Exploring Faculty Conceptualizations of Sustainability in Higher Education: Cultural Barriers to Organizational Change and Potential Resolutions

Abstract

It is often suggested that for institutional change efforts towards sustainability to bear fruit a common vision for sustainability in higher education (SHE) is necessary. Given the contested nature of the concept and the complexity of academic institutional culture, seeking broad consensus around sustainability presents a significant challenge to those seeking organizational change for sustainability. This article describes a research project that explored professors’ conceptualizations of SHE in the case study of Dalhousie University. We identified a number of divergent and conflicting conceptualizations around not only the concept of sustainability but also the role of the university in education for it, and promoting sustainability outside of its walls. Given the nature of the tensions in this study in particular and how they relate to important debates in the field of SHE generally, we propose embracing a vision of sustainability rooted in plurality and dialogue.

Keywords

Sustainability in higher education divergent conceptualizations pluralism organizational change sustainable development

Introduction

Emerging socio-ecological crises present us with a host of intractable or ‘wicked’ problems, whose inherent complexity precludes them from being meaningfully addressed through the narrow application of linearly focused disciplinary thinking, or the same instrumental rationality which is at the root of current crises. Addressing wicked problems will require a massive and concerted mobilization of our collective creative capacities (Brown et al., 2010). As centres for scholarship and research, institutions of higher learning (IHE) have been called upon to be among the vanguard in our response to the challenge of global sustainability (Cortese, 2003).

Much of the sustainability in higher education (SHE) literature discusses the need for sweeping institutional transformation through a common vision of sustainability (Bekessy et al., 2007; Lukman and Glaviˇc, 2007; Sterling, 2004; Velazquez et al., 2006). Such change requires deep and systemic learning on the part of institutional stakeholders in order to concomitantly reduce the ecological footprint of the university while aligning its intellectual footprint with the principles of education for sustainable development (ESD). If one envisions the intellectual footprint of the university as the memes that it disseminates, aligning the university with sustainability entails engaging in transformative forms of sustainability related education aimed at developing socio-ecological literacy in its students (Cortese, 2003; Tilbury, 2004; Wright, 2006). For Sterling (2004: 51), the primary challenge with this student focus is that ‘without the deep learning that this implies, on the part of policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, lecturers and all the other actors in higher education, the response of [higher education] to sustainability is always likely to be partial and accommodatory rather than full and transformative’. Thus, it is unsurprising that research suggests that the ‘greening’ of physical operations has met with greater success than efforts directed at incorporating sustainability principles into the curricular, pedagogical and management structures of IHEs (Beringer and Adomßent, 2008; Cotton et al., 2009; Tilbury, 2004). This is likely because making technical systems more ecologically efficient saves money, and typically does not involve negotiating the sorts of cultural or ideological differences inherent in socially constructed notions of: how we educate and why; the nature of the university in society; and the nature of sustainable development itself.

The contested nature of the concept of sustainability also presents significant challenges, if it is to be a banner under which to rally institutional change (Cotton et al., 2007; Thomas, 2004). Many contend that for institutional change efforts towards sustainability to bear fruit, university stakeholders must share a common understanding of the concept (de la Harpe and Thomas, 2009; Wright, 2010). Though some level of common understanding is important, seeking a consensus-based vision of sustainability runs the risk of glossing over important conceptual differences which may mute conflict or incompatibility between divergent interpretations of sustainability (Sylvestre et al., 2013; Wals, 2011). If the evolution of the concept is arguably predicated upon the exploration of the nature of tensions between divergent perspectives of sustainability, then muting these differences could lead to stagnation within the practice of sustainability. Therefore, exploring a plurality of sustainable potentialities is potentially the most important role the university has to play with respect to sustainability in society (Foster, 2001).

Universities present a number of unique challenges for organizational change. Institutional cultures, and academic culture in particular (Kezar and Eckel, 2002), espouse longstanding values such as academic autonomy, freedom and collegial governance which are often perceived as essential components of the university (Kezar, 2001; Sporn, 1996). These can represent values-based obstacles to managerial or top-down forms of governance wishing to implement transformation for sustainability (de la Harpe and Thomas, 2009). This in concert with challenges related to the inherent ambiguity of the concept of sustainability itself, as noted earlier, results in a lack of shared understanding and language for discussing sustainability, meaning that consensus building of a common vision is often fraught with conflict (Cotton et al., 2007; Reid and Petocz, 2006; Sherren et al., 2010).

Academics are an exceedingly important constituency to consider when exploring change at the university (Kezar, 2001; Sherren, 2010; Sporn, 1996). While tensions around the concept of sustainability and the role of university with respect to it are clearly the subject of much debate in the literature, it is unclear how these tensions actually play out on the ground or how they relate to the lived experiences of university faculty. Though important work has been done to explore how SHE-engaged faculty at certain universities envision curriculum change for sustainability (specifically change towards ESD) (Cotton et al., 2009; Reid and Petocz, 2006; Shephard and Furnari, 2010; Sherren et al., 2010), little research to date has sought to explore how university faculty outside of SHE conceptualize sustainability and the role of the university in achieving a sustainable future as well as how this may affect organizational change. Understanding how theoretical debates found in the sustainability literature are articulated within the context of academics’ lived experiences at the university may help in tailoring change efforts in such a way that they will be meaningfully adopted by the organization. Moreover, this lack of knowledge represents a missed opportunity to bring a level of practical and material substance to this high level theoretical debate.

