Abstract
Sustainability reporting (SR) practices at higher education institutions (HEIs) appear fragmented and underutilized. Research is needed to persuade HEIs to adopt SR standards, explaining the SR advantages of achieving sustainability objectives and realizing organizational change. Only a few research studies have investigated how HEIs employees can be trained on SR and how this can affect SR implementation. This research explores SR training for HEIs employees, focusing on gender reporting (GR) training as a means to achieve sustainability objectives and realize organizational change. Among the United Nations' Sustainable and Development Goals (SDGs), gender equality (GE) emerges as a relevant topic to investigate, also in the HEIs context, with current research being limited. Through a survey among Italian HEIs employees who attended a GR training course, this study investigates the effects of learning outcomes of respondents' expected achievement of GR objectives and organizational change after GR implementation. The research also studies whether the perceived organizational barriers to GR affect the expected realization of organizational change. The results support the impact of learning outcomes on the expected achievement of GR objectives and organizational change. Conversely, the perceived organizational barriers to GR do not affect the expected realization of organizational change. The study enters the debate about GR at HEIs and contributes to literature on sustainability training for HEIs employees, providing practical implications for organizations that intend to implement such training and showing their advantages.
Highlights
Sustainability reporting (SR) is intended to measure, disclose, and be accountable to internal and external stakeholders about the organizational performance toward sustainability development (SD) (GRI, 2011)
Sustainability education and training in universities is key to meet future challenges (Aleixo et al, 2018). Based on those premises and on the gaps identified in the literature, this study aims to investigate how learning outcomes related to SR training can affect participants’ perceptions of achieving sustainability objectives and realizing organizational change at higher education institutions (HEIs)
Through a survey directed at course delegates, this research aims to contribute to the literature by emphasizing the role of sustainability training concerning the development of SR in achieving intended sustainability objectives and organizational change, from the perspective of those who are involved in the courses and their learning outcomes
Summary
Sustainability reporting (SR) is intended to measure, disclose, and be accountable to internal and external stakeholders about the organizational performance toward sustainability development (SD) (GRI, 2011). Sustainability reporting has been traditionally built on economic and environmental issues, while the emphasis on social issues appears to be less developed (Salzmann et al, 2005). Sustainability is no longer considered as having solely an environmental meaning, and has economic and social dimensions (Dempsey et al, 2011). Social sustainability is directed at creating opportunities to meet people’s needs and plays a major role in contributing to developing communities’ sustainability (Dempsey et al, 2011)
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