This thesis presents a seven-step process for sustainability report development within the higher education sector. Currently, there exists a variety of sustainability indicators and sustainability assessment tools to aid local governments, corporations and higher education institutions in sustainability performance measurement and reporting. Such variety illustrates the value-laden nature of defining sustainability, determining the relative importance of environmental, social and economic facets, and selecting performance evaluation methods. While the municipal and corporate sectors can benefit from step-by-step guidance on the process of sustainability reporting, such guidance is weak in the higher education sector. To address this issue, empirical evidence from the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) is complemented with an analysis of select municipal and corporate sustainability reporting processes to arrive at the seven-step process for sustainability report development at the higher education sector. Therefore, this thesis is of particular interest to practitioners undertaking sustainability reporting within the higher education sector for the first time.

This thesis presents a seven-step process for sustainability report development within the higher education sector. Currently, there exists a variety of sustainability indicators and sustainability assessment tools to aid local governments, corporations and higher education institutions in sustainability performance measurement and reporting. Such variety illustrates the value-laden nature of defining sustainability, determining the relative importance of environmental, social and economic facets, and selecting performance evaluation methods. While the municipal and corporate sectors can benefit from step-by-step guidance on the process of sustainability reporting, such guidance is weak in the higher education sector. To address this issue, empirical evidence from the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) is complemented with an analysis of select municipal and corporate sustainability reporting processes to arrive at the seven-step process for sustainability report development at the higher education sector. Therefore, this thesis is of particular interest to practitioners undertaking sustainability reporting within the higher education sector for the first time.

Purpose: This paper aims to conceptualize impacts of higher education institutions (HEIs) on sustainable development (SD), complementing previous literature reviews by broadening the perspective from what HEIs do in pursuit of SD to how these activities impact society, the environment and the economy. Design/methodology/Approach: The paper provides a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2005 and 2017. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify major themes and impact areas addressed in the literature to develop a conceptual framework detailing the relationship between HEIs- activities and their impacts on SD. Findings: The paper identi fi es six impact areas where direct and indirect impacts of HEIs on SD may occur. The fi ndings indicate a strong focus on case studies dealing with speci fi c projects and a lack of studies analyzing impacts from a more holistic perspective. Practical implications: This systematic literature review enables decision-makers in HEIs, researchers and educators to better understand how their activities may affect society, the environment and the economy, and it provides a solid foundation to tackle these impacts. Social implications: The review highlights that HEIs have an inherent responsibility to make societies more sustainable. HEIs must embed SD into their systems while considering their impacts on society. Originality/value: This paper provides a holistic conceptualization of HEIs- impacts on SD. The conceptual framework can be useful for future research that attempts to analyze HEIs- impacts on SD from a holistic perspective.

nÃo hà / A gestÃo ambiental tem sido uma ferramenta relevante para a orientaÃÃo de instituiÃÃes pÃblicas e privadas, incluindo o setor da educaÃÃo representado pelas InstituiÃÃes de Ensino Superior (IES). Por meio da implementaÃÃo de sistemas de gestÃo ambiental (SGA) à possÃvel adotar procedimentos para minimizar impactos gerados pela rotina de atividades realizadas em um Campus UniversitÃrio. Por esta perspectiva ambiental, buscou-se o conhecimento da realidade vivida no Campus UniversitÃrio do Pici da Universidade Federal do CearÃ. A pesquisa permitiu identificar na Ãrea fÃsica do Campus os aspectos e impactos ambientais significativos do Campus; prÃticas sustentÃveis em execuÃÃo atravÃs de projetos de extensÃo; pesquisas realizadas nas unidades operacionais e administrativas, e tambÃm, possibilitou ter uma visÃo ambiental dos gestores responsÃveis pelas atividades acadÃmicas, administrativas e operacionais. Percebeu-se a iniciativa de coordenadores de projetos de extensÃo e pesquisa em manter, melhorar e desenvolver prÃticas sustentÃveis no Campus. Observou-se, porÃm, a falta de integraÃÃo/comunicaÃÃo entre a gestÃo responsÃvel pela administraÃÃo do Campus e a maioria das aÃÃes de pesquisa e de prÃticas sustentÃveis, havendo necessidade de uma parceria mais efetiva. De posse dos dados coletados e dos estudos realizados em outras IES foi proposto um modelo de gestÃo ambiental para o Campus, baseado no ciclo do PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). Concluiu-se que o modelo proposto poderà ser expandido para outros campi da UFC, considerando, obviamente, os impactos e a realidade de cada um. Por fim, sugeriu-se que a UFC deve revisar prÃticas de consumo, identificar fontes de desperdÃcios e minimizar os impactos ambientais gerados pelas atividades acadÃmicas, administrativas e operacionais. / Environmental management has been an relevant tool for guiding public and private institutions, including the education sector represented by the Higher Education Institutions. Through the implementation of environmental management systems (EMS) is possible to adopt procedures to minimize impacts caused by routine activities in a university campus. For this environmental perspective, was sought the knowledge of lived reality on the Campus do Pici, Federal University of Cearà (UFC).The research allowed to identify the physical area of the Campus: The significant environmental aspects and impacts of the Campus; Sustainable practices implemented through extension projects; Research conducted at operational and administrative units. The survey also allowed to have an environmental vision of the managers responsible for the academic, administrative and operational activities. Was perceived the initiative of coordinators extension projects and research to maintain, improve and develop sustainable practices on campus. Was observed, however, the lack of integration / communication between the management responsible for the administration of the campus and the majority of the shares of research and sustainable practices, recommended be more effective partnership. In possession of the collected data and studies in other higher education institutions, was proposed a model of environmental management for the campus based on the PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act). It was concluded that the proposed model could be expanded to other campuses of the UFC, considering, obviously, impact and reality of each. Finally, it was suggested that the UFC should review consumer practices, identify sources of waste and minimize environmental impacts created by academic, administrative and operational activities.