To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a case study at Dalhousie University which was comprised of a series of in-depth interviews with faculty members from a variety of departments. The decision to involve as wide an array of departments as possible was an attempt to incorporate disciplines into a discussion of SHE that have traditionally been marginalized (Reid and Petocz, 2006). It is our hope that in doing so we could better capture the potential plurality of perspectives that exist with respect to sustainability on campus. This is pertinent, since disciplinary boundaries are often touted as significant barriers to transformative sustainability at the university (Cotton et al., 2009). Through a case study at Dalhousie University, we sought faculty perspectives within two broad categories: conceptualizations of sustainable development; and, the role they envision for the university in helping society become more sustainable. The purpose was to identify any ideological tensions that may exist between divergent conceptualizations associated with these categories, and more specifically, what challenges these tensions may present with respect to creating a common vision of sustainability at the university.

Methods

Dalhousie University is a comprehensive Canadian university with approximately 18,000 full-time students and over 6,000 full-time faculty and staff. Though there is currently no institutional mandate for organization-wide transformation for sustainability, a number of significant initiatives have demonstrated the university’s commitment to it. It is a signatory to the Talloires Declaration, the Halifax Declaration and the UNEP Cleaner Production Declaration (Dalhousie University 2012). Over the past decade it has founded an Office of Sustainability with a view to creating campus-based solutions that foster positive ecological, social health and economic outcomes (Office of Sustainability 2012). More recently, the university has founded the College of Sustainability where students may pursue a double major in sustainability and the discipline of their choice in a programme that draws upon faculty from across the university to provide an interdisciplinary and problem-based learning experience. Beyond this, Dalhousie obtained a silver ranking in STARS, a self-reporting sustainability performance indicator system produced by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE 2012). Therefore, we expected that academics at the university should have some familiarity with the concept of sustainability.

For this study, we randomly selected one faculty member from 33 academic departments at Dalhousie University for in-depth, face-to-face interviews. Faculty members were invited to participate in a one hour long semi-structured face-to-face interview. A list of indicative questions is given here:

What do you feel is the role of the university in contemporary society?

From your perspective, what do you feel will be key issues to the functioning of the university in the next 10 years?

When you hear the term sustainable development, what does this mean to you?

What role do you feel universities should play in achieving sustainability?

When you hear the term sustainable university, what does this mean to you?

What are the current barriers to preventing full implementation/realization of sustainability at your university?

What do you foresee as barriers to implementing sustainability initiatives on your campus in the future?

What would it take to put becoming a model of sustainability on the top of your university’s list of priorities?

Interview data were transcribed verbatim and coded inductively for emergent themes. Analysis and data management were conducted using NVivo 9 qualitative analysis software (QSR International 2011). Participant responses were initially coded by question and analyzed to create a substantive codebook where responses were grouped based on inherent similarities (Charmaz, 2006; Ryan and Bernard, 2003). Over multiple readings of the substantive codebook, themes were developed inductively that explained the nature of the similarity between coded responses under a specific code. Themes as understood here are common abstract constructs used in the expressions and thoughts of respondents in the interviews (Ryan and Bernard, 2003). Clusters of conceptually related themes were woven together into discourses describing the range of divergent conceptualizations present within the respondent pool. We employed Hajer and Versteeg’s (2006: 175) definition of discourse as ‘an ensemble of ideas, concepts and categories through which meaning is given to social and physical phenomena, and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices’. This enabled us to identify discursive tensions present within the institution.

Findings

The following section reports on the analysis of the data and is organized according to the two broad research categories outlined above: conceptualizations of sustainability and conceptualizations of the role of the university in making society more sustainable. Within each of the broad categories, thematic discourses emerged, which are discussed in the following.

Conceptualizing Sustainability

Thematic analysis revealed six distinct discourses present in the interview data. Each of the discourses discussed below received titles derived from the participants’ own words. It is important to note that since individual perspectives tend to be highly complex, they cannot be neatly housed inside the boundaries drawn around a single discourse. Many respondents engaged during their interviews with more than one of the discourses outlined below. Table 1 offers a breakdown of the distribution of discourses by faculty.

