Universities preach sustainability but fail to practice it, study finds
European universities are making public commitments to environmental and social responsibility while maintaining business-as-usual operations behind the scenes, according to research across four institutions. The disconnect between stated goals and actual practice undermines credibility with students and threatens institutional legitimacy as stakeholders increasingly demand accountability.
Originaltitel: The decoupling challenge for systemic sustainability in higher education
<p>Purpose: This study investigates the persistent gap between sustainability commitments and their systemic integration within European higher education institutions (HEIs). Drawing on institutional decoupling theory, the study identifies organizational practices that lead to policy-practice decoupling across environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions, hindering the transition toward a sustainable future.</p><p>Design/methodology/approach: Employing a qualitative, interpretive methodology, the study utilizes thematic analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders (students, academic staff, administration, leadership, and representatives from industry) across four European universities. This multi-stakeholder, cross-institutional design provides nuanced insights into the manifestations of decoupling.</p><p>Findings: The analysis reveals widespread decoupling across ESG dimensions: environmental education gaps, digitalization inefficiencies, and misaligned infrastructure investments; social support inadequacies and persistent inequalities; and governance deficits characterized by short-term budgetary thinking, poor strategic coordination, and transparency limitations. These organizational practices collectively constitute the decoupling mechanisms through which formal sustainability commitments are reproduced without substantive operational change.</p><p>Originality/value: This study advances the literature on the implementation gap in HEIs by integrating institutional decoupling theory with a comparative ESG analysis. By disaggregating findings across ESG dimensions, the research identifies specific organizational practices that operate as structural buffers between formal policies and operational realities. Governance deficits function as the structural catalyst sustaining concurrent decoupling across all three ESG domains, and the study offers a diagnostic typology to foster institutional integration and systemic sustainability.</p>