Green Horizons: Navigating the Transition to Systemic Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions​

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Introduction

The primary goal of this Special Issue (SI) is to foster comprehensive discussions that offer valuable insights and support Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) on their path to sustainability. It focuses on developing effective strategies for embedding sustainability across HEIs' operations, overcoming barriers to change, and engaging various stakeholders in concerted efforts toward a sustainable future. This initiative underscores a systemic approach to ensure HEIs play a pivotal role in societal shifts towards sustainability by preparing academic staff and students with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to tackle environmental challenges. Through this exploration, scholars contribute to a growing knowledge base, underlining HEIs' crucial role in the sustainability agenda. The SI aims to deliver research findings that guide HEIs in adopting a systemic perspective towards achieving sustainability, providing a roadmap for institutions to become key actors in environmental stewardship. 
 
 The green transition in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) is a complex and interdisciplinary topic that aims to explore and understand the strategies, policies, and practices that HEIs can adopt to transition towards more sustainable and environmentally friendly operations. This topic is situated at the intersection of environmental science, education policy, organizational behaviour, complex socioeconomic systems, and sustainability studies. It seeks to address the pressing need for HEIs to respond to global environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, by integrating sustainability into their core activities: education, research, campus operations, and community engagement. 
 
The SI aims to identify best practices and innovative solutions for reducing HEIs' ecological footprints through sustainable campus management, integrating sustainability into teaching across various disciplines, and fostering critical thinking and environmental awareness. It also explores HEIs' roles in advancing sustainability research and innovation, acting as catalysts for community sustainability, and developing effective governance and policy frameworks that support the green transition. 
 
Methods for assessing and reporting on sustainability performance are examined. The SI calls for submissions that apply systems thinking to both quantitative and qualitative research, including case studies, surveys, secondary analyses, and experiments, to contribute to a holistic understanding of sustainability in HEIs.​

List of Topic Areas

This Special Issue delves into the complex, interdisciplinary field of sustainability in HEIs. It focuses on sustainability across the following topics, although other relevant issues can be considered:  

• Campus operations, procedures, routines, and practices;  
• Curriculum development; 
• Antecedents, mediators, moderators, and outcomes of sustainability-oriented and/or socially responsible behavior in HEIs; 
• Research innovation, impact, and engagement;  
• Community engagement initiatives, development, and breaches; 
• Best practices for stakeholder management and orientations;  
• Decision-making and decision-making impacts of executive bodies (e.g., governance mechanisms, policy outcomes), of departments, and of individual actors involved in sustainability-related initiatives; 
• Sustainable practices, policies, and operations effects on organizational citizenship, pro-social behaviors, motivation, job satisfaction, work-life balance, and counterproductive work behavior;  
• Sustainability performance assessment and their effects on HEI workers.  

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”. 
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Submissions Close: 15th Oct 2025