The attention to sustainability impacts arising during the lifecycle of products is growing as industry wants to increase its contribution to a sustainable society. To do so, companies must find ways to navigate the complexity of the needs within the socio-ecological system in which they operate. In engineering design projects, the interpretation of needs into requirements is essential, as they represent the collective understanding of the design problem to be solved. Ideally, requirements are possible to verify and validate, which makes it challenging for industry to integrate socio-ecological considerations, often based on qualitative models, into requirements. Sustainability then tends not to be prioritized in trade-offs with traditionally identified requirements for engineering design. A qualitative research approach within design research methodology framed a sequence of studies guided by the research question ‘How can requirements be utilized to support Sustainable Product Development?’ First, a research gap was identified from a literature review which indicated a lack of socio-ecological systems contextualization in the identification, as well as the traceability of sustainability criteria to integrate into requirements. Secondly, a conceptual model was established for how management of requirements can be improved to facilitate traceability, as well as how contextual socio-ecological systems perspective can be introduced in the selection, of sustainability criteria for engineering design projects. For this purpose, the results from a multiple-case study based on semi-structured interviews with seven design and manufacturing companies was triangulated with findings of an in-depth literature analysis. Five key elements of management of sustainability in requirements were proposed in a profile model corresponding to different levels of sustainability maturity. A third study explored, based on literature and prototype causal loop diagramming, the potential of a group model building approach to enhance contextual understanding of strategically identified, i.e., company-tailored, sustainability criteria in relation to traditional requirements in early phases of the product innovation process. A final study investigated how a strategic sustainability perspective can be integrated with engineering design methods and value modelling to create a decision support for concept selection. The studies together indicate that key constituents of good requirements, traceability and systems contextualization, can be achieved also for socio-ecological sustainability considerations. This requires organizational commitment and will be reflected in the design of the operational management system for their product innovation process. Following the proposed five key elements of sustainability integration in requirements, a company is expected to increase the organizational sustainability maturity, and hence its capability to contribute to a sustainability transition. This research also shows that there is a gap in current methods and tools for enhanced socio-ecological systems contextualization. The two last studies of this thesis give promising approaches of tools and methods to be further developed and analyzed, namely group model building, system analysis and value modelling.

A company cannot be more sustainable than its supply chain. Given their complexity and the need for collaborative, strategic action for sustainability across supplier networks this research takes a systems perspective to answer, “How can a Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) lens support supplier network collaboration towards sustainability?”.The application of the SSD lens includes mapping barriers and enablers to collaboration for sustainability found in literature and a case company along with the Five-Level Model (5LM) to which we add complex adaptive system elements. Based on this a thematic analysis of the barriers and enablers is performed paper presents results of the 5LM and thematic analysis, finding that taking an SSD perspective shows interconnections across the multiple enablers and barriers to collaboration. The challenges encountered during 5LM along with the results implications for the Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) academic field and practitioners are discussed. We conclude that the variety and complexity of barriers and enablers for collaboration make it important to approach sustainability strategically across the supplier network. The SSD perspective supports collaboration for sustainability by providing an opportunity to examine it from a systems perspective and to formulate prescriptive considerations for the case company and guiding questions for SSCM practitioners.

In recent times, companies have been motivated to transition towards sustainable development. This motivation is driven by several external and internal factors such as awareness about limited resources, environmental degradation, economic profitability, changes in regulations, etc. Transitioning towards sustainability is not an easy task. There can be several challenges such as the multi-dimensional aspect of sustainable development, changes in workflow , investing in/inventing new technology , etc. T o tackle these challenges, a strategic transition is required. In order to help organizations strategically move towards sustainable development, Göran Broman and Karl- Henrik Robèrt have provided a framework through their research. It can be an overwhelming task for a company to understand and implement this framework. The thesis addresses this challenge by designing a board game around the operational procedure provided by the framework. To develop the game, Evensen et al.’s model was leveraged which utilized different inputs such as literature review, Broman and Robèrt’s framework, and thematic analysis of interviews as inputs for game development. The interviewing process included semi-structured interviews of eight employees (sustainability-related positions) from different companies to understand how their companies are perceiving sustainable development, implementing sustainable practices, and what are the needs and challenges faced. This thesis contributes to academia in two ways. First, it extends the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) by providing an application-based learning tool. After studying the theoretical side of the framework, the developed game can enhance the understanding of the framework. Second, it modifies the game design model by substituting generative research with a framework (FSSD) as an input and further discusses the benefits of having FSSD as an input element. From a practical perspective, apart from providing a better understanding of sustainability and educating companies about FSSD, the board game session enables the employees to think about how to implement FSSD for their specific scenario. Additionally, it also provides companies a controlled environment to think about risks and foresee the consequences of their future actions. Hence, providing a safety net before the initiation of the implementation process.

