Article

Conceptual Development in Higher Education Sustainability

Initiatives: Insights from a Change Laboratory
Research Intervention
John Scahill 1,2 and Brett Bligh 2, *

1 Galway-Mayo School of Engineering, Atlantic Technological University, H91 T8NW Galway, Ireland;
john.scahill@atu.ie
2 Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK
* Correspondence: b.bligh@lancaster.ac.uk

Abstract: An international debate is taking place about embedding sustainability in higher

education institutions (HEIs). Separate strands of literature address the importance of
sustainability concepts and strategic change approaches. This paper explores conceptual
development as an unfolding process within sustainability change initiatives. Data are
derived from nine Change Laboratory workshops, conducted over 6 months, in which
20 stakeholders of varying backgrounds worked to create “a sustainable campus” in an HEI
in Ireland. Transcribed video recordings and artefacts produced in workshops are analysed
using activity theory principles to examine conceptual development, identifying four novel
concepts created by stakeholders. The development of the Campus Sustainability Statement
(CSS) concept is analysed in depth. It was produced in four stages of development—pursuing,
in turn, a purposeful definition of “sustainability”, a shared framework to contextualise
different actions, a mission statement for the campus, and the CSS proper. Each stage
arose from a conflict of motives expressed within the coalition of participants, which was
addressed by suggesting an abstract idea and considering its implications, with the latter
stages also including attempts to embed and objectify the concept. Successive ideas were
challenged, refined, and/or abandoned by participants on the grounds of ethics, fit with
the institution, and relevance to subsequent action, with the eventual CSS judged to be an
acceptable basis for institutional work. This paper emphasises the processual importance of
Academic Editor: David Gonzalez developing sustainability concepts within institutions, including the creative potential for
Received: 20 March 2025 addressing value tensions and the possibility for nurturing new forms of collective agency.
Revised: 22 April 2025
Accepted: 25 April 2025 Keywords: sustainability change; embedding sustainability; sustainability initiatives;
Published: 28 April 2025
sustainability in higher education; activity theory; Change Laboratory; concepts; conceptual
Citation: Scahill, J.; Bligh, B. development; expansive learning
Conceptual Development in Higher
Education Sustainability Initiatives:
Insights from a Change Laboratory
Research Intervention. Sustainability
2025, 17, 3968. https://doi.org/
1. Introduction
10.3390/su17093968 This paper contributes to the literature on sustainability in higher education from the
Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. perspective of organisational change. In particular, it highlights that the issue of conceptual
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. development is a crucial consideration for those higher education sustainability initiatives
This article is an open access article in which groups of stakeholders come together to enact change within their institution.
distributed under the terms and We present an analysis of data from such a change initiative within a higher education
conditions of the Creative Commons
institution (HEI), tracing how a Campus Sustainability Statement (CSS) was developed as a
Attribution (CC BY) license
(https://creativecommons.org/
core outcome of the group’s work. Importantly, the idea of having a CSS was developed
licenses/by/4.0/). (alongside several others) within the group, rather than being imposed from above at

Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 https://doi.org/10.3390/su17093968

Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 2 of 51

the beginning of the project; it arose from the group’s own difficulty in establishing an
understanding of the term ‘sustainability’ that they could agree on and which seemed
relevant to practice in their HEI setting. We trace how the underlying idea, which has since
become central to a range of other campus initiatives, was first posed in abstract form and
was subsequently developed through several iterations, being subject to considerable con-
testation by stakeholders at each stage. We aim to demonstrate that processes of conceptual
development and contestation, rather than being a distraction or an annoying but necessary
precursor to the “real” work, are a crucial aspect of the stakeholder engagement that needs
to occur when seeking to encourage engagement with sustainability in HEIs.
The context is an increasing recognition, in many countries worldwide, of the need
for sustainability-related change within HEIs [1–4]. Universities have played key roles
in initiatives related to sustainability and sustainable development for many decades:
conducting the underlying research into associated ecological, economic and societal issues;
coordinating initiatives for identifying challenges and formulating policy; and contributing
to strategic actions alongside other partners [5–8]. Yet, far from serving as exemplars for
organisational practice, HEIs have often been seen as laggards in enacting sustainability-
related change in their own institutions. Among other things, such a situation undermines
HEIs’ educational mission and damages their credibility with stakeholders and external
collaborators, as well as perpetuating the harmful, direct environmental footprint of their
organisation [3,7].
For such reasons, HEIs have launched a wide range of institutional sustainability initia-
tives over recent years, with many and varied objectives—such as embedding sustainability
into educational programming, mapping and ameliorating the impact of organisational op-
erations, embedding consciousness raising artefacts into the campus experience, outreach
and collaboration with local community partners, and environmental auditing and report-
ing [7]. However, notwithstanding these efforts, prognoses of institutional practices remain
pessimistic. Reviews highlight, in particular, a lack of holistic or systemic approaches and a
lack of genuine stakeholder engagement [3,9]. The latter issue, in particular, is a core point
of focus for the present paper.
A recent project by the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges
(EUAC), which examined a range of HEI sustainability initiatives and produced case
reports of 18 schemes at institutions across several countries, drew conclusions that are
highly relevant to the present work [9]. The foreword to the associated report makes the
argument in the following way:
“One key thing the EAUC has learnt in its 20 years is that there is no one stan-
dard approach to sustainability. Off the peg or tick box approaches can appear
attractive on the surface but change can often be just that, on the surface. For the
EAUC, the key to success is for a university or college to define sustainability
for itself and build a unique strategy and structure which reflects its particular
nature, context and geography”. (p. 2)
The EUAC report correctly draws attention to a range of issues of crucial importance to
the success of sustainability initiatives, including the centrality of stakeholder engagement,
the need to define the subject matter of the initiative, and the requirement for bespoke
rather than generic strategies. Yet the methodology of the underlying project, which
presents disparate case studies and then highlights common features and outcomes, leaves
underexplored both (a) the relationships between these issues when promoting sustainability
and (b) how these aspects unfold within the process of undertaking particular initiatives. We
contend that such concerns are important for understanding how to design, manage, and
explain the success (or lack thereof) of particular attempts at change, and, for this reason,
the present paper focuses on this subject matter in more detail.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 3 of 51

