreover, student training projects overcome the major challenges of both power distance and continuity.

To summarise, student training projects may provide a new, promising avenue as an implementation method for capacity building that provides substantial benefits and overcomes the challenges of other methods mentioned in the existing literature.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world are engaged in internationalisation efforts. Yet internationalisation per se is associated with significant pressures on the environment and environmental resources, which need to be addressed. This study aims to assess the opportunities, benefits and challenges associated with the internationalisation of universities at a global level.

A total of 27 relevant case studies were extracted from the literature to illustrate how HEIs worldwide are ensuring sustainability in their internationalisation efforts.

Through case studies of international HEIs, the study lists the opportunities, benefits and challenges associated with the internationalisation of universities at a global level and some of the measures that may be deployed to reduce the environmental impacts of their international activities.

This study provides a welcome contribution to the literature because it outlines some of the works taking place at universities, where matters related to sustainable development are considered against a background of internationalisation efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to point out the necessity of implementing more appropriate approaches instead of the traditional single disciplinary approaches, in order to be able to cope with the ill‐defined, highly complex problem of sustainable development in systems such as organizations or regions.

Based on empirical data concerning expert and stakeholder preferences, it is argued that research and teaching on innovation for sustainability need to be both inter‐ and transdisciplinary.

Here, the approach of transdisciplinary case studies, developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, allows appropriate integration of research and teaching activities and thus leads to mutual learning between the case study actors.

In the second part of the paper, these conceptual considerations are illustrated with the so‐called Erzherzog Johann case study, an integrative research and teaching project at the University of Graz.

In the paper the very complex task to integrate research and teaching on sustainability‐related innovation is described and illustrated with the first transdisciplinary case‐study conducted in Austria according to the ETH approach.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which a sample of US-based higher education institution’s (HEI’s) climate targets and associated climate action planning efforts align with the definitions of and practices associated with science-based targets (SBTs) that are typically used to organize corporate climate efforts. This analysis will be used to explore similarities and tease out differences between how US-based HEIs and corporations approach sustainable target setting and organize sustainable action.

The degree of intersection between a sample of HEI climate action plans from Ivy Plus (Ivy+) schools and the current SBT initiative (SBTi) general corporate protocol was assessed by using an objective-oriented evaluative approach.

While there were some areas of overlap between HEI’s climate action planning and SBTi’s general corporate protocol – for instance, the setting of both short- and long-term targets and large-scale investments in renewable energy – significant areas of difference in sampled HEIs included scant quantitative Scope 3 targets, the use offsets to meet short-term targets and a low absolute annual reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

This paper unites diverse areas of literature on SBTs, corporate sustainability target setting and sustainability in higher education. It provides an overview of the potential benefits and disadvantages of HEIs adopting SBTs and provides recommendations for the development of sector-specific SBTi guidelines.

Nowadays, fast and unpredictable changes are common in most countries. Organizations are trying to survive in an environment that shows obvious signs of wear and tear. At the same time, sustainability has been arousing an obvious interest for years, in both the business and academy fields. The global perspective of the sustainable phenomenon as well as the objectives and goals to be achieved have turned into the Agenda for Sustainable Development, with the horizon set in 2030. This chapter is part of SDG 9, which proposes innovation as a means to contribute to sustainability and create wealth in nations; thus, sustainable innovation constitutes a basic and growing paradigm, which makes it possible to achieve SDG 9. Furthermore, the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on companies and their way of innovation managing is exposed. Finally, guidelines are proposed so that organizations can be more responsible and sustainable.

The study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance in terms of certain board characteristics on the level of universities’ voluntary sustainability disclosure.

A content analysis based on a comprehensive disclosure index – that also accounts for the impact that COVID-19 exerted on the social dimension of university activities – is performed on a sample of Italian public universities’ websites for the year 2020. An ordinary least squares regression model is estimated to test the association between universities’ board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence and board gender diversity (including the presence of a female rector), and online sustainability disclosure.

This study provides evidence that websites represent a valid tool used by universities to highlight their social performance and demonstrate their commitment to dealing with the pandemic’s social and economic disruption by supporting their stakeholders. Board gender diversity and female Rector’s presence are crucial factors that positively impact voluntary sustainability disclosure levels.

Policymakers and regulators can benefit from the study’s findings. Using the results of this study, they may reflect on the need to regulate sustainability reporting in universities. In addition, findings may offer policymakers inspiration for regulating the presence of women on university boards.

This study offers novel contributions to existing literature analysing the university’s voluntary sustainability disclosure practices through alternative communication tools such as websites. Moreover, it provides novel insight into the role of the board gender diversity in university sustainability disclosure practices.