Increasing awareness of anthropogenic impacts on the planet has lead to efforts to reduce negative environmental impacts in product development for several decades. Benefits to companies who focus on sustainability initiatives have been put forth more recently, leading to many efforts to incorporate sustainability considerations in their product innovation processes. The majority of current sustainability considerations in industry constrain design space by emphasizing reduced material and energy flows across the product’s life cycle. However, there is also an opportunity to use awareness of sustainability to bring attention to new facets of design space and to drive innovation. Specifically there is an opportunity for product-service systems (PSS) to be a vehicle through which sustainability-driven innovation occurs. A framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) provides the basis for understanding sustainability in this work, and provides clarity with regard to how to think about sustainable products and service innovations. The “backcasting” approach included in this framework also provides insight into how incremental and radical approaches could be aligned within the product innovation working environment. This thesis explores how sustainability considerations can be better integrated into existing product innovation working environments in order to drive innovation processes within firms, with a specific emphasis on opportunities that occur as sustainability knowledge leads to innovation through a product-service system approach. It endeavors to contribute to both theory development within the emerging sustainable PSS design research area, and also to advance the state of practice within industry by connecting dots between the state of theory and the state of practice. Society’s opportunity to become more sustainable and industry’s desire for innovation in order to lead to or increase profitability are often in conflict. However, this thesis argues that knowledge of global social and ecological sustainability can be used to drive innovation processes, and that there are win-win opportunities that can often be achieved through a PSS approach. There is some, but not sufficient, support for the inclusion of sustainability considerations in the product innovation process, and even fewer tools to support the use of sustainability to drive innovation. In response, an approach to providing support that brings together the FSSD and various approaches to systems modeling and simulation is presented. Opportunities to use sustainability-friendly attributes of existing products through a PSS-approach are also presented.

Regenerative Leadership is a newly emerged leadership approach with a holistic worldview that is aiming to restore, preserve and enhance people, society and environment. It is a purposeful and empathic leadership that focuses on fostering partnerships between people and nature. In this research, we investigated application of this approach in work teams to promote collaboration and strategically contribute to Social Sustainability. By conducting several interviews with Regenerative Leadership practitioners and analyzing them doing qualitative content analysis, we found that Regenerative Leaders build team cultures that shift power and agency to the team as collective, the collaborative processes are centered around self-organization and inclusive decision-making. Building a culture of trust and encouraging learning, the leaders strengthen the adaptive capacities in the small social system of their work teams, thereby contributing to social sustainability. The way the interviewed leaders make decisions, how they choose the people in their team, what they value, how they act in a moment of misunderstanding in their team, what is their attitude towards the collective – all this is not only inspired by RL theory, but by the personal values and in particular by the spiritual convictions of the leaders.Even with the spiritual and personal perspectives of the interviewees, Regenerative Leadership strengthens all adaptive capacities of a work team as a social system. Moreover, this leadership paradigm offers a vision and values as a source of inspiration for the team members to collaborate Therefore, the approaches taken by leaders in this new and emergent field are effective ways to integrate the science-based principles of Social Sustainability into work teams

The global challenges of our time are unprecedented and urgent action is needed. Transformational learning and leadership development are key leverage points for supporting society’s transition towards sustainability. Many even claim that learning on an individual, organisational and societal scale is required for society’s successful transitioning towards sustainability. However, in this relatively new field, practitioners, scholars and educators grapple with what best promotes transformational learning and with how to best design and operate learning experiences that truly build capacity for leadership for sustainability. The aim of this work was to establish an improved understanding of this and to find recommendations for practitioners and educators with ambitions to create systems change for sustainability by building the capacity of people to be sustainability leaders. As an educator and facilitator of sustainability work for over a decade, working at the crossroads of local government and community change, lecturing on leadership for sustainability in Australia and currently being embedded within the faculty of the Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS) program in Sweden, I have rested this thesis firmly within an action-oriented transformations research paradigm in which the only way to understand a system is through a comprehensive collaborative attempt to change it. One case of action research explored an organisational change for sustainability program that spanned over five years in a local government in Perth, Western Australia and the learning and policy interventions that supported this change. Participant observation with field notes, interviews, surveys and document analysis were particular methods used in this case. Two further cases focused on the MSLS program and its practices and specific components that support such leadership development and transformational learning. Feedback surveys from students and an open question survey to alumni were key methods used in these cases. The findings suggest that community and relationships are essential for supporting and growing sustainability leadership capacity; that hope and agency are irreplaceable components for leading sustainability change; that self-reflection and dialogue are skills that will help sustainability leaders navigate complex and uncertain futures and that these can be learned. Findings also indicate that creating a shared language for sustainability work helps bridge disciplinary divides and practitioner silos, and that skills of dialogue are required to capitalise on participation. Also, the integration of the components of community, place, content, pedagogy and disorientation with hope and agency can help support transformation in sustainability leadership education and provide synergistic reinforcement of the sustainability transformation required. This thesis provides added evidence that learning can be a key leverage point for sustainability transformations in an organisation and suggests how such learning can be most effectively achieved through a conscious design of learning environments, including the use and integration of the mentioned components to improve sustainability leadership for impact in society.