Discourse One: A Zero Sum Game (ZSG)

This discourse was by far the most frequently reproduced by respondents, with 58 per cent of them discussing concepts associated with ZSG. This discourse entails an inherently conservative view of sustainability where the relationship among sustainable development, environmental protection, social equity and economic expansion is as a ZSG. This discourse is characterized by explicit discussion of planetary resources as finite and tends to be critical of mainstream socio-economic ideologies that are wedded to a notion of perpetual growth. For example, one respondent stated:

[…] sustainable development is not development just for development’s sake, not just to say ‘oh we grew by 2% or 3% or 4%’ but that [society] is sustainable in the long run in terms of its impact on the environment and its impact also on future generations. (Participant 20)

Respondents who produced this discourse tended to draw heavily on the language of intergenerational equity often associated with the Brundtland Report as a way of initially framing their responses. Sustainability also tended to be framed in largely technical terms:

[…] I think of it in term of resources and environment particularly, more than perhaps the economics and business side of things. I think about using resources as sparingly and effectively as possible, getting down our consumption of metals, plastics, food material, getting it down to the point where we can replace them more easily… I think of it in terms of the amount of damage to the environment that is created by production. (Participant 11)

Table 1

Reproduction of discourse by faculty expressing conceptualizations of sustainability

Moreover change for sustainability was conceptualized less as a fundamental questioning of socio-economic structures than as a fine-tuning of these structures to bring them more in line with the principles of sustainability by sensitizing them to the reality of biophysical limits. In many instances, there was explicit discussion of the necessity of reining in business and industry, but again, only to ensure that they operate with a strong awareness of biophysical limits. As Table 2 illustrates, this discourse tends to be most developed by respondents in the Faculty of Science and Engineering or departments with a strong connection to the natural sciences. Although this discourse was also present within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, their engagement with the discourse was typically weak, characterized by a brief reiteration of Brundtland-like rhetoric without a subsequent discussion of biophysical limits or focus on environmental sustainability.

Table 2

Reproduction of discourses by faculty tied to themes expressing the perceived role of the university in helping society to become more sustainable

Discourse Two: A Positive Legacy (APL)

This discourse parallels the ZSG discourse in many ways, for instance by evoking the Brundtland rhetoric of inter and intra-generational equity and the importance of prudence in the consumption of natural resources. Nevertheless, it diverges conceptually in several important ways and was reproduced by only 18 per cent of participants mainly from the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Management. Most notably, this discourse developed a much more optimistic conceptualization of sustainability beyond ‘doing things less badly’ which tends to be the focus of the ZSG discourse and outlines a much more prominent role for business, industry and financial institutions rather than framing them as a force to be reined in. With respect to the former, respondents felt that traditional conceptions of sustainability were overly pessimistic and tended to prefer a vision where technical prowess and innovation for sustainability, aside from helping to stem environmental destruction through conservation and austerity (doing things less badly), could be used as a tool for bettering society, strengthening economy, all the while respecting biophysical limits (doing better things). Tied to this was an explicit belief in the importance of development. One participant in particular draws a distinction between sustainability and sustainable development preferring the latter:

I’d say that ‘sustainable development’ would have more buy in from more parties and be more practical, because ‘sustainability’ in my view is too branded with the idea of resistance to change. Most people want to move forward, whether it’s with their own personal agendas or with their company’s agendas. So I think that sustainable development is a better label for trying to balance things. (Participant 32)

This is a techno-optimist position and is perhaps most succinctly articulated by the belief that human society has consistently come to a better place and that our ability to learn and innovate will enable us to negotiate and avert emerging socio-ecological crises. Sustainable development as framed by these respondents seems to centre on a reflexive relationship between development and the socio-ecological realm whereby a deeper understanding of how development affects systems necessarily leads to better development:

[…] my own metaphor about this is that it’s like being a little child, you don’t quite understand how things work, … pretty soon you get conscious about how everything is interdependent, you get over that arrogance of ‘I understand it all’ and ‘I can fix it all’. With that mindset I think we actually would see a resolution. [We’re] still a work in progress… over generations and centuries we progressively have come to a better place. Now we have reached the limit of the anthropocentric world where we are realizing the value of other living and inanimate things and their interaction with human well being. (Participant 27)

Furthermore, respondents discussed creating a ‘positive legacy’ or positive change for sustainability as being contingent on balancing the needs associated with the interrelated spheres of economics, culture, society and environment, demonstrating a high degree of sensitivity to the inherent complexity of sustainability related problems.

Discourse Three: A Trojan Horse for Perpetual Growth (THPG)

The 24 per cent of respondents, predominantly from the Arts and Social Sciences, who articulated this discourse took a significantly different and far more critical stance regarding sustainable development. Generally speaking, respondents identified it as conceptual doublespeak that functions to maintain socio-economic structures that are inherently unsustainable. In particular, they discussed it as rhetoric whose purpose is perpetuating an economic ideology rooted in perpetual growth:

[…] one form of sustainable development, at least abstractly, is exponential growth, if it’s sustainable, right? So you can at least imagine that’s one of the visions that you’d have, exponential growth, That’s not sustainable at all and it’s always built on what will come next. It’s not very clear that what will come next will save our bacon… So the very term sustainable growth is either problematic or self-contradictory and I’m not sure which is more troubling. (Participant 17)

In contrast to the ‘A Positive Legacy’ discourse, there was a strong scepticism concerning sustainable development as employed by business, industry and what was viewed as the dominant socio-economic ideologies of our time. As a result, present in this discourse are themes that articulate the necessity of challenging mainstream ideologies and how they frame sustainability to their benefit:

[…] from the side of it being an oxymoron to the extent that development of resources and development of wealth, is in my view, fraught with structures and processes, that are designed to sustain inequality, unmanageability, unsustainability, and the quickest retrieval of resources at the minimal expense with the least amount of cost to those who are making the profits from those resource. Sustainable development can only mean a continuation of those structures and of those inequalities. (Participant 33)

Presenting sustainable development as an oxymoron is prevalent in this discourse. Framing sustainable development as such often took the form of a semantic challenge to what was perceived as inherent contradictions built into the language on which the concept is based. Though respondents who produced this discourse often noted that there existed potential for the concept and the practice of sustainability to be socially transformative, they felt progressive and transformative conceptions of sustainability tended to be marginalized by the mainstream.