In the present paper, we draw on a project that attempted to develop just such a
“unique strategy and structure” for sustainability. The project, which was undertaken in an
HEI in the Republic of Ireland, used the Change Laboratory methodology for research inter-
vention (which we describe below) to bring together a group of institutional stakeholders,
who met in regular workshops over several months to discuss how to embed sustainability
throughout institutional practice.
At the time of the project, the institution was a medium-sized HEI, with around
12,000 students, whose work was distributed across five campuses in the west of Ireland.
Founded in 1973 as a Regional Technical College and with an ongoing commitment to
regional development, since the time of the project, the institution has merged with two
others, as part of a national reorganisation of the sector [10], to form a larger university with
more than 20,000 students. The institution, many of whose campuses are in rural locations,
has had a positive history of engagement with sustainability issues. This has included
receiving a Green Campus Flag for waste and energy management as far back as 2011, at a
time when such accreditation was rare in the sector nationally, and subsequent awards for
biodiversity and transport. There have also been other notable initiatives, including the
development of a Woodland Trail starting in 2014 and a Living Willow Outdoor Classroom
initiative starting in 2016 [11].
Yet the project we draw on in this paper was driven by a conviction that prior work
had a fragmentary character, with worthwhile initiatives led by different enthusiasts and
champions, but without a common vision that would draw issues of pedagogy and student
experience together with campus operations. A range of specific and deeply rooted issues
(which participants in the underlying project, using the terminology of our approach as
described in Section 3.1, eventually analysed and located as ‘contradictions’), have included
different visions and values of sustainability, the inconsistent integration of espoused ap-
proaches into the actual fabric practice, and mutually incompatible developments occurring
in different practices [12].
As we make clear in our literature review, this broad situation has been common in many
of those higher education institutions which seriously attempt to engage with sustainability
issues. The project took as its starting point a single campus which had a strong record on
environmental issues in terms of campus operations and which, as we elaborate further in
Section 4.1, was a hub for providing a range of academic programmes—including some (like
outdoor education, social care, and construction) with a track record of engaging with
sustainability concerns in their curriculum in various ways. The aim was to bring together
a range of academic and professional stakeholders in workshops, in which practitioners
would pursue the creation of “a sustainable campus”.
By its end, the project had achieved considerable success: it not only developed the
Campus Sustainability Statement addressed in this paper and hosted a public launch
event for it but also put forward proposals for new academic programmes, outlined a
suggested approach for ongoing curriculum integration, and nurtured the formation of
a more permanent Centre for the Study of Community Sustainability [12]. At the time of
writing, many of these suggestions have been taken forward and are in various stages of
being enacted.
Yet such success, while genuine, was not achieved easily or quickly; did not arise
from a predesignated, imposed plan; and was not based on prescriptions about ‘best
practice’ from elsewhere. Instead, the project relied on robust, open and frank discussions
between stakeholders from different backgrounds, with workshops structured to encourage
debate and dissent as well as the production and consolidation of new knowledge over a
sufficiently extended period of time [12]. In a previous publication, we have documented,
in particular, how resistance and criticism, explication and envisioning, and commitment
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 4 of 51

and action were important at different moments of the project, with each a prerequisite for
building the capacity across and within the stakeholder group, which eventually proved so
crucial [13].
The purpose of our present analysis is to trace the conceptual development which oc-
curred within the initiative, by which we mean the production of new knowledge in forms
that ‘grasp’ aspects of the present situation and guide subsequent action [14]. We regard
the suggestion in the EUAC report [9], quoted above, that an HEI needs “to define sustain-
ability for itself” as a clear recognition of the need for conceptual development. However,
for us, this is but one example of what is required; conceptual development in sustain-
ability initiatives might reach considerably beyond the specific issue of “defining” one
specific term.
We understand concepts and conceptual development in ways influenced by the
activity theory tradition [14]. In such scholarship, concepts are understood as a type
of artefact which mediates activities in ways that are practical (they help people suggest
actions which should be undertaken to pursue the object of the activity) and future-oriented
(they help people accommodate visions of problems and/or solutions). Importantly, it is
understood that concepts are not developed only by specialists, but by a whole range of
people in their everyday life, and that new conceptual development is spurred whenever
issues in activity arise which cannot be mediated adequately by existing artefacts. In
Section 3.4 we put forward a model which illustrates how conceptual development occurs
in sequences of actions, including identifying a conflict of motives arising from an existing
activity; putting forward a simple idea; exploring how the idea addresses the conflict of
motives; developing the idea to address problems in existing activity; and working up an
artefact so that the new concept can be used in the future (potentially by others). Our model
also acknowledges that conceptual development is not smooth but instead passes through
stages, with stages tending to become abandoned as the inadequacies of the conceptual
development work become apparent to those undertaking it. It is this model which frames
our analysis of conceptual development in this paper.
The analysis we present in this paper addresses the following research question: What
is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher education sustain-
ability initiative? By addressing this question, we aim, as we outline in our literature review
(Section 2), to contribute to the literature on sustainability in higher education, and particu-
larly those strands concerned with sustainability terminology and strategic approaches for
embedding sustainability in the sector. Such literature, we argue, is regrettably weak in
recognising conceptual development within initiatives, and in understanding the processes
by which such initiatives unfold. We use our conceptual model to explore how conceptual
development occurred within a Change Laboratory, a research intervention methodology
often used to understand the potentiality in a given set of practices [15].
To address this question, in what follows we first present a preliminary analysis
which demonstrates that several ‘strands’ of conceptual development could be discerned
within the data generated by the project. Having done so, we focus on one ‘strand’ of
conceptual development occurring during the research intervention: specifically, that which
resulted in the development of the CSS. In that conceptual strand, as we elaborate below,
initial arguments about different interpretations of the word ‘sustainability’, and attempts
to find a common definition, were eventually abandoned by the group in favour of a
succession of ‘frameworks’ and ‘statements’. Those frameworks and statements were each,
in turn, challenged and refined by different stakeholders, on grounds of ethos, fit with
the institution, and relevance to subsequent action, until the eventual CSS was forged and
judged to be an acceptable basis for institutional work.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 5 of 51

