Purpose of the paper: Understanding sustainability in higher education could be a challenge. Without an agreed understanding, measuring and improving performance become difficult. The purpose here is to explore how Diagnosing in a Sustainability Opportunity Study (SOS) could be understood for university education, research and societal co-operation. Further, the purpose is to propose how the SOS could be used to assess the level of university sustainability.
Methodology: The starting point is the Sustainability Opportunity Study (SOS) that describes how sustainability can be understood and operationalised based on an outside in stakeholder needs satisfaction focus. Focus is on Understanding-Defining-Measuring of Diagnosing. An important part in Understanding is viewing the organisational mission in terms of sustainability – doing the right thing in the value chain. The right thing is linked to global sustainability needs that the ethical and sustainable university strives to satisfy. An SOS for Diagnosing university sustainability is proposed as a conceptual benchmark. Further, the use of this benchmark for assessing university sustainability maturity is proposed.
Main Findings: The content of an SOS for university sustainability has been proposed based on identifying benchmarks for the processes of education, research and co-operation. Important sustainability goals are providing actor change competence, producing relevant sustainability research and supporting society in work towards sustainability.
Practical implications: Universities need to work on a better understanding of who the main customers/stakeholders for universities are.
Originality/value: Highlighting the importance of understanding sustainability in universities.
Type of paper: Conceptual research paper