Discourse Four: Socially Transformative Potential (STP)

Much like the THPG discourse, the 21 per cent of respondents who developed this discourse, predominantly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, tended to be highly critical of the perceived unsustainability of pre-existing socio-economic structures. However, rather than regarding sustainability as a rhetorical ploy to reinforce and perpetuate these structures, they discuss sustainability as a concept through which these structures may be critiqued:

[…] In my view, absolutely fundamental to any positive development of the notion of sustainable development requires a transformation of the whole paradigm by which wealth production and society formation are linked. What that takes, I don’t know, but it seems to be very clear that when the development of wealth is understood fundamentally as a private affair as opposed to a public good then we are doomed to a sustainable development in the oxymoronic sense. (Participant 33)

Though this respondent alludes to the contested nature of the concept, it is clear that the respondent envisions an STP embedded in the idea.

As with the ZSG discourse, respondents who developed this discourse display a strong sensitivity to the biophysical limits of the planet. Nevertheless, they tend to produce a more comprehensive vision of sustainability by discussing biophysical limits in tandem with issues of social, cultural and economic development which demonstrates an understanding of sustainability that is beyond technical fixes. As one respondent notes:

[…] industrial and commercial development is linked with excess and destruction. So clearly sustainable development is an attempt to change that historical problem, to recognize it and to think about ways in which we develop economically, environmentally, the way we develop spaces, economic and social systems that do not lead to overdevelopment and to resource exhaustion, but instead lead to something sustainable for the future and for the present. (Participant 28)

For these respondents, the perceived need for a fundamental rethinking of the dominant socio-economic paradigm is clear. It is on this point where this discourse diverges most significantly from both the ZSG and APL discourses.

Discourse Five: Nothing New (NN)

As the title suggests, respondents who produced this discourse found nothing novel in the concept of sustainable development. The broad assertion from this 18 per cent of respondents was that doing things sustainably has always been a goal and the fact that the global rhetoric has shifted to discussions of ‘sustainable development’ is likely a question of political correctness. As one respondent noted:

[…] I think that before the term was generated there were people who were thinking along sustainable lines but they didn’t use the term, and then it became sort of a politically correct term. I don’t have a better term, and I don’t take issue with it and I agree with the principles, but I would argue that there are people who were probably doing things with sustainability in mind long before it became a popular term. (Participant 13)

Sustainability is conceived of here as being inherent to most production processes which seek to produce goods and services with greater degrees of efficiency. This parallels the strong technical vision of sustainability inherent in the ZSG discourse except there is little to no discussion of resource conservation and efficiency in relation to the inherent biophysical limitations of the planet. This is not to say that they are omitted completely only that they have not been explicitly expanded upon. It may be that environmental protection being the driving force behind efficiency and conservation is thought to be common sense, but this is impossible to discern from respondents engaged in the production of this discourse.

Discourse Six: A Contested Concept (ACC)

This discourse speaks to an understanding that the concept of sustainable development is itself highly ambiguous and as such is a contested concept. It is interesting to note that the 42 per cent of participants who developed this discourse typically opened their discussion with this point before moving into a description of their particular view. A standard example of this in the interview data is as follows:

[…] sustainable development… It’s one of those terms that mean everything and nothing. It’s kind of like development, it can mean whatever any organization or any person wants it to mean, you can just sort of put your spin on it. I think it’s a [phrase] that used to mean something and it’s become co-opted—something akin to the term empowerment. (Participant 2)

These respondents share the belief that the concept of sustainable development is easily co-optable. Much of this discussion centres on challenges inherent in defining something whose scope necessitates a degree of ambiguity.

As with the THPG discourse, this critique is centred on the semantics associated with the concept, yet rather than isolating their critique to how the term may be co-opted to reproduce the status quo, many of the respondents who engaged in this discourse spoke more broadly. In this vision, respondents suggest that the ease with which the term is co-opted is due to the difficulty of operationalizing the concept and as a result the term sustainable development has become vacuous over time. For example, one respondent describes the evolution of the concept of sustainable development away from something which may have been politically radical or transformative into a popular buzzword or catchphrase:

[…] I personally think that it takes away from the original intent … You see that with a lot of terms [or] buzzwords, they’re supposed to have some sort of radical political edge to them and then they become so common in everyday parlance that they lose that activist, radical, political edge that they used to [have]. (Participant 25)

Therefore, through its broad application by different parties seeking to employ the term for their own ends, sustainable development is perceived as devoid of meaning in a general sense; or at the very least devoid of transformative potential. It is interesting to note that the majority of the respondents who engaged with this discourse were associated with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Table 2).