We should be clear from the outset that our approach in this paper differs markedly
from the dominant narratives in the literature on sustainability in higher education. In
Section 2, we briefly review how, in that literature, sustainability is conceptualised and
strategies for implementing it are discussed. We conclude that conceptualisation is primar-
ily addressed in terms of debates about different definitions (understood as universally
applicable) and educational movements (usually with an evangelising character), with
judgements made about the correctness or comparative merits of the alternatives suggested;
while implementation is usually discussed by categorising different objectives or evaluating
different outcomes achieved by ‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’, and ‘middle-out’ approaches. We
suggest that our approach in this paper, which emphasises conceptualisation as an attempt
to apprehend and guide institutional practice, and which explores implementation as a
process within which new concepts can be developed, offers a productive new way for
addressing the challenges emphasised within these areas of scholarship.
In the sections that follow, we describe the most important principles guiding our
research, including when designing the underlying research intervention and analysing
the conceptual development which occurred; outline the specific project design which was
derived from these principles; analyse the strand of conceptual development within the
project that led to the development of the CSS; and discuss the implications for future
scholarship and practice in the area of sustainability in HEIs. First, however, we reinforce
our view of how the relevant issues are conceptualised in the relevant literature.

2. Literature Review
The scholarship on sustainability in higher education is large and diverse [16–21]. The
present work was constructed on the basis of a literature review whose focus demarcates
two specific areas of debate within this wider body of knowledge [12]. One area concerns
sustainability terminology in higher education, whose meanings and implications are
debated extensively. The other addresses strategic approaches for embedding sustainability
in particular institutions. We write this paper as a contribution to several specific strands of
debate we engaged with in these areas of literature. In what follows, we provide a brief but
critical overview of these debates.

2.1. Sustainability Terminology in Higher Education

The first area of scholarship we address in this paper concerns sustainability termi-
nology and its use in higher education. We analyse this area by disaggregating it into
three related strands of debate concerned, in turn, with a lack of clarity in sustainability
terminology, value tensions about what sustainability should mean, and communication
problems between stakeholders.
The first of these strands addresses a lack of clarity in sustainability terminology [4,22–26].
The papers in this strand highlight that discussions about sustainability often lack precision
and take the various imprecise interpretations as a source of frustration. This strand of
work reflects widespread concerns in the literature on sustainability in organisations more
generally (rather than specifically in higher education) that there is no clear definition of
sustainability for organisations to adopt [23] and that, therefore, it is difficult for decision-
makers to orient their work [24].
Scholarship focused specifically on educational contexts has typically engaged with
this issue by striving for greater precision: typically, by emphasising the contribution of
education to sustainability, rather than by adopting definite positions on sustainability
itself. The Eco-UNESCO definition of ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ provides
one example of how such approaches position education in relation to societal concerns:
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 6 of 51

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), using a wide definition of educa-

tion (both formal and non-formal), is both a part of Sustainable Development and
a tool for achieving the Sustainable Development goals throughout the world
and at all levels (national, regional, and local). It refers to a process of learning
that allows making decisions that take into account long-term economic and
ecological effects, as well as the equity of all communities. It also aims at building
the capacity and commitment needed for building sustainable societies [27].
One outcome of this approach, however, has been to produce within educational
settings a plethora of new terms and definitions, and contestation between their respective
advocates. For example, Wu and Shen’s [4] review of sustainability education during
the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development found that a great variety of
different terms were being used and defended, even where the underlying meaning was
synonymous or interchangeable. Thus, it is suggested that a lack of clarity in broader
sustainability discourse has become mirrored in research and practice on education. This
situation is typically viewed negatively: for example, it is seen as having negative effects at
an institutional level when pursuing sustainability initiatives [22,26] and as leading to a
lack of commitment from bemused stakeholders [25]. Owens and Legere [28] argue that
“When a community fails to understand sustainability, it impacts how they conceptual-
ize environmental problems and make decisions to solve them” (p. 367). In our view,
such work draws useful attention to the importance of conceptualisation. However, we
wish to query the common assumptions that sustainability conceptualisation is the ex-
clusive domain of specialists and that institutional stakeholders should be ‘receivers’ for
unambiguous concepts.
A second strand of debate in this literature concerns value tensions, especially those
arising from differing views about the centrality of the environment when thinking about
sustainability [6,29–32]. The underlying context is that a longstanding strand of work
focused specifically on environmental issues has been challenged by the emergence of rival
conceptions of sustainability with a broader focus.
Some of the corresponding value tensions are clearly highlighted in the ESDebate
report published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) [29]. This
study, based on submissions from expert respondents, seeks to delineate and understand
the variety of debates surrounding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Respon-
dents’ views highlight sharp divides around the centrality of the environment, with many
contrasting ESD against the older term Environmental Education (EE) in various ways, viz.
that (i) EE is a part of ESD, (ii) ESD is a part of EE, (iii) ESD and EE partly overlap, and
(iv) ESD is a stage in the evolution of EE [29] (pp. 11–13). Specific differences between ESD
and EE are perceived as highly important by respondents. Some, for example, disparage
EE as “naturalist, apolitical and scientific work” (p. 12) or suggest that “EE represents an
interest (group)” (p. 13). Others worry about ESD on the following grounds:
“There is a danger that it [ESD] legitimises the notion of infinite economic
growth—only at a more sustained pace. This interpretation is not in line with
notions of EE” (p. 13).
The literature emphasises that these value tensions have impacts upon organisational
practices, rather than being merely individual preferences. For example, committees
and organisations with a longstanding environmental focus are “re-orienting themselves
towards transformative learning around equity issues, north–south relationships, cross-
cultural aspects, etc.” [32] (p. 86). Such trends are correctly taken as posing a range of
challenges for those professionals involved in sustainability in higher education, leading to
proposals that those practitioners need to develop (and be supported to develop) a wider
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 7 of 51