Magister Educationis - MEd / Following the understanding that incentives influence behaviour both in terms of eliciting and sustaining it, this thesis seeks to explore the link between incentives and knowledge production at the University of Nairobi. Given the backdrop, higher education institutions have a key role to play in economic development through knowledge production; the study seeks to see how academics can be steered to produce knowledge. The principal-agent model primarily informs the study, whose primary argument is that for incentives to attract, motivate and retain employees, these incentives have to be sufficient, fair and consistent. Additionally, the model predicts that a higher sum of monetary incentives triggers higher effort, resulting in higher productivity. Using a single case study approach, the study focused on the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The data for the study was mainly provided by the structured interviews, institutional documents and archival. The findings of this study show that there are several incentives related to research at the University of Nairobi. These include: promotion opportunities, time resources, research funding, and financial allowances for publications and successful supervision of postgraduate students. Multiple principals including the government, national research council and the university itself provide these incentives. The general perception of academics is that, the incentives are weak and do not encourage the maximization of the University’s research goals. In addition, academics are also confronted with other principals who reinforce non-research behaviour. These principals offer significant rewards for consultancies, and incentives for teaching on the full-fee-paying stream by providing additional payments, over and above regular salaries, to academics that teach on these programmes. Given the weak nature of the incentives for research, academics at the University of Nairobi seem to respond more favourably to the nonresearch incentives. Overall, the study confirms the economic principle that individuals, in this case, academics, respond to incentives. However, in the context of competing incentives, the research incentives have to be adequate, systematically applied and continuous to reinforce a vibrant research culture.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The research reported in this thesis examines the approaches of four (4) HEIs in the Western Cape Province in South Africa to institutional development of IS security ecompetencies across their full staff compliments. It used a mixed research methodology and multiple case study research design in which four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) participated. A total of 26 in-depth interviews were conducted and 385 questionnaires were completed. The research found that these HEIs do not formally develop the IS security e-competencies of their IS resources end users. Because end users handle critical information and research projects of importance not only to the HEIs, but also to the country, this situation creates a potential risk to their IS resources. In other words, the HEIs that participated in this research rely more on the ICT security technology itself to protect their IS resources than on the human side of ICT security. This is in direct contrast to the established literature which clearly points out that it is the internal end users that pose the most threats to IS security resources and these threats are more dangerous than the external threats.

