Leadership for sustainability perceptions in higher education institutions in Oman

Abstract

This study explores leadership in higher education institutions in Oman where education for sustainability issues are a high priority. The Vice-chancellor of the premier university Sultan Qaboos University, Qaboos Sultanate of Oman, and his four senior management team members answer the following question: What are the concrete steps which have been undertaken in order to allow the university to integrate sustainability in its: (a) curricula; (b) research; (c) practical projects; and (d) regional and national development endeavours? The views of these senior leaders carry larger national and international implications for the promotion of sustainability in Oman. They define their leadership as articulating a desire to bring about educational change and to prepare in practice for an explicit paradigm shift towards sustainability throughout the university and the country as well. Internationalization of the university is considered to be an important part of its sustainability strategy.

Keywords

higher education Oman sustainable development university leadership

Introduction

A simple Google search identifies a number of publications in the important field of leadership for sustainability (LFS). Within LFS, some studies (e.g. Pepper, 2014) focus on the narrower field of LFS in education (e.g. Bush, 2014). Again, within the (exclusively) higher education (HE) research literature we have identified a particular LFS gap, taking the whole of the higher education institution (HEI) itself as the object of study – as opposed to the HEI being an academic sight for other (non-HEI focused) research across disciplines. Shiel (2013) contributes to fill this gap for English HEIs (global north), and in this article we use an LFS lens to explore leadership in HEIs in Oman (global south, e.g. Sultan Qaboos University, SQU), where education for sustainability issues have a high priority.

The rationale and significance of this LFS study arises in the first place from SQU’s Office for External Cooperation (OEC)’s new communication channels with the nine SQU colleges to accomplish the OEC mission in attracting research visitors in interdisciplinary fields like LFS. Second is Leal’s call for book chapters (Leal Filho, 2014).

We take ‘leadership’ in the sense of ‘leadership as what leaders do’, mindful that there are issues with such an approach, as there are with other (different) understandings of leadership. Again, from the different accounts of what ‘sustainability’ is, we take sustainability in the context of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), 2005–2014, to mean and entail the following: ‘The reorientation of Higher Education (HE) Institutions (HEI) towards a more congruent relation with socio-economic, environmental and healthcare systems’ (Wals, 2014). So far as is known, the present article represents the first study of LFS at HEIs in Oman. Through its SQU Hospital (SQUH) – the only teaching hospital in Oman – SQU provides clinical and community health services as a core responsibility for the healthcare dimension of sustainability. The SQU campus is thus a crucial entry point to creating a more sustainable Oman by educating, training and qualifying young Omani medical doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists, technologists and other professionals.

The purpose of this article is to explore LFS at HEIs in Oman, namely SQU, in the context of the UN Decade of ESD. This objective is achieved by analysing LFS in a methodology of case studies described below.

Macro and micro framework

In this study the macro context comprises socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of sustainability of the nation state in which the university is located. The micro context is composed of the university community and the university-specific context.

The macro context in the Sultanate of Oman

The macro context of the Sultanate of Oman considers issues relating to ESD at universities through a discussion of leadership in higher education (HE). This study comes in a long sequential line of previous perspectives from other scholars in a variety of countries worldwide as well as other global considerations, providing some sense of an increasing global agenda for change (Hammersley-Fletcher, 2009). In addition to SQU, there are Colleges of Applied Sciences (CAS), and there are also joint tertiary vocational training sub-systems with smaller-scale student intake compared with CAS. These are designed, regulated and funded by the government in Oman, working with educational institutions of Germany, Holland and Scandinavia, for example. The Omani Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) is the top HE agency and has endorsed the UN Decade of ESD (2005–2014), and to speed up Oman-based undergraduate education a new Directorate General (DG) was established in 2005 to run a network of six regional campuses The first CAS students’ cohort graduated in 2010, having been admitted to a foundation programme in 2005, benefiting from international collaboration projects. This includes an agreement between DG CAS and Otago University, New Zealand, for the CAS IT Programme. Thus, students at CAS – unlike SQU – may be admitted to IT programmes.