range of competencies [32]. Yet this strand of literature does not address how disparate
stakeholders might address such tensions within an institution.
Another strand of debate does, however, frame issues of sustainability terminology
institutionally—but in terms of communication problems [33–35]. Papers in this strand
highlight that higher education stakeholders are frequently unable to meaningfully discuss
sustainability with each other because they use different terminology or understand the
same terms in different ways. Owens and Legere’s study [28], for example, analyses how
a group of stakeholders from a specific campus discuss sustainability. Their findings
highlight that these stakeholders, while apparently using some common words, actually
discuss notions that both diverge from each other and differ from published definitions.
Some papers have attempted to explain such terminological difficulties by framing
universities as particular kinds of organisations; they are, as Gale et al. [35] note, “loosely
coupled networks of semi-autonomous centres of influence and decision-making” (p. 253).
Doing so serves to connect debates about sustainability terminology with those engaging
with institutional issues (addressed further below in Section 2.2). Such work suggests that
different institutional stakeholders imbue sustainability terminology with their own mean-
ings due to their own motivations and background, with the attendant communication
problems framed by reference to university silos [34] (p. 26), cross-disciplinary antag-
onisms [35], difficulties of communication between academic and professional staff [1],
and mistrust of senior managers seen as prone to tokenism [1]. Gale et al. also highlight
that discussions of sustainability are stymied by different fundamental beliefs, especially
about issues such as social democracy, environmental protection, economic growth, and
social justice (p. 251). For Djordevic and Cotton [1], a particularly thorny issue is that the
“underlying belief structures intrinsic to HE (such as independence of thought and critical
thinking) may conflict with the attitudinal implications of the sustainability message” (p. 382).
Papers in this strand of scholarship often attempt to propose ways of addressing these
communication problems. Some proposed solutions—for example, the advocacy of clear
leadership [24] (p. 57) or that research scholars aim to provide accurate information within
their own institutions [33] (p. 11)—draw attention to the roles of particular individuals
in promoting particular understandings of sustainability issues. Others highlight the
necessity for communication breaking out of silos; for example, by supporting ongoing
interdisciplinary collaboration [35] or different forms of institutional “networks” [24].
Owens and Legere [28] note the importance of framing sustainability concerns within wider
systems rather than as “magic bullet” solutions (p. 380). We agree that collaboration across
silos is a potentially promising approach, but the processes by which such collaboration
might address communication problems for sustainability and frame institutional solutions
systemically remain poorly understood in this literature.

2.2. Strategic Approaches for Embedding Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions

The second area of scholarship we address with this paper concerns strategic ap-
proaches for embedding sustainability in particular institutions. We analyse this area by
disaggregating it into two related strands of debate concerned, in turn, with the character
of the change process and the strategic aims of organisational initiatives.
The first of these strands addresses the character of the change process used when at-
tempting to inculcate sustainability [18,21]. This issue is typically understood as important
not only because of its impact on organisational outcomes but also as fundamental in its
own right; as Djordevic and Cotton [1] argue, Education for Sustainable Development is a
process of learning.
Papers focused on process issues typically discuss the people who should be involved
in sustainability-related change [24,32,33]. Discussion especially focuses on the recruitment
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 8 of 51

of pivotal individuals: typically, those in specific organisational roles or who are actively
leading sustainability work in the institution. A strong emphasis is placed on finding
“the right leader” because, as Appleton [9] argues, “it is vital to have sponsorship at the
top, without which there is the risk of the agenda being seen as weak, and potentially
dispensable” (p. 26). Appleton also discusses the need for leadership at “all levels” and
suggests appointing, throughout an organisation, a variety of people as ‘champions’, ‘spon-
sors’, and ‘academic leads’. A similarly strong emphasis is placed on domain specialists,
with Wesselink and Wals advocating for the important role of environmental educators in
institutional processes [32]. Other writers discuss the need for “grassroots action”, by which
is typically meant addressing existing work: for example, Verhulst and Lambrechts [21]
discuss the need to map and understand those sustainability projects in the institution
which are already being undertaken, at small scale, by enthusiasts and then recruiting
those people by offering sources of funding (p. 198). Overall, such work typically suggests
recruiting those who are existing carriers of authority and expertise within an institution
and does not address how people might develop and change as a result of participation in
the change process.
Papers in this strand also typically differentiate between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’
change processes, a distinction “based on the placement of agents of change in the hierarchy
of authority” [18] (p. 340). This dichotomy is portrayed as problematic: both types of process
are seen as inadequate for connecting to actual practice across an institution [18] (p. 343),
and yet attempts to coordinate between processes of each type have demonstrated that
achieving “a true fit between bottom-up and top-down” is difficult [21] (p. 198). For this
reason, some authors advocate for processes of ‘middle-out change’ or “middle leader-
ship” [18] (pp. 346–348). This conception is understood as the process of empowering
“social intrapreneurs” within the institution who will create “positive change through
entrepreneurial solutions” [18] (p. 344). Such discussions usefully highlight the issue
of agency, but that agency is conceived individualistically, and the processes by which
desirable agency might be fostered remain vague.
A number of authors have proposed change process models based on various princi-
ples, such as “integrative development” [24] or an “evolutionary perspective” [2]. Such a
process view is useful as a guide to action and a way of analysing desirable change. Yet a
key factor in such models is to imply a linear relationship between different stages, thereby
tending to separate moments of conceptual decision-making from change implementation.
Verhulst & Lambrechts [21], for example, use as the basis of their work a process model
which differentiates between “a preparatory stage, a change stage with different interven-
tion cycles, and a consolidation stage” (p. 193). They acknowledge some debate on whether
the preparatory stage (where significant conceptual work happens) should be “completed
first”, but their alternative to doing so involves allowing “small, individual projects” which
proceed “without too much planning in advance” (p. 193). In other words, it is somehow
assumed that ongoing conceptualisation in change processes is incompatible with the idea
of advance planning.
The character of the change process is also discussed using the vocabulary of partner-
ship, collaboration, and networks [17,18,33]. Collaborative approaches are seen as useful for
“breaking down the silo-mentality” in institutions, so as to “extend horizontal reach across
business areas that might otherwise remain independent of each other” [9] (p. 27). A variety
of collaborative approaches are considered in this literature. For example, Mader [24] differ-
entiates between several kinds of networks, including information networks, which spread
a vision as widely as possible via one-way communication; knowledge networks, which
exchange knowledge and develop trust, typically via committees and working groups; and
innovation networks, which engage those with a shared vision and on this basis undertake
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 9 of 51

