Contribution to Book
Sustainability as a university value: A journey from awareness to behavior change
Handbook of Sustainability in Management Education
(2017)
Abstract
Sustainability can be viewed as an organizational innovation that is adopted and internalized. Diffusion of innovations theory provides a starting point for how organizations may adopt sustainability practices and values, but its linear model does not adequately describe the iterative cycle of a learning organization. Therefore a new ‘sustainability journey’ framework is introduced that describes a six-step process of internalizing sustainability from awareness to behavior change. The framework is applied to describe how Grand Valley State University (Michigan, USA) adopted sustainability as a university value and grew in its awareness, understanding, and implementation of sustainability. The university’s sustainability practices ultimately have led to significant value creation for the university and the community, and the sustainability-based behaviors have become the ‘new normal’ on campus. The framework is applicable to any learning organization, including businesses, NGOs, and other institutions.
Disciplines
Publication Date
June 30, 2017
Editor
Jorge A. Arevalo and Shelley F. Mitchell
Publisher
Edward Elgar
ISBN
978 1 78536 123 4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785361241.00014
Citation Information
Erik Edward Nordman, Norman Christopher and Yumiko Jakobcic. "Sustainability as a university value: A journey from awareness to behavior change" Handbook of Sustainability in Management Education (2017) p. 131 - 150 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/erik_nordman/46/