All the while, the discipline of IT is gaining importance and is also changing in nature to become a strategic sustainability planning and development tool (Musango, 2012). This is demonstrated by the fact that IT project development formed an important part of the plan of action by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). For instance, the Council of Health Ministers of GCC (of which Oman is a member) also endorsed the UN MDG targets and indicators, providing a framework to measure progress in the integration of environment and health sustainability and socioeconomic development (Khoja, 2013). Powell (2012) notes that people’s mental and physical well-being and a healthy environment are among the key indicators for sustainability in a country’s regions. This sustainability-alignment of the Omani public higher education system situates education (e.g. CAS with its pioneering IT programme example) as a sustainability teaching and learning site (Hammett, 2013). In its turn, this positioning of CAS campuses takes good care of the region’s educational, cultural and technology sustainability dimensions.

The micro context in Oman

The example taken is that of SQU. The public higher education subsystems in Oman currently include the premiere institution – SQU, established in 1986 – and ESD profiles of SQU have been studied (Hussain and Albarwani, 2014). Recently, there have been interesting studies on particular aspects of SQU academic programmes; see, for example, Alharthy (2012) on engineering, Alsalmy (2013) on teacher education, and Lane-Kelso (2012) on digital citizens. Also, our field-collected data and content analysis reveal that SQU programmes have been internationally professionally accredited as being sustainability-compliant. In other words, curricula are required to include sustainability-related learning outcomes as a necessary pre-condition for international accreditation of SQU programmes. This aligns with Mcdevitt (2008)’s assertion that for universities to remain competitive they must first meet the demands of international accrediting bodies, and second be more innovative. It has also been argued that accreditation is a first step to accomplishing higher levels of performance (Sahney, 2014), and to being role models for replication elsewhere (Alrawas, 2012).

Case study research approach

The objective of this article is to explore LFS at HEIs in Oman, in the context of the UN Decade of ESD. This objective is achieved by case study analyses using narrative techniques of semi-structured interviews. This article, in a sense, seeks to combine notions of narrative analysis with how to undertake meaningful research. This approach helped us as researchers to interact, engage, and better understand and interpret LFS from the perspectives of SQU top leaders and the influence of SQU institutional culture upon LFS as well. For a world-ranked HEI (for example, SQU) that is unique in the sense of being the only public university in a country (for example, Oman) aspiring to be part of the global knowledge-based economy, where no LFS investigations have been previously undertaken and from the state of the art LFS literature (above), the following research question is derived:

Research question: What are the concrete steps which have been undertaken in order to allow the university to integrate sustainability in its: (a) curricula; (b) research; (c) practical projects; and (d) regional and national development endeavours?

Through the answer to this research question we learn more, not only about LFS but also about SQU itself as a field of study in its own right (as opposed to SQU being an academic site for tens of other established disciplinary areas). Over the past three decades, SQU has shaped the national development of Oman as well as being shaped by it, and it is hoped that this study shows what SQU, Oman, can teach others on the international stage.

In a case study methodology, the context of this enquiry is a large size government-sector university – SQU – with its website (www.squ.edu.om) demographics showing about 1000 multi-ethnic multicultural academic staff with full-time student enrolment of more than 17,000 who come from state-run schools that are also exclusively for Omani nationals. One of the authors of this article is a senior permanent academic staff member; the other is a senior visiting researcher, and for the purpose of this article the latter is also an insider to the study. Both bring to this study their recent experience within the university, their substantive knowledge of the history of the university, the intricacies of its development, and the wider tertiary context. While we seek to represent the data, we also acknowledge that we bring our informal observations of the university; and we concur that ‘there is seldom complete agreement on any experience’ (Giles, 2011).

Selection of and interviews with university leaders

The following selection of interviewees was judged by the researchers to be the most appropriate, because we observe that at SQU strategic decisions are made at this level of the university leadership. The Vice-chancellor (VC) and his four senior management team members answer the following question: What are the concrete steps which have been undertaken in order to allow the university to integrate sustainability in its: (a) curricula; (b) research; (c) practical projects; and (d) regional and national development endeavours? Semi-structured interview protocols were conducted for this study in November 2014. We interviewed the following: the VC and two deputy VCs (DVC) on academic affairs, and postgraduate studies and research; the Assistant VC for OEC (AVC OEC); and the VC’s Academic Advisor (VC AA). All interviewees are PhD holders who have been at the university for more than 10 years, and four of them held senior college positions before being promoted to their current leadership level. They all agreed to participate in a voice-recorded interview through introductory email and telephone communications, and each agreed to a visit in their respective office timed for their convenience. Assuring anonymity for respondents and to galvanize their support, the researchers included with the research question a covering letter that identified LFS at SQU to be the first such research to be published internationally – of particular reputational value to SQU senior leaders – with an executive summary as background material.