transformational processes, typically via establishing institutional centres and projects.

Appleton’s [9] (p. 26) discussion of consulting students in the context of work on the UK’s
National Student Survey would count as a network according to such definitions. We find
such ideas useful for drawing attention to the possibilities of collective working across
organisational structures. Yet existing discussion seems tacitly to restrict many stakeholders
to passive forms of ‘consultation’ and only to recruit others to active engagement on the
basis of their prior agreement with some given vision.
The second strand of literature on strategic approaches we wish to address is concerned
with the strategic aims of sustainability initiatives in organisations. Such aims are commonly
addressed in this literature by demarcating them in relation to the institutional areas being
addressed, setting out the underlying ‘drivers’ behind the work, and/or suggesting success
factors which should be nurtured.
A common approach in this literature is to differentiate sustainability initiatives by their
institutional points of focus [12,16,25]. Doing so has been common currency for decades: as
Lozano et al. [7] note, the 2005 Graz Declaration for the Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development asked university leaders to promote actions in three areas: learning and teaching,
research, and internal and external social responsibility (p. 16). The actual categories of focus
are not consistent between papers. For example, Ralph and Stubbs [25] suggest demarcating
between operations, teaching, and research (pp. 77–78), while Berchin et al. [16] differentiate
further between strategies for research, teaching, campus operations, outreach, and knowl-
edge dissemination (p. 759). Yet such work regards categorisation as important, for the
reason that “different factors contribute to the success of the integration in each of these
areas” [25] (p. 78). In our view, such work is valuable for recognising that organisational
change dynamics are not uniform across an institution but brings drawbacks of arbitrarily
categorising sustainability initiatives from the outset and thus tacitly constraining their
conceptual remits.
Strategic aims are also often discussed in relation to their ‘drivers’ [3,12,21], on the basis
that sustainability change initiatives should be understood as “driven processes” [12] (p. 32).
Many such drivers are recognised, sometimes presented as detailed lists. Cheeseman
et al.’s [33] review of the policy literature highlights a “myriad” of drivers (p. 2), and
suggests that common drivers include policy creation, forging partnerships, reporting
requirements, responding to stakeholder pressure, the use of sustainability as a tool for
institutional marketing, a progressive political situation, and pedagogical approaches
(pp. 8–9). Other authors suggest that drivers are so numerous that they require higher-level
categorisation. For example, Ralph and Stubbs [25] suggest that it is useful to differentiate
between external drivers, such as national policy directives, and internal drivers, such as
the ethical obligation for universities to provide leadership to wider society (pp. 73–74).
While such work furnishes a useful sense of motivation for strategic approaches, we agree
with Cheeseman et al. [33] that such work generally omits a sense of how sustainability
initiatives are enacted as a process (p. 2).
Strategic aims are also discussed in terms of recognising and nurturing a range of
factors seen as likely to lead to success for sustainability initiatives [24,34]. For example,
Ralph and Stubbs [25] suggest that key success factors include the identification of com-
mitted individuals, the provision of dedicated resources, senior management leadership
and support, and institutional funding (p. 86), while Verhulst and Lambrechts [21] focus
on individual commitment, external funding, and an accurate assessment of the current
situation in the organisation (p. 195). Dlouhá et al.’s [2] discussion of ‘transition factors’
has a more detailed character: emphasising the prior embeddedness of environmental
education, the presence of individual initiatives, the vitality of inter-institutional networks,
an understanding of ESD as a term, the existence of ESD policy documents, the matu-
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 10 of 51

rity of ESD policy implementation, the degree of transdisciplinary working, stakeholders

competencies for innovative pedagogy, the existence of Green Campus initiatives, and the
prevalence of sustainability research within an institution (pp. 676–678). While this variety
of factors doubtless captures important issues, the discussion typically positions them as
prerequisites for success rather than a product of sustainability initiatives.

2.3. Our Core Critiques of the Literature

Our critical engagement with the literature on sustainability in higher education,
above, focused on two areas.
Our overview of the area of literature on sustainability terminology emphasised
stands concerned with lack of clarity, value tensions, and communication problems. Such
work is useful for drawing attention to the importance of concepts and conceptualisation,
identifying that value tensions are often challenging, and noticing the importance of
communication across silos. Yet we critique the existing work in this area for assuming that
concepts are created by domain specialists (and that institutional stakeholders must merely
understand concepts clearly), for lack of consideration of how value tensions are actively
worked through by stakeholders, and for underemphasising how work across institutional
silos might be addressed by using new concepts.
Our review of the literature on strategic approaches emphasised strands concerned
with the character of the change process and the distinct strategic aims of sustainability
initiatives. We judge such work valuable for highting the importance of stakeholder input,
issues of agency in integrative development, and the need to work across institutional
structures; and for recognising that change dynamics are not unform across an institution,
that initiatives are motivated by a range of drivers, and that stakeholder recruitment is
important for the success of specific initiatives. Yet, in our view, such work has a range
of shortcomings. These include a focussing mainly on leveraging the input of existing
carriers of authority and expertise rather than on how people develop within change
initiatives; an individualistic, rather than collective or group, understanding of agency in
sustainability change; a tacit suspicion of ongoing conceptualisation (which is sometimes
seen as a barrier to project planning); a focus on recruiting stakeholders who already agree
with a predetermined agenda (and relegating others to being ‘consulted’ less intensively);
and focussing on the reasons and factors in place at the outset of a sustainability initiative,
but less so on how such initiatives unfold as a process.
Our overarching view, in summary, is that these areas of literature have important
shortcomings when it comes to understanding the links between sustainability concepts
and change initiatives, and to understanding sustainability-related change as a process. In
this paper, therefore, we commit to analysing the potential for conceptual development
to occur within higher education sustainability initiatives, and to understanding such
development processually. It is for this reason that we pursue the specific research question
stated in Section 1.

3. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework for the present study is situated in the activity theory tradi-
tion [36], from which we derive an understanding of both human activity and how change
in that activity can be nurtured and studied [37,38]. We selected and honed this framework
because of its general alignment with our underpinning epistemological positions—for
us, it is crucial to understand sustainability in higher education as an issue of activity, and
‘promoting’ sustainability as a process of changing activity—as well as its specific utility for
designing and analysing particular change initiatives.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 11 of 51

Below, we briefly provide some necessary background information about, in turn,

activity theory itself, which furnishes a way understanding human activity, including the
roles of various artefacts within it; expansive learning, a framework for understanding
the processes by which radical changes in particular activities are accomplished; and
transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), which provides an approach to designing
tasks that aim to develop the agency of those participating in attempts to radically change
their activity. We then consider, in more detail, how to understand the nature and role of
concepts within such a framework.

3.1. Activity Theory

Activity theory (sometimes branded Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, or ‘CHAT’)
is an extensive and sophisticated theory for understanding human practice. It draws
considerably on the heritage of Lev Vygotsky’s Marxist programme of developmental
psychology from the 1920s–30s and has been substantially further developed and expanded
over several decades [39–41]. The theory has been used, in varied ways, across many
academic disciplines—including psychology, computer science, engineering, organisational
studies and educational research—and in disparate global contexts [42,43]. Such disparate
uses, of course, have generated substantial contestation between scholars and ongoing
development of the theory (sometimes into competing interpretations). In recent times,
activity theory has become a prominent theory used for studying higher education settings,
where researchers have valued how the theory helps them grasp complex situational
dynamics, its emphasis on locating phenomena in cultural–historical context, and its
staunch focus on change and development [44]. For similar reasons, it has also been used
to study sustainability education more specifically [45]. Elsewhere, it has been used to
examine sustainability practices outside educational systems, such as in farming [46,47].
In the wider, underlying research-intervention project, activity theory was used in
various forms to conceptualise the change the project was trying to achieve (for example,
by using activity system diagrams), to assist participants to analyse their activity (and put
forward ideas for future activities), and to structure the research analysis of data [12]. Given
that the present paper focuses specifically on issues of conceptual development, however,
we sketch the key principles of the theory only briefly. These [38,48] are as follows:
• Activity–action distinction: The word activity has a technical meaning which we can
summarise as “sustained, collective projects of human subjects”, which is differentiated
from action, which means “subjects’ time-bound pursuit of goals”; furthermore, the
theory emphasises that the meaning of subjects’ actions can only be understood by
locating them in the context of the wider activities in which they take place;
• Object–orientation: Activities are understood to be oriented towards objects, which
means that activities involve ‘working on’ material items and that those involved in
the activity derive collective motivation and make meaning from doing so;
• Artefact–mediation: Human subjects are not understood as working directly on their
objects, but instead as being “equipped” [49] to do so, with a variety of artefacts
mediating between subjects and objects in tripartite relationships in which subjects use
artefacts when pursuing their work on objects;
• Historicity: The theory emphasises that activities develop their own structures (in-
cluding rules, divisions of labour, and constellations of artefacts) historically, with the
current form of any given activity having arisen out of antecedents and tending to
develop into new forms;
• Contradictions: Activities are understood as taking forms that unavoidably encompass
a range of structural oppositions and tensions, which are an ongoing driver of change
and development because subjects, who experience aspects of these contradictions when
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 12 of 51

enacting the activity, try to overcome them and thereby transform the activity—albeit
with wide-ranging outcomes and in ways that lead to further contradictions emerging.

3.2. Expansive Learning

Expansive learning is a notion developed within the activity theory tradition to de-
scribe instances of qualitative rupture and radical change within activities. The associated
theory, initially put forward by Yrjö Engeström in the late 1980s [36], suggests that such
ruptures emerge when the accumulation of contradictions in a particular activity becomes
sufficiently acute that subjects are provoked into re-imagining and re-mediating the entire
activity. Where expansive learning occurs successfully (which is not a foregone conclusion),
a necessarily collective process will involve subjects constructing culturally novel ideas and
practices that result in the object of activity being transformed (‘expanded’). Engeström [36]
argues that societal challenges, including those related to sustainability, increasingly require
forms of learning that go beyond internalising established knowledge and towards actively
producing new ideas and forms of being, which makes expansive learning an important
phenomenon to study and nurture.
In analytical terms, the theory of expansive learning foregrounds process: chains
of different actions are understood to occur in cyclical rhythms. Engeström’s [36,50]
work suggests that, where expansive learning is achieved successfully, subjects will have
undertaken a range of actions whose goals will fall into the following categories:
1. Questioning: rejecting or criticising established aspects of activity or current proposals
for change;
2. Analysis: investigating, representing, and explaining (a) the structure of the present
activity and (b) the earlier activities that have led to the present ways of working;
3. Modelling: devising explanatory yet simplified models of new forms of activity that
might overcome present contradictions;
4. Examination: exploring the dynamics, potential, and limitations of proposed activity
models by debating their application and considering test cases;
5. Implementation: applying proposed activity models in practice at a small scale and
identifying how they work in concrete terms;
6. Process reflection: evaluating the progress of attempts at change and how those attempts
align with the motivations of participating subjects;
7. Consolidation and generalisation: embedding new activity models as new forms of
practice at a wider scale.
Expansive learning has been the topic of extensive prior scholarship over several
decades [36]. Studies have concluded, for example, that the actions undertaken, when
understood through the above categories, neither occur in a predetermined linear fashion
nor are simply random [50]. For this reason, expansive learning is understood as having a
cyclical motion, and the process of going through the category stages is sometimes referred
to as an expansive learning cycle.
The project we draw on in this paper was a direct attempt to nurture expansive
learning in relation to sustainability in higher education. In practical terms, the above cate-
gories (such as questioning) provided a tool for thinking strategically about how particular
moments in the research intervention fitted into the wider project, and about designing
workshop tasks aligned with appropriate goals [13]. It should be emphasised, therefore,
that project participants did not engage in conceptual development in a vacuum. On
the contrary, their ongoing conceptualisation both (a) responded to particular stimuli (for
example, being presented with a task whose goals correspond to some form of modelling
invites a certain kind of work on concepts) and (b) influenced how the project unfolded (for
example, some particular instance of conceptual development might necessitate moving
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 13 of 51