Conceptualizing the role of the university in helping society to become more sustainable

Responses about the role of the university in helping society become more sustainable are grouped into three broad themes: (a) education, (b) research and (c) engagement and outreach. However, the form that these should take with respect to sustainability was the source of divergence among respondents. In this section, results are divided into three major themes, each of which produced three sets of binary discursive tensions. Table 2 shows a breakdown of the distribution of discourses by faculty.

Theme One: Education and Sustainability

A strong binary tension emerged between respondents who felt that sustainable development should figure prominently in university education (ESD in Table 2), and those who felt that educating for sustainability created a negative instrumentalizing effect on university teaching and learning since the focus of education should be for culturing critical thinking (CCT) (see Table 2) and creating a prepared mind. While viewpoints within the anti-instrumentalist, CCT discourse, tended to be quite homogenous, there were differences within the ESD discourse that would likely underpin institutional disagreements concerning forms, functions and outcomes of ESD within the university.

Respondents in the anti-instrumentalist discourse expressed broad concern about what they perceived as the potentially deleterious effects on the university: should ESD be broadly implemented across the curriculum? As one respondent warned:

[…] well there’s the danger that it [ESD] can become very facile and politically correct. I know my Canada, which is obsessed with sin and redemption, very puritanical, and this is not a good climate in the university. (Participant 10)

In addition, several respondents alluded to ESD being too narrow as an educational paradigm. For instance, its problem-centred learning may not promote the sort of premise reflection necessary for behavioural change. However, respondents in the anti-instrumentalist discourse rarely dismissed ESD outright. Rather, they perceived sustainability at the university and within the broader society as being reproduced along largely technical lines, with disciplines such as engineering and the natural sciences dominating the discussion. Therefore, although some respondents clearly display resignation to broadly incorporating ESD into the curriculum, the issue is not so much with the concept of sustainability but rather with instrumentalizing education in general. As one respondent from the Humanities notes:

[…] the humanities are not job training. Again I come back to this concept of instrumentalizing. The humanities [are] not where you come, in a very finite literal way to get a job. This is both one of our great strengths and our great weakness in the contemporary world. We provide students ways of thinking, ways of understanding the past and the present, ways of understanding culture, the human mind, human societies, but those ways of thinking don’t translate quickly and obviously into jobs. (Participant 28)

Respondents who favoured educating for sustainability (ESD discourse) clearly did not view their position as one of indoctrination. In fact, they too were strong advocates of the idea that education should foster critical thought. However, in contrast to the anti-instrumentalist discourse, they felt that since sustainability issues are likely to be among the most pressing issues of our time that educating students in this context ‘is’ educating to create a prepared and critical mind. As one respondent notes:

[…] So there will be a generation of students emerging with very particular knowledge of these questions and awareness of what’s happening and I see that as being a very major contribution [of the university]. These are people who will be eventually running businesses, at high level in governments, contributing to community groups, NGOs; they’re many of the people who will be actively involved in solving the messes that my generation made. (Participant 11)

The rationale that underpins much of how respondents who support ESD justify explicitly incorporating the values of sustainability into education is the belief that universities are sites that produce future leaders and that if universities educate for sustainability a consequence of this will be a broad dissemination of the principles of sustainability throughout the social sphere. Though broad consensus does exist concerning ESD as a positive strategy in promoting sustainability, the form it should take is a point of contention.

Some respondents advocated making ESD central to the university’s educational mission, and beyond this, creating programmes and majors that deal specifically with sustainability. Other respondents contended that sustainable development should be incorporated into all curricula across all departments:

[…] I think all students going through the university system should get a strong education in sustainability, so that they can take that with them integrate it into whatever other stream [they are] focusing on. I don’t think it should be siloed, sure it’s good for some students to concentrate and be specialist but even if they’re not everyone should be getting that. (Participant 3)

Put even more strongly, as well as further supporting our claim that respondents perceive ESD and fostering critical thought as mutually reinforcing, one respondent expressed the following:

We need to be preparing students so that they can play a positive role and that they are able to function in whatever area they are planning to go into so they will be able to understand the issues of sustainability that they we’ll be facing. My view is that any person who graduates from university in this century will need to have an understanding of the concept, and will be better able to thrive and have a positive impact on society which is, I believe, our role is as a university. (Participant 29)

Theme Two: Knowledge Creation for Sustainability

As with education and sustainability, knowledge creation for sustainability as a response category produced two divergent discourses with little respondent overlap between the two. The first engaged with sustainability problems through applied research and problem-solving as important roles for the university with respect to sustainability. For example, one respondent offered:

[…] since it’s a multi-faceted problem I think that the university is one of the key agents that can identify aspects of this problem and provide solutions to those aspects. So in my own work I can provide solutions and then society can decide which of those solutions they think they can implement given certain constraints. (Participant 30)

It is important to note that while some respondents explicitly framed research in terms of inter- or transdisciplinary problem-solving (typically those coming from departments engaged in sustainability-related work), many only alluded to this through cursory discussions about research indicating a lack of familiarity with the way in which research in sustainability is typically conceived.