Leaders for sustainability at the university

All respondents agreed that leading for sustainability at all levels is necessary for making sense of sustainable development in Oman, for communicating important information about sustainable development, and for creating a collective cross-disciplinary institution-wide space where SQU academics communicate, sharing together something of the experience of leading for sustainable development. All these uses of sustainable development by SQU academics as leaders help to form and define sustainable development in Oman.

Drawn from the larger dataset of five voice-recorded interviews, two narrative accounts are outlined here as examples of data presentation; the other narratives are to appear in forthcoming pieces (Hussain and Albarwani, forthcoming). In the first narrative the senior leader for sustainability describes his goal to position sustainability at the top of the agenda within the university. His vision is to make a SQU one of the leading HEIs in the region. Remarkably, on the morning of the interview, the university was preparing for a workshop from USAID on how to apply for funding from US development agencies. With strong support from faculty and staff he describes himself as an innovator and research volunteer, and in this narrative there is evidence to indicate a high level of achievement. In the second narrative the leader describes her first steps towards embedding internationalization into university agendas. She acknowledges the influence of colleagues in her approach.

Leader’s narrative 1: LFS is all about education

Responding to Omani national educational needs at all levels from university foundation level to postgraduate, LFS is built in the SQU system dynamic of receiving fresh raw material from schools (pupils who are Omani nationals) as annual intake of more than 3500 and producing excellent (Omani nationals) graduates in all disciplines ready to join the workforce and to serve the Omani community – this is LFS at its best. For instance, SQU takes pupils from government schools and a few years later sends some of them back to the schools as graduate teachers to eventually lead for sustainability in every school in Oman and change the pathways of education systems for the better. Some schoolteachers play very important roles in laying the foundations of sustainability concepts in the hearts and minds of their pupils and schools.

LFS enables us to ensure that SQU every year graduates hundreds of strong leaders. For instance, in the discipline of education we realize that if graduates are sent to work after their studies at university as weak teachers, then they will produce weak school students as input to our university. This in its turn may mean that SQU will receive a weak intake, thus perpetuating a ‘weak-weak-weak …’ cycle in the education system. This would be a good example of bad LFS. On the other hand, if SQU produces strong graduate teachers to schools, and schools send strong pupils as input to SQU, then Oman will have a ‘strong-strong-strong …’ cycle that is excellent LFS. Our vision for our graduates is not only to serve the Omani community, but also to be the best in this service on a global level. An external measure of the quality of our students comes from the good performance of SQU graduates enrolling for postgraduate programmes. For instance our graduates succeed in being admitted to leading international HEIs in UK, Europe, North America and Asia Pacific – another external indicator of the quality of our graduates. More than nine out of every ten of our graduates that study abroad come back to work in SQU as members of academic or research staff with international postgraduate qualifications. Furthermore, we find that as members of staff, SQU graduates outperform in promotion to higher ranks their peers who are graduates from universities other than SQU.

LFS is not something you can implant in university students at the age of 19; it has to be nurtured at elementary school and looked after at all stages of education.

By way of highlighting the success of our graduates, let me give the following example. Hasan (not real name) graduated in Engineering in the 1990s and worked with Schlumberger International, who took him here and there around the world in many locations. Then he came back to SQU for MSc and PhD studies, finishing both successfully. Next he went on to start up a company of his own based in Oman that is attracting business in competition with well-established international companies in his field of competence and expertise.

In closing, the following sentence sums it up: SQU graduate the teachers of today, who in their turn help in producing tomorrow’s teachers, medical doctors, engineers, scientists and other professionals. (Senior university leader 1)

Leader’s narrative 2: LFS is all about internationalization

We are not consciously thinking about LFS – I do not know what other senior university leaders think – but we are not consciously working on LFS and now comes the time to imbed LFS in our strategic plans. Within internationalization (the fourth clause in the SQU Royal Charter), the OEC research visitor framework opens up space to participate in interdisciplinary research – for instance, this LFS study aiming to strengthen the SQU internationalization profile and enhance local innovation. These SQU experiences may be usefully replicated elsewhere, considering local needs while paying attention to global perspectives.