from one kind of action to another, for example from modelling to questioning, thereby
influencing how the expansive learning cycle unfolded).

3.3. Transformative Agency by Double Stimulation

Transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS) is a framework, emerging within
the activity theory tradition and spearheaded by Annalisa Sannino, focused on how sub-
jects can be helped to “intentionally break out of conflicting motives and change their
circumstances” [40] (p. 16). Work on transformative agency explores how people come
together to form joint subjectivities, while double-stimulation refers to a long-established
principle, first used by Vygotsky, of understanding how people propel their volition using
specific artefacts and a corresponding research programme exploring how such processes
might be nurtured [51]. TADS, therefore, provides us with a framework for understanding
how to construct tasks that assist subjects not only to pursue difficult goals but to do so in
ways that express their own developing subjectivity [52].
In the underlying project, the above ideas provided a principled approach for de-
signing particular tasks in workshops [12]. Such an approach has been used before in
comparable projects [52,53]. Participants are provided with a first stimulus which describes
some particular goals for the task (cf. Section 3.2), yet these goals cannot be addressed in
obvious ways, and so a second stimulus is provided, comprising a framework for thinking
about how to break down the task. Participants are also confronted, where applicable, with
examples of the kinds of problems being discussed (in the form of documents, images,
video footage, etc.), and may be asked to work in particular ways (for instance, in sub-
groups) and document their findings in particular formats. Importantly, resources from
earlier workshops are often reused in later ones—for example, a diagram developed by
participants might be reintroduced in a later task as a second stimulus, in a way that aims to
support a process of cumulative knowledge building and the ongoing re-examination of
earlier discussions.
The present paper does not focus extensively on the design of particular workshops.
Yet it is important to note that working within this framework involves participants in a
wide variety of actions in which concepts are likely to be put forward and debated, tested
and refined, and deprecated in favour of new ideas. To provide only a few examples,
participants’ modelling work might involve developing a concept they think helps them
analyse current problems, their implementation might test new models of activity using
some concept as a yardstick, and their efforts at implementation might show that a concept
is inadequate and needs to be replaced. Participants are also likely to develop a range of
competing ideas, or to put forward several ideas and choose to take forward only a subset
of them.

3.4. Concepts
The idea of a ‘concept’ has been contested between different scholarly traditions
over extensive periods of time, with cognitive psychologists and linguists, for example,
understanding the nature of concepts in very different ways [54]. For the purposes of this
paper, we understand concepts from a practice perspective, and, in particular, adhere to a
view derived from activity theory.
In the activity theory tradition, concepts are understood as a particular kind of arte-
fact that mediate between subjects and their objects [14]. Concepts vary widely in their
character—they are positioned and understood, for example, as more or less scientific,
culturally established, stabilised in meaning, ephemeral, partial, contested against other
concepts, and so on [54]. What concepts have in common, however, is that they are devel-
oped to be practical, in the sense of providing a way of “handling” an object of activity, and
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 14 of 51

future-oriented, by which is meant accommodating visions of problems or solutions that help