In order to address complex challenges and bring about transformations, change agents need to possess the necessary capacities. Contemplative pedagogies such as Social Presencing Theater (SPT) may play a crucial role in developing such capacities. Therefore, this thesis explores how the embodiment method SPT could contribute to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), in order to support change agents in development. SPT and its learning environment, outcomes and possible contributions to ESD were researched through surveys with twelve participants of a two-day SPT training, as well as interviews with eleven SPT facilitators. According to the results, SPT has the potential to offer relevant contemplative practices that cultivate the capacities that leaders need to address complexity and uncertainty. The findings suggest that as a learning process, SPT can foster capacities within change agents and groups, promoting awareness and mental flexibility to recognize and work with dynamic systems. SPT also appears to foster specific learning outcomes, including several key competencies for sustainability. We recommend applying SPT in the context of strategic leadership development for sustainability, to promote sustainability education that is strategic, holistic, and innovative.

This thesis aims to understand the role of facilitated nature experiences for leadersas a step towards sustainability. Qualitative interviews were conducted with facilitators andparticipants of nature-based leadership programs (NBLP) and analyzed regarding 1) Transformative Learning Conditions, 2) Transformative Learning Outcomes, and 3) Professional Changes inspired by NBLP participation. Results show that facilitators foster Transformative Learning through six main conditions and that Transformative Learning ishappening as participants experience an increased understanding of interrelatedness within our socio-ecological system, change in worldviews, as well as realignment with purpose and gained confidence. Our findings indicate some evidence of professional changes after programcompletion that show potential to move society towards sustainability. The reconstruction of worldviews and increased human-nature connectedness depicts the potential for NBLP to address a deep leverage point that is highly effective for systemic change towards sustainability. Our research provides valuable insights for practitioners in the fields of education for sustainable development and sustainability leadership to increase both conscious and subconscious ecological systems understanding. The authors suggest NBLP should be further explored by decision-makers and researchers.

For society to move towards sustainability, competent engineers able to tackle systemic socioecological challenges are needed. To ensure this, integrating sustainability in engineering education is instrumental. This research aims to examine the current state of sustainability integration within Swedish engineering programs, as well as identifying challenges, needs, and drivers for integrating sustainability from the perspective of educators. Using a survey (P=55)and interviews (E=7) with educators of engineering master’s programmes in Sweden, the findings showed that: - Sustainability is not being strategically integrated. Tools as the framework of Sustainability Competencies have potential to help with the integration. - The main challenges inhibiting integration include a lack of resources, time, relevant sustainability teaching materials, and perceived relevance of sustainability to engineering courses. - The main drivers of integration are management directives, funding, educator’s personal convictions, and the increase of sustainability as a topic in common discourse. - Some main needs include building competence in educators, increased collaboration with sustainability experts, and learning from other universities regarding the process of integration. Whilst all educators show sustainability awareness, most educators lack knowledge and right conditions for integrating sustainability into engineering education. Considering the interconnectedness of all factors, adopting a systemic approach is necessary in order tostrategically integrate sustainability in engineering education.

This report aims to answer the question “What is the relationship between adopting a landscape conservation approach and human well-being?” through a case study of the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network. The Network is a collective that involves a variety of stakeholders that belong to a multidimensional scale and focuses on achieving a wide spectrum of goals. This research looks at the landscape conservation approach, which the Network uses, through the lens of strategic sustainable development by taking a systems perspective. The eight sustainability principles, which are used for the analysis, function as system boundaries for sustainability to aim towards human well-being. The environmental sphere is connected with the social sphere and make up the socio-ecological system and should not be considered separately. This research aims to make this connection clearer to compliment the lack of knowledge on this topic. The main conclusion is that by operating within the 8SPs and using a landscape conservation approach, organizations can contribute directly or indirectly to human well-being and the health of ecosystems. Some of the benefits for humans are an increase in physical and mental health and having the opportunity to find meaning by being out in nature.