The second discourse was formed around the perceived necessity for a broader approach to sustainability-related work at the university. These respondents identified one of the most important aspects of knowledge creation at the university to be meta-critique and active debate (Table 2). Though they clearly saw a role for the university in generating practical solutions to sustainability related problems, they felt that the drive to problem-solving was overshadowing discussion and critique that ought to occur, conceptually speaking, prior to discussion of sustainability and its related problems. One respondent explains rather clearly:

[…] if the university becomes the solver of these questions in an instrumental manner then the [ability] to say: ‘what are the parameters of the problem’ or ‘is there a problem’ might get waylaid in our rush to say that there is a problem and the university must solve it … There should be at least some kind of distance, where the earnestness of solving the problem immediately is one that can have a few breaths to reflect on it, without [the university] liquidating itself into these issues. (Participant 17)

Embedded in this is a critique of the instrumentalizing tendency that a concept like sustainability may have with respect to a vision for institutional change. As with the earlier quotes illustrating some respondents’ scepticism with respect to ESD as an organizing principle, the issue is not necessarily with the concept of sustainability but with instrumentalizing forces within the university.

Theme Three: Sustainability and Public Service

Within the university imperative of public service, two different discourses of potential avenues for action emerged. The first was inwardly focused where respondents spoke of the importance of displaying leadership in sustainability through being a model of sustainability:

[…] Well it should be a beacon in society, it should adopt an appropriate model of sustainability within its own enterprise and then implement that to the best of its ability and then advertise that fact so that the rest of society can follow. (Participant 4)

Beyond merely an outward display of sustainability to society, many respondents saw modelling as an opportunity for educating people within the university (Modelling Sustainability in Table 2). The way in which most respondents developed this idea displays the perceived importance of a latent curriculum for sustainability. Rather than merely educating for sustainability, the university ought also to embody the ideals of sustainability and as a result of day-to-day exposure, students and staff are thought to adopt many of these values themselves:

[…] A whole pile of the leaders of our future society go through our turnstiles … whether they’re working as managers or CEOs, if they’ve been in an environment where these issues are taken very seriously then they bring with them a kind of ethos. (Participant 16)

The second discourse was also populated with statements about engaging the public sphere (Table 2). This relates in many ways to the notion of being a model but differs in that respondents seek to overcome what is perceived as the traditional ivory tower mentality which engenders a gulf between the institution and society.

Although many respondents expressed that the university should be more sensitive to the needs of society and to be better at mobilizing knowledge to the segments of society who could stand to benefit, there was some disagreement as to the form that engagement should take. Some respondents saw the necessity for a more engaged advocacy type role within the public sphere, such as this respondent:

[…] to educate the broad public through, public lectures, speaking, radio, and television. [it’s] really important for scientists, professors, people who know something about it, to take on an advocacy role and get it out there. (Participant 3)

Other respondents disagreed, feeling that such acts went beyond the ken of the university and would likely be problematic:

[…] I think it has to be a place where everything is on the table, everything is being discussed, and I think that that would be the biggest thing it could do. I think it would be very problematic to take a role in sort of engineering the solution or trying to enforce the solution. I think the university does a very poor job when it decides to, as it were, act and try to accomplish something. I think it does a much better job when it can educate people and get them to reflect. (Participant 21)

Discussion

Our research suggests that creating a unified vision of sustainability at the university that could act as an organizing principle for institutional change would likely be a significant challenge given the plurality of divergent and often conflicting perspectives held by faculty members. This is a result of two tensions present in the findings: (i) tensions related to contestation and ambiguity around the concept of sustainability; and (ii) tensions which occur outside of the sustainability debate. Our findings support those of Reid and Petocz (2006) and Cotton et al. (2009) in particular, who found faculty members’ range of viewpoints on sustainability would likely not be amenable to broad institutional transformation for sustainability. Our own study expands on this previous work by beginning to elucidate how these perspectives may potentially interact, and attempts to explain what this may mean for a vision (or visions) of sustainability on campus that is/are aligned with the lived experiences of university stakeholders. Given our results, we suggest that the field moves away from thinking in terms of creating a single vision of sustainability for the university and beginning to consider a critical vision of ‘sustainabilities’ (note the plural) for the university.

Given the plurality of perspectives in evidence, and the tensions inherent in them, the quest for consensus around sustainable development within the university runs the risk of diminishing differences and limiting the confines of the discussion. If the contemporary university is to be conceived of as a site that grapples with complex socio-ecological problems, we should wish to avoid institutional behaviours and reforms that risk limiting the institution’s ability to define and creatively address such problems. That many respondents produced themes often found in the SHE literature demonstrates the potential amenability to the sorts of reforms called for in that same body of literature. Nevertheless, as one may expect, respondents in disciplines typically associated with sustainable development were the ones to display strong alignment with SHE values. Incorporating perspectives from disciplines that are typically peripheral to discussions of sustainability enabled us to better understand the institutional climate towards sustainability and more importantly uncovered a number of dissenting viewpoints with which any institutional change for sustainability must necessarily contend.