Internationalization is here manifested in our collaborative research, multiethnic academic, research, technical and academic staffs and multicultural environment. Moreover, we are proactive in seeing and seizing opportunities for SQU academic staff to join as members in international research teams. The sustainability concept is here throughout SQU, but we are not consciously working on it. Now comes the time we really should work to embed sustainability in SQU strategy. Sustainability as a learning outcome is a pre-requisite for international professional accreditation of SQU academic programmes. Sustainability is a continuous holistic initiative (not ad hoc and then it stops!) spread through SQU programmes, leading to fruitful results fuelling further Omani progress in human resource development and generating wealth. In closing I like to emphasize that we are not consciously aware that sustainable development is already in SQU strategy – now the time has come for both sustainable development and internationalization to come out loud and clear. (Senior university leader 2)

Comparison of sustainability leaders

All the five interviewees have PhDs: two in engineering, two in science and one in education. Obviously, being academics they are all interested in learning, teaching, research and community service. All were very generous, and to us it appears that they really benefited from the interview experience, and made a point of saying so. Throughout our interviews, we found that respondents agreed that leading for sustainability at all levels is necessary for making sense of sustainable development in Oman, for communicating important information about sustainable development, and for creating a collective cross-disciplinary institution-wide space where SQU academics communicate, sharing together something of the experience of leading for sustainable development. All these uses of sustainable development by SQU academics as leaders help to form and define sustainable development in Oman.

Discussion

As noted above, there are different understandings of leadership and different accounts of what sustainability is, so taken together there are many variations of what leadership for sustainability might be. The present study benefited from endeavours elsewhere (Hamersley-Fletcher, 2006) that educational leaders are focused on developing their understandings of self and the ways in which humans react and interact with each other, and that these understandings are used to enable leaders to make greater sense of the world of the HEIs within which they work and give substance and direction to their professional development. This sits very comfortably with the findings of a recent review (Sarkis, 2013) of sustainability management that found that, in sustainability-based research, the ordinary management of people (human) problems is a top challenge to making advances. The presence of the research visitor acted as a lever to galvanize the VC and his senior management team together in a way that was beneficial to this study.

We observed that the senior SQU management is keen to interact with student societies influenced by other HEIs worldwide. For instance, since the 1970s student voice has been the subject of considerable academic interest in Anglophone educational systems and shared by many other countries (Czerniawski, 2012). This aligns with the following (Wangenge, 2012): that universities are seeking better engagement with their communities while also moving ahead with their traditional functions of training the human capital base. Like many universities historically before it in other countries (Luzano, 2006), SQU has played many leadership roles in transforming Omani society and has supported sustainability scientific research (Environment Ministry, 2012: 11).

The contributions of this study complement other works in Europe (Shiel, 2013), attempting to fill the LFS in HEIs’ international literature gap. Leal Filho (2012) quoted in (Lee, 2012) notes that there is lack of empirical works trying to ascertain first-hand what is expected of university sustainability policies. So far as is known, there are no previous journal-published international sustainability works with the SQU institution itself as the topic of research.

Prospective SQU international research visitors may consider benefiting from the framework of the new OEC communication channels opened for one of the authors as a research visitor to strengthen the SQU internationalization profile. According to Lawn (2012), the process of education internationalization involves Anglicization, and that political borders are suspended in a manner similar to borders being dissolved for international economic processes and e-commerce. This is in alignment with Pinheiro et al. (2012)’s findings that societal demands have influenced the way in which universities have evolved in different places.

This study provides a fresh space for colleagues who are senior leaders of SQU to articulate their perspectives on LFS with critical reflections on their own experiences that in its turn may lead to deriving further insights to advance the LFS topic. Although the research opportunities offered by the Omani ESD realm have been well explored in the literature, the use of an LFS lens to analyse the SQU management of resources across disciplines has been less well developed. Significantly, in the second half of the last century there was growing interest to advocate a ‘Systems Approach’ tool (Najim, 1982) for developing countries like Oman to be used for solving sustainable development problems, including concurrently with the birth of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) systems approach for a north Gulf water resources management development project (Hussain, 1982). Recently, other studies (Zhao, 2013) have focused more on innovations and advancing science and technology and on the integration of the needs of science, technology and socioeconomic practice.

Paraphrasing Hammersley-Fletcher (2015a), we keep within reality (the supremacy of Anglo-American HEIs over global south HEIs) our celebration of (LFS at SQU study) achievement, nurturing excitement, good practice and appreciation of sustainability issues. Hammersley-Fletcher (2015b) also notes, in the domain of professional ethics, that good is viewed as intrinsic to the work of educators involved in negotiating between competing imperatives and drivers, and the importance of considering the behaviours of those researched in order to expose their perceptions.

