Organized by Prof. Inka Bormann, Andreas Wanke and Katrin Risch
Many universities have a sustainability policy that focuses on the whole institution by addressing sustainability in research, teaching, and campus management. All of them have built certain governance structures to shape this process.
The analytical understanding of governance ranges from the narrow definition of ‘intended change of political regulation’ to the wide understanding of an ‘(emerging) form of social co-ordination of heterogeneous actors’ (Bormann 2017). Establishing sustainability governance structures at universities requires processes of institutional change that can take many forms.
The workshop aims to show the range of ways in which governance approaches can unfold institutionally. For sharing best practices, lessons learnt, and insights into overcoming obstacles we facilitated a peer-learning format. In addition to hands-on examples, input from a Germany-wide research project on governance for sustainable development at universities (HochN) provided information on various governance regulators and their roles in addressing sustainability institutionally. We discussed the underlying processes and structures, constellations of actors and challenges of sustainable development implementation at universities.
The Management Workshop addressed the following questions:
• Which conditions are required to institutionalize sustainability governance?
• How to organize governance approaches with critical impact?
• How to enable and facilitate cooperation with all stakeholders at the university?
• How to empower and support knowledge transfer?
