Resumen de El desarrollo sostenible en los campus de las universidades españolas desde una perspectiva de los stakeholders
Currently, environmental solutions are being searched for to enhance people’s quality of life in cities, which is a realistic goal. Public and private actions not only include influential activities but also real scientific, technological, and innovative capabilities that can be integrated toward new initiatives. Such initiatives may contribute to the sustainable development (SD) of cities as well as their economic development.
Universities’ role in city settlements as well as their local impacts, such as employment, revenue generation, positive environmental management practices, and human resources, are microcosms that reflect an idea traditionally focused on education, research, and knowledge transfer. They now have the new challenge of contributing to the SD of their community.
Against this background, this doctoral thesis focuses on Spanish universities’ management of SD, and specifically on the environmental management of campuses and environmental sustainability through this mission. The main research objectives were to identify the key perceptions of stakeholders, identify the integration of direct stakeholders’ participation in university management models to develop policies toward SD, and finally to analyze sustainability and university topics reported on and presented by Spanish newspapers to the public.
This study employed a mixed-method design. The exploratory stage employed a quantitative method, with a survey used for data collection and an explanatory approach used for the data analysis. Probabilistic topic modeling algorithms were employed to explore and analyze the perceptions of society based on editorial content from national media outlets (2014–2017) using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA).
Subsequently, a qualitative method was employed, which involved using focus groups and in-depth interviews to understand the perceptions of the university communities. This considered the opinions of members of the Social Council as an element of the interactions between society and institutions, student representatives, academic experts, and eco-campus managers.
The originality of this study is that it provides a useful knowledge base for superior governance, planning, and management, which will strengthen the integration of active, participatory roles of primary and secondary stakeholders, as well as society as a key stakeholder, for contributing to Spanish universities’ management system toward sustainability, including their main concerns. Hence, this study attempted to translate their valuable information into innovation, engagement, interaction, and value creation of universities through the implementation of a stakeholder intelligence model. As such, this study proposed five variables: (1) Promoting environmental sustainability through the mission of the university; (2) Assessment of universities’ sustainable commitment; (3) Knowledge and assessment of universities’ performance; (4) Environmental management on the campus; and (5) Principal barriers to introducing sustainable actions at universities. These were embedded in the two elements of “Stakeholder Behavior and Perspective Analysis” and “Current and Potential Stakeholder Contributions’ as well as social dialog.
The results are presented over two chapters together with an explanation of the outcomes and a short introduction to the method applied in each case. The first section of the results chapter focuses on “stakeholders’ key perceptions on and participation in sustainability,” which includes the most crucial factors of sustainability among universities for stakeholders, what universities are doing for SD through their mission, and campus performance, barriers, and challenges to implementing sustainable actions. Moreover, it means stakeholders’participation in the management system of universities through their knowledge and level of information in sustainable themes. The second section of the results focuses on “society’s perception on ‘sustainability’ and ‘university’ based on newspaper coverage in Spain’, which includes the main trends in Spanish media toward sustainability and higher education during 2014–2017, as well as the relationship between the composition of press media agendas and the perception of university stakeholders.
This thesis concludes with a set of recommendations for the integration of stakeholder approaches into universities’ management models toward SD to encourage an active role and more efficient system. Finally, the results are presented in a concentrated format, together with limitations and recommendations for future research.
