Impact-centred meaning and practice of sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs)

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

The call for more responsible and sustainable businesses is growingly being accepted across industries. However, each organization`s understanding and practices of sustainability can wildly differ. Unsurprisingly, (Elkington, 1999) addressed that there are more than 100 definitions of sustainability. That illustrates the importance of finding how sustainability is understood and practiced in a contextual basis. This single holistic case study research tries to explore sustainability within one HEI, King Abdulaziz University (KAU) which is ranked top sustainable university in Saudi Arabia.
Since research is one of the core domains of sustainability in HEIs, this paper aims to show an example of how sustainable research is understood and practiced at KAU, focusing on sustainability in research, and sustainability of research from the lens of the stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984), where both internal and external stakeholders are engaged and being taken considerable.
Until present, 30 semi- structured interviews were conducted, along with an extensive secondary data. The value of this paper is to shed the light on the importance of social and environmental impact-centred research, accompanied with the economic potentials. Demonstrating an empirical strategic shift towards sustainable and impactful research, that is not limited to citation rates and impact factors. Which reflects the institutional commitment to social, environmental, and economic pillars of sustainability.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 16 Mar 2022
EventResponsible Business Research Seminar - Tampere, Finland
Duration: 16 Mar 202217 Apr 2022

Conference

ConferenceResponsible Business Research Seminar
Country/TerritoryFinland
CityTampere
Period16/03/202217/04/2022

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