organise action [14]. The extent to which a concept is practical and future-oriented is seen
as related to how it captures the ‘essence’ of some given problem or solution. A distinction
is sometimes made between ‘true’ concepts, which do capture the essence, and “general
notions”, which fail to do so—usually, these latter merely provide abstract definitions or
mechanical lists of attributes [54].
Adopting this view of concepts for the present work is useful not only because of its
commensurability with the activity theory framework used in the research intervention,
whose data we draw on, but also because of its recognition that attempts at conceptuali-
sation pervade social practice, with important consequences. As Engeström [14] writes,
“culturally novel concepts are not only created by scientists but also by people struggling
with persistent problems and challenges in all walks of life” (p. 100). The view that certain
concepts are a priori ‘correct’ or ‘authoritative’, which seems assumed in much of the litera-
ture reviewed in Section 2 (and which has also underpinned much educational research on
school classrooms), is alien to the activity theory tradition. Actual social practice involves
not only striving to master a range of existing concepts but also challenging or rejecting
them and forming new ones. One influential activity theory study, for example, documents
how support workers and residents in a homecare setting for the elderly developed a
new concept to address care encounters [55]. Rather than starting from a policy checklist
or formal definition, their collective concept formation grew from an apparently simple
reference to an everyday action (a homecare resident moving from being seated in a chair
to a standing position), which was fraught with difficulty in the practice context. From
that beginning, workers and residents together developed a series of word meanings and
artefacts, eventually leading to the implementation of a “mobility agreement” approach,
subsequently implemented in the setting.
Compared with the previous aspects of our framework, activity-theoretical under-
standings of those processes which Engeström calls “concept formation in the wild” [14] are
relatively tentative, although a recent book has highlighted their increasing practical and
theoretical significance [56]. However, based on our reading of several studies which have
addressed the issue [14,54,55], we propose to address collective conceptual development in
this paper by focusing on the following aspects:
1. Conflict of motives: subjects experience and articulate conflict about some issue, arising
from underlying contradictions in their activity, which cannot be mediated by estab-
lished artefacts (including the existing concepts transmitted from past activity, and
those they have hitherto developed themselves);
2. Abstract projection: subjects project a simple idea that expresses their will to mediate
the predicament in a particular way, attaching to it some external representation (often
by creating a new word or giving new meaning to an existing word);
3. Consideration: subjects explore how their abstract projection can help them understand
or address their conflict of motives;
4. Embedding: subjects relate the abstract projection to their actual activity, clarifying and
contesting its connections with other aspects of activity, including the contradictions
in that activity;
5. Objectification: subjects attempt to draw together some material artefact that represents
their projection in a sufficiently comprehensive, stable, and intelligible way for their
own later use, and potentially for use by others.
Figure 1 provides a model of this conceptual development process. The figure, which
is our own formulation, highlights how conceptual development passes through stages,
with each stage of development represented as a different column in the figure’s notation.
A stage of development proceeds from the foundation of a conflict of motives, which arise
 sents their projection in a sufficiently comprehensive, stable, and intelligible way for
their own later use, and potentially for use by others.
Figure 1 provides a model of this conceptual development process. The figure, which
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 is our own formulation, highlights how conceptual development passes through stages, 15 of 51
with each stage of development represented as a different column in the figure’s notation.
A stage of development proceeds from the foundation of a conflict of motives, which arise
from
from underlying contradictions in
underlying contradictions in activity,
activity, and
and which
whichbecome
becomeexpressed
expressedasasthe polesofof
thepoles
the conflict, with this being shown at the bottom of the column. As we have
the conflict, with this being shown at the bottom of the column. As we have explained explained
above, thepoles
above, the polesofofthis
this conflict
conflict cannot
cannot be mediated
be mediated by established
by established artefacts,
artefacts, whetherwhether
those
those transmitted from past activity or any that subjects might already have
transmitted from past activity or any that subjects might already have been working been working
on
on themselves.
themselves.

Figure 1. The conceptual development

Figure 1. development process.
process.

It is understood in this model that stages of development may proceed through a

sequence of actions whose goals constitute attempts at abstract projection, consideration,
embedding, and objectification, as these have already been defined above. This is indicated
in the figure by the cumulative building of actions in these rows, from the bottom of each
column upwards. Yet these stages may also be abandoned, as their inadequacies become
evident to the subjects working on them, with the action being truncated in such cases as
subjects return to a conflict of motives. This is indicated in the figure by the grey dotted line
indicating multiple potential paths of work, and the angled arrows indicating that these
paths may diverge after any aspect of conceptual development.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 16 of 51

As for other aspects of our framework, we intend that these are used to capture cyclical
processes of development, by which we mean that conceptual development will encom-
pass considerable contestation and often require re-visiting earlier decisions, but will not
proceed in an entirely arbitrary way (for example, we contend that the starting point for a
new stage of conceptual development will differ each time, but will nonetheless constitute
a conflict of motives). In our analysis below, we outline how conceptual development in
the sustainability intervention we document passed through several stages of development
and explore the extent to which the above aspects were manifest at each of those stages.
Figure 1 forms the analytical basis of this work, and an illustration of the specific concep-
tual development process undertaken by subjects working on the Campus Sustainability
Statement is presented in Section 6.1 using this same notation.

4. Research Design
The present paper draws on data from a project in which a range of institutional
stakeholders came together in workshops over a period of several months to address
sustainability issues [12,13]. The project was based on an approach called the Change
Laboratory, an established interventionist research methodology used by researchers in the
activity theory tradition since the 1990s [37,57].
The purpose of Change Laboratory projects is to facilitate deep transformation in work
practices while generating research knowledge within the change effort. The approach
places great emphasis on how participants reconceptualise the nature of the problems they
confront (sometimes several times) as the project proceeds, generate their own solutions,
and develop their collective agency to implement those solutions. The Change Laboratory
approach makes extensive use of the theoretical framework outlined above in Section 3.
Projects are designed for the explicit purpose of stimulating expansive learning in real
activities by using double stimulation tasks to nurture the transformative agency of the
participants [36,53]. That purpose is addressed by hosting a series of workshops in which
participants work on tasks designed according to these principles [58]. To our knowledge, the
work we draw on was the first such project undertaken to confront sustainability challenges
in a university, though the approach has been used to address other challenges in higher
education, including the design of new curricula, services, tools and platforms [15,38,52].
It has been used to address sustainability challenges outside of academia, such as in
agricultural settings [47].
As the sections below elaborate, the project was conducted by recruiting around
twenty stakeholders from across an auxiliary campus within a multi-site higher education
institution. Participants came together to discuss sustainability-related issues in nine
workshops over approximately six months. The fundamental purpose of the project was to
explore the creation of “a sustainable campus”.

4.1. Research Site

Undertaking Change Laboratory projects involves selecting an intervention unit as
the site for the initiative [37,38]. That intervention unit should serve as an “authentic
professional backdrop” for the issues the project aims to study [59] (p. 9). Moreover,
since the project attempts to explore the potential for future development of work in
the intervention unit, selecting the unit is consequential. Change Laboratory researcher
interventionists often attempt to select an intervention unit which has an organisationally
strategic position and where there is already some recognition of a need for change.
For the present work, the intervention unit was an auxiliary campus of a multi-site
university in the west of the Republic of Ireland. At the time of the project, the auxil-
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 17 of 51

iary campus served around 1000 students from a wider university student population of
about 12,000.
The campus serves as an academic centre for the provision of a number of programmes,
ranging from Nursing to Construction Management, and as a workplace for staff from a
wide range of academic disciplines. It was selected as the intervention unit for several
reasons. Firstly, the