There is a dearth of literature on the effects of the implementation of the Skills Development Act (SDA) in South African governmental or Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Although the available body of scholarship draws attention to problems that HEIs encounter with the implementation of the SDA, it does not elaborate on the underlying reasons for these problems. The aim of this critical interpretive study was, therefore, to gain an understanding of the rationale for and meaning of HEIs' employee staff development practices and that of the implementation of the SDA, as well as the match and mismatch between them. The intention of this study was to bring to the surface the underlying social dynamics that Skills Development Facilitators (SDFs) attach to the implementation of the SDA in HEIs. The epistemological intersection between interpretivism and critical theory was, therefore, chosen as the paradigmatic backdrop of this study. The use of Atlas.ti™ to analyse systematically the volume of unstructured data gathered from seven SDFs at HEIs not only facilitated the data analysis but also enhanced the validity of the study. Besides this, Professor Elsie (Liz) Greyling and Professor Nico Sauer intensively scrutinised and commented on my interpretation of the data, also contributing to the validity of this study. An analysis of the research data generated the following interrelated themes: • HEIs experience a total lack of support and guidance from the ETDP SETA. • The descriptions of terminology in the SDA and the explanations offered by government officials are often contradictory and confusing. • Informal development, one of HEIs' core employee learning methods, is difficult to capture. • HEIs' Workplace Skills Plans (WSP) and Annual Training Reports (ATR) submitted to the ETDP SETA are not a fair and accurate reflection of HEIs' staff development practices. • The development of systems to capture HEIs' employee ETD practices on the ETDP SETA's templates for the WSP and ATR is costly. • Time frames for the development of WSPs in HEIs differ from the time frame of the ETDP SETA. These were the main themes indicating why HEIs find it difficult to integrate the SDA in their staff development framework. The effect of these reasons why HEIs find it difficult to integrate the SDA in their staff development practices is that HEIs submit their WSPs and ATRs only to recoup in rebates (grants) the levies they pay. The government furthermore aims to take control of HEIs' employee ETD practices by enforcing the establishment of institutional structures to manage staff development mechanistically. Moreover, HEIs are compelled to prioritise investment in the education, training and development of designated employees, whereas the service delivery of quality education depends on the efficiency of all HEIs' staff members (by implication the development of all employees). In addition, HEIs are compelled to invest in the development of unemployed SA citizens, although the relationship between investment in ETD and economic prosperity is not proven. HEIs are, furthermore, compelled to follow a statutory policy framework that focuses on the manual skills required in the labour market, not on the cognitive, intellectual and largely scholarly skills that HEIs require to maintain and enhance quality education in South Africa. The result of the latter, viewed from a institutional perspective (macro-financial), is that HEIs not only have less funds for ETD practices than they had before the implementation of the SDA, but also that the implementation of the SDA could create negative social relations in HEIs themselves. These effects of the implementation of the SDA also seem to be perpetuated by the lack of interaction and debate between the ETDP SETA and HEIs. It is therefore argued in this study that the absence of officially structured dialogical activities between HEIs' representatives and ETDP SETA officials would perpetuate the dissonance between the reasons for and aims of the SDA and those of skills development in HEIs. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation is a qualitative and quantitative research effort aiming to establish the meaning of, and the form(s) that human capital and human capital investment, traditionally business-oriented concepts, take in an institution of higher education. The literature review provides an extensive background of human capital and human capital investment theory and theorists. It presents a case study completed at a small college combining interviews, survey administration, and analysis to formulate hypotheses about the nature of human capital investment in institutions of higher learning. The interviews provided rich data through specific examples of how employees at the college defined human capital investment. Analysis of the interviews resulted in the formation of six human capital dimensions, one dimension unique to higher education institutions. A preliminary human capital investment survey was created and quantitative measures were able to discriminate one interpretable factor, similar to one dimension created from the interviews. The factor encompassed items that were related to the moral involvement (Etzioni, 1961) of the employees. This lead the researcher to believe that human capital investment in this higher education institution is different than in corporations. Further research is encouraged to validate this hypothesis and to continue to promote discussions about human capital investment in institutions of higher education.

Sustainability education has become an important focus of many higher education institutions (HEIs), with the inclusion of many sustainability-related learning objectives for undergraduate students. As sustainability is a new, rising discipline, an increasing number of HEIs have made efforts to assess their teaching and learning effectiveness. However, most assessments fall short in determining the relationship between sustainability curriculum and the impacts on leaning outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to assess the impact of academic setting, specifically of a structured sustainability curriculum, on undergraduate sustainability knowledge, as well as analyze the implications of perceived barriers and opportunities to implementing sustainability into academics. Using California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) as a case study, this research emphasizes the results from an online sustainability knowledge survey administered to honors students who take a structured sustainability knowledge curriculum and general students who are not required to take any sustainability courses, but can elect to do so. The study reveals that honors students have significantly higher sustainability knowledge scores (SKS) after taking a structured sustainability curriculum, but also reveals that those post-curriculum SKS of honors students are not significantly different from that of general students after taking 3 courses. The results further indicate that honors students that take a 3-course sustainability curriculum do not score significantly higher than those that take a 1-course sustainability curriculum. However, general students that take 3 sustainability-related courses score significantly higher than general students who take 0, or 1 to 2 sustainability-related courses. These results suggest that unlike honors students, general students need to take a minimum of 3 courses in sustainability to achieve significantly higher SKS. The findings also show that the SKS of students do not significantly differ across colleges and that the SKS of students in the general population have the potential to improve, suggesting that additional sustainability education can benefit all students. Additionally, the analysis of student perceptions reveals that students support the integration of sustainability into existing courses, which can help address the main perceived barriers of time constraints, lack of course promotion, and lack of relevance to major. Ultimately, the results suggest that university-level decision-makers should focus efforts on integrating sustainability into existing courses, increasing the opportunity for all students to take at least 3 sustainability-related courses during their undergraduate experience. Such efforts would be a first step in developing sustainability education at an HEI and would help achieve significant improvement in undergraduate student SKS.

Yes / Higher Education [HE] policy makers play a major role in the application of international standards on gender equality. Depending on the particular characteristics of each Higher Education organisation, this responsibility is borne and/or shared by specific actors that may be located in Human Resources departments, and/or could be strategically placed throughout the organisational structure. It also rests on the actions and commitment of senior leaders and managers, who are visual and powerful champions for structural change. Either way, policy actors are particularly involved in monitoring and evaluation processes, and policy implementation, as well as legitimation of gender equality standards. Therefore, it is fundamental to work with a clear roadmap to integrate gender equality into organisational change, which would sustain context-specific, legally compliant and responsive policies that meet international and national standards of gender equality and non-discrimination. Accordingly, this resource offer a hands-on and transparent approach to gender mainstreaming in Higher Education institutions, constituting a support tool for policy makers and actors involved in policy development and implementation, which is key for regulating and legitimating organisational transformation along gender sensitive, gender competent, gender balanced and gender equal principles. / FP7