All the while, the HEI sphere likes to see itself as committed to virtuous practices and selfless pursuit of knowledge (Hatier, 2014). Within this (ethics) domain, one of the anonymous reviewers argued that the above account of the leader’s narrative 1 might be biased to present a positive and significant perspective of LFS at SQU to promote SQU internationally. The important critical issues here are that first such limitation is transparent rather than hidden away, allowing the reader to properly interpret the results of this (LFS at SQU) study – an under-researched context. Second, we (authors and researchers) are under professional obligation (Hammett, 2015; Kinser, 2012) to respond to readers’ comments (after publication) in a similar (thoughtful, constructive, calm and clear) fashion to earlier (peer-review) engagements with editors and reviewers (before publication).

Implications

Given that the implementation of sustainable development in higher education is an international concern, the findings of this LFS study have implications not only for Oman, but also for global audiences. The UN Decade of ESD has boosted international efforts to speed up the reversal of an environmental turnaround in which the natural environment which we need to sustain us is instead turning against us. World leaders joined senior university leaders in rallying calls to tackle concerns for unsustainability, e.g. Crown Prince Charles: ‘In failing [the sustainability of] the earth, we are failing humanity’, quoted in Lagarde (2014).

Universities worldwide are introducing conceptual LFS frameworks; for instance, Pinheiro et al. (2012) note that at the supranational level the European Commission has played a vital role in making HEI senior leaders more responsive to changing dynamics and external events, while in the Nordic education subsystem (Ischinger, 2009) HEIs play a key role in European regional innovation systems. As shown in the above examples in Oman, HEIs conceive of, operationalize and implement ESD policy in very unique ways in response to differing political pressure and distinctive institutional settings. For instance, as a consequence of the growing global scope of societal and public policy issues, the EU and US governments, and UN-DESD, are prompted to respond with economic or environmental policy, e.g. without-borders trade policy in e-learning and education services, and education policies, e.g. ESD, that appear to be similar around the world (Roumell, 2014). In the first stage some universities may act to introduce ESD values, making LFS advances possible.

Conclusions

This article explores leadership for sustainability in higher education institutions through the eyes of senior university leaders in the context of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Case studies are developed to examine leading cultural change at an HEI, namely SQU, with data outlined in representative narrative accounts. Consistency is apparent across the study, through which the university Vice-chancellor, his deputies and assistants, occupying formal senior leadership positions, articulate a desire to bring about change and represent an explicit shift towards sustainability in the university and its colleges. In the main, these university leaders envision their institution as a place where the community works for a sustainable future; they passionately share the responsibility for change, and they recognize the importance of strategies to introduce and embed change in their university.

One of the effects of globalization is the emergence of the field of educational leadership in higher education as an international concern. Thus the findings of this study have implications not only for Oman but also for global audiences. The international significance of the promotion of LFS at universities in Oman is made as follows. First, the internationalization of HE in the twenty-first century has highlighted the importance of an internationalized national HEI (SQU, for example) – as opposed to a non-internationalized university – to the economic sustainability of growth-aspiring countries in the global south (Oman, for instance). In other words, HEIs in other lands in the global south (with their unique histories and developmental trajectories) may benefit from what SQU can teach others about internationalization. Second, in our globalized world – the UNESCO-defined educational system (world region) of the 22 Arab States and its GCC sub-system (of which Oman is a member) – public universities are emerging as strategic national institutions that shape and are shaped by the sustainable development of their countries. Third, internationalized HEIs are the crucial supply-side for the expanding demands of the graduate-recruiting knowledge-based global industries.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

At Sultan Qaboos University, we would like to thank His Excellency Dr Ali Al Bemani, Her Highness Dr Muna Al Said for Professor Sadiq Hussain’s Research Visitor ‘acceptance letter’; and Zwarda Al Mahrruky, Khalid Al Siaby and Nihad Ali Al Hadi for their assistance in international interlibrary loans for this paper.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

Alharthy

(2012) Sustainable outcome-based assessment SQU engineering programmes. In: Proceedings 7th international conference on education and development, Valencia, Spain.

Alrawas

(2012) Dean’s foreword. In: SQU Medical College Annual Report. Muscat: SQU Press.

Alsalmy

(2013) Degree of professionalism in teacher training programmes. SQU Journal of Education 7(1): 214–222.