Disciplines and Divergent Thinking around Sustainability

Conceptions of sustainable development displayed a tendency to break down along disciplinary lines. This is in no way a novel finding, as one would expect faculty members’ discussion of a concept like sustainability to draw significantly from their area of expertise. That respondents produced nuanced conceptions of sustainability in relation to their disciplines while tending to de-emphasize aspects associated with the disciplines of others could be taken as evidence that disciplinary boundaries inhibit communication and produce narrow conceptions of sustainability. However, an alternative way of framing this finding is that individual disciplines can offer unique and important lenses through which to view sustainable development. Moreover, critique of disciplines (Everett, 2008), though warranted in some respects may be overstated in others. As mentioned before, the divergent conceptions of sustainability can lead to divergent approaches to achieve it and could help avoid the emergence of narrow thinking within sustainability. This is not to underscore the importance of interdisciplinarity, but only to echo Sherren’s (2010) observation that strong interdisciplinary research in sustainability is contingent on the presence of healthy disciplines. Therefore, rather than dissolving disciplines, creating institutional structures that facilitate and encourage communication across the disciplines may be more beneficial to advancing sustainability on campus.

Though a good deal of divergence exists among conceptualizations, none of the conceptions of the participants is demonstrably false or contain misconceptions as all of the reported conceptions in some way relate to pre-existing discussion around sustainability. This is not to say that all conceptualizations are equally valid, but that engaging with a plurality of perspectives could expand the boundaries of the debate and be fruitful in avoiding ossification around the concept (Wals and Corcoran, 2004). In addition, there is a degree of complementarity between divergent conceptualizations in this study, where conceptual depth in one conceptualization could potentially address conceptual weakness in another. For instance, the ZSG and APL conceptualizations hold an instrumentalist view of the natural world, framing it in terms of resources; a view that is often critiqued in the literature (Kopnina, 2012; Selby and Kagawa, 2010). In contrast, the critical premise reflection implied within both the THPG and STP conceptualizations clearly holds the potential for developing alternative frames through which to construct the human/environment relationship. Thus the interaction of divergent epistemological and ontological positions inherent in these disciplinary perspectives could be used to develop more holistic ways of thinking about sustainability and solving sustainability related problems. Suggesting the importance of a plurality of ontological and epistemological positions should not be construed as an argument for a descent into ‘anything goes’ pluralism. Rather, the conception of inter- or transdisciplinarity could potentially promote an examination of the boundaries of one’s knowledge and the assumptions on which that knowledge is based (Russell, 2010).

Cultural Tensions That Occur ‘Prior To’ Sustainability and the Challenge of Organizations Change

In contrast to discursive differences concerning conceptualizations of sustainability, divergence among respondents that occurs outside of sustainability relates to ideological commitments concerning the nature of the university and education, and does not display as strong a tendency to break down along disciplinary lines. The most obvious example of this is the clear tension between respondents who advocate ESD at the university and those who critique it as instrumentalizing and counter to what they perceive to be the educational mission of the university; namely educating to create a critical and prepared mind. This tension finds clear resonance in the literature; for instance, Wals (2011) and Foster (2001) frame similar tensions to those in our study in terms of instrumental perspectives versus emancipatory perspectives of education, while Jickling and Wals (2008) describe this dichotomy as transmissive versus transformative approaches to education. The contention is that educating towards specific ends, as is implied by both the instrumental and transmissive perspectives (as well as the way in which ESD is often framed in our own results), is akin to indoctrination and risks narrowing thinking around socio-ecological issues. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that transferring knowledge and values to students does not lead to the sort of behavioural change that proponents of these forms of education suggest (Kollmuss and Aygeman, 2002; Wals, 2011). Moreover, we do not necessarily know what behaviours and skills will be beneficial to future social, economic and ecological contexts and as such directing education in this manner risks making future societies maladapted to the problems they may face (Scott and Gough, 2007).

In contrast to this position, Kopnina (2012) argues that the pluralism inherent in educating without specific ends within environmental education and ESD in particular, risks seeing marginalized perspectives (such as eco-feminism or deep ecology) being muted by dominant hegemonic anthropocentric discourses and may run counter to developing novel frames through which to view and educate about socio-ecological issues. Given the severity of current socio-ecological crises and the socio-economic pressures to continue patterns of production that are in and of themselves unsustainable, directing education towards creating an environmental consciousness or a sustainability consciousness is arguably necessary. Clearly the depth to which the debate is framed by experts in the field goes beyond how it is reproduced by respondents in this study. Nevertheless, we see clear parallels within our results that suggest the presence of similar opinions within the respondent pool.

Organizational Change and Sustainability: The Need for Pluralism

Many of the broad philosophical quandaries expressed in the literature are articulated to one degree or another by our respondent group. While some of the tensions we have described relate to disciplinary ways of conceptualizing sustainability, others are rooted in normative beliefs and deeply held convictions about the nature of education and of the university in general. Therefore the probability of successfully constructing a consensus vision of organizational change for sustainability at the university which speaks to the lived experience of academics seems unlikely. In addition, the wisdom of settling on one vision is questionable when you witness the learning benefits of students being confronted by divergent views (Foster, 2001; Moore, 2005). Rather than asking what should sustainability at the university look like, the question may become: how can we encourage and facilitate meaningful interaction between these groups? Such a question implies commitment to a communicatively rational stance, as well as a deep ontological and epistemological openness, the likes of which admittedly appear almost exclusively in theoretical texts (e.g., Brown et al., 2010: Chapters 1–4; Habermas, 1984). Nevertheless, providing a place within the organization for an interdisciplinary concept like sustainability could promote the sort of conceptual space advocated by Sterling (2004) and Wals and Corcoran (2004: 223–224), which could transform many of the barriers discussed in this section into opportunities for deep social learning (Sherren, 2010).

If the institutional culture of academics at the university is one of dialectical tension, dialogue and discord, then abandoning our pursuit of a singular vision of sustainability seems warranted. Without sounding glib, the need for this is perhaps most succinctly explained by the North American cultural relationship to spaghetti sauce. This unlikely parallel was inspired by a presentation given by Malcolm Gladwell at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference (Gladwell, 2005) on the work of Howard Moskowitz, a market researcher and psychophysicist. In using consumer centred sensory analysis to help the Campbell’s soup company develop ‘the perfect spaghetti sauce’ (Moskowitz and Gofman, 2007; Moskowitz and Hartmann, 2008), Moskowitz’s research revealed that consumer preferences were not distributed along a normal distribution. Rather his results showed that consumers were horizontally segmented according to sets of divergent preferences (e.g., chunky versus smooth). In other words, this translated into the observation that there was in fact no one perfect sauce, just perfect sauces.

The oddity of this analogy should not undermine the complexity of the revelation or its bearing on the current study. Given the nature of contestation surrounding sustainability and the role of the university and its relationship to institutional culture, surely pursuing a singular or consensus vision of sustainability is fraught. We argue that, like this example, our findings suggest a degree of horizontal segmentation which is represented by divergent conceptualizations sustainability at the university. To reiterate our above recommendation, rather than trying to craft a vision of sustainability for the university, we should encourage the development of a vision of critical sustainabilities, where affixing the term critical to the term sustainabilties implies a necessary and constant dialogical/discursive interaction of divergent positions. From here the obvious questions become ‘how do we visualize a sustainable university?’ and ‘what strategies do we use to get there?’

The challenge of finding ways to operationalize pluralism as it is discussed in this study hinges on creating organizational structures not only to house a diversity of thought on the issue, but also to facilitate communication, all the while remaining reflexive in order to avoid becoming ossified. At an institutional level, this may mean scaling back expectations for sweeping organizational transformation towards a ‘sustainable university’ and focusing instead on how to use pre-existing institutional structures to create inter- and transdisciplinary hubs within universities centred around transformative scholarship and research for sustainability. By drawing on the diversity of interests and talents already present at the university through the creation of novel collaborative networks, it may be possible to create a fertile ground for developing sustainability focused research and teaching agendas that are adaptive, innovative and transformative while circumventing many of the obstacles to sweeping organizational change discussed in this study.

If diversity of thought is meant to be a hallmark of university culture, as much of our data suggest, then what we suggest can be understood as a more radical (re)engagement with that very imperative. While interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sustainability research is becoming more common, examples of transformative forms of teaching and learning within universities are far rarer. Sterling (2010) highlights the Hawkesbury Center for Systemic Development [which Bawden (2005) discusses in more detail] and Schumacher College as two successful cases from outside the mainstream from which this discussion draws much inspiration. However, engaging in teaching and learning as outlined above within a conventional education system that operates largely within positivist and transmissive frames, poses a significant challenge (Bawden, 2005). In our future research, we hope to explore ways of developing sustainability and environmentally related education that is transformative and sensitive to both the needs of students and the broader societies in which they find themselves.

Cultures differ between institutions, meaning that though many lessons may be transferable between institutional contexts, the notion of developing a step-by-step blueprint for change is ill-advised. Kezar (2005) notes that with respect to organizational change within universities, creating testing grounds for change efforts that can demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of proposed change is a powerful means of facilitating organization learning and acceptance around broader change of the same type. Therefore, though a vision of what a sustainable university ought to look may still seem elusive, engaging in the sort of approach discussed above may indeed lay the groundwork from out of which such visions may emerge.

Conclusion

The task of promoting sustainability, both within and without the university, requires diversity in thinking about how to educate and what role the university should occupy within society. Much of the current thinking around SHE displays some sensitivity to the need for diversity and many comprehensive frameworks for institutional change have been developed. Nevertheless, the concept of sustainability and associated educational theories bring with them sets of assumptions that may have limited the bounds of the debate and work to reproduce the social and ideological structures that are at the root of global socio-ecological crisis.

This study uncovered divergent views among faculty at the university which echo many ongoing debates in the literature. Since these divergent viewpoints are not easily resolved, and may indeed present an opportunity for deep learning and the continued maturation of the concept of sustainability, developing institutional structures which encourage differences and facilitate the interaction of disparate perspectives around a common theme, rather than diminishing difference through the pursuit of a singular vision of sustainability, may be more institutionally plausible and in-line with reflexive conceptualizations of sustainability at the university. Thus, rather than the pursuit of sustainability at the university, we suggest examining the potential for multiple critical sustainabilities operating simultaneously and in dialogue with one another.

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