Bush

(2014) Editorial. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 42(4): 443–444.

Czerniawski

(2012) Repositioning trust: A challenge to inauthentic neoliberal uses of pupil voice. Management in Education 26(3): 130–139.

Environment Ministry (2012) Sustainable development in Oman. Muscat: Environment Ministry.

Giles

(2011) Re-culturing a university department. Management in Education 25(3): 87–92.

Hammersley-Fletcher

(2006) Educational leadership. Management in Education 34: 143–152.

Hammersley-Fletcher

(2009) Editorial. Management in Education 23(4): 150–153.

10.

Hammersley-Fletcher

(2015a) Editorial. Management in Education 29(2): 45–53.

11.

Hammersley-Fletcher

(2015b) Value(s)-driven decision-making. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 43(2): 198–202.

12.

Hammett

(2013) Transition and the education of the new South African citizen. Comparative Education Review 57(2): 309–331.

13.

Hammett

(2015) Research and Fieldwork in Development. London: Routledge.

14.

Hatier

(2014) The morality of university decision makers. Studies in Higher Education 39(6): 1085–1094.

15.

Hussain

Albarwani

(forthcoming) Leadership for higher education in Oman.

16.

Hussain

(1982) Automatic stations for Iraq resources development. In: IFAC Systems Approach for Development Symposium Proceedings, Rabat, Morocco, 1981. Oxford: Pergamon.

17.

Hussain

Albarwani

(2014) Sustainable development at universities in the Sultanate of Oman. In: Leal Filho

(ed.) Transformative Approaches to Sustainability. Switzerland: Springer International, 151–163.

18.

Ischinger

(2009) Universities for cities and regions: OECD lessons. Change Management for HE 41: 8–13.

19.

Khoja

(2013) Working together for better health: GCC technical cooperation. Executive board of GCC health ministers, Al Riyadh.

20.

Kinser

(2012) Editorial. CIES Newsletter: Perspective. New York: Comparative and International Education Society.

21.

Lagarde

(2014) BBC 2014 Sustainability Dimbleby Lecture. London: BBC.

22.

Lawn (2012) Europeanizing Education: Governing a New Policy Space. Oxford: Symposium Books.

23.

Lane-Kelso

(2012) Global digital citizenship: becoming a world university in Oman. Journal of the World Universities Forum 5(1): 97–114.

24.

Leal Filho

(2012) Sustainable Development at Universities. Frankfurt: Peter Lang

25.

Leal Filho

(2014) Transformative Approaches to Sustainable Development. Switzerland: Springer.

26.

Lee (2012) Manifestos for sustainability. In: Leal Filho

(ed.) Sustainable Development at Universities. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

27.

Luzano

(2006) Sustainable development at Cardiff University. Cleaner Production 18: 637–644.

28.

Mcdevitt

(2008) Strategy revitalization in academia. Educational Management 22(1): 32.

29.

Musango (2012) Technology assessment of sustainability in South Africa. PhD thesis, University of Stellenbosch, http://scholar.sun.ac.za.

30.

Najim

(1982) System Approach for Development. London: Pergamon.

31.

Pepper

(2014) Leading for sustainability in Western Australian regional schools. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 42(4): 506–519.

32.

Pinheiro

Benneworth

Jones

(eds) (2012) Universities and Regional Development. London: Routledge.

33.

Roumell

(2014) Comparative policy formulation analysis US and EU e-learning. Comparative Education Review 58: 135–144.

34.

Sahney

(2014) Developing a high performing teaching hospital. In: SQUH workshop, SQUH, SQU, Muscat.

35.

Sarkis

(2013) Guest editorial: Sustainability in engineering management setting. IEEE Transactions Engineering Management 60(2): 301–308.

36.

Shiel

(2012) Enabling university leaders as sustainability role models. In: Leal

Sustainable Development at Universities. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

37.

Shiel

(2013) Leadership. In: Sterling

Maxey

Luna

(eds) The Sustainable University: Progress and Prospects. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 110–131.

38.

Wals

AEJ

(2014) Sustainability in higher education in the context of the UN DESD. Journal of Cleaner Production, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.06.007.

39.

Wangenge

(2012) National universities and the regional dimension. In: Pinheiro

(ed.) Universities and Regional Development. London: Routledge.

40.

Zhao

(2013) Sustainability in China needs the environmental Internet of things. International Journal Sustainable Development and World Ecology 20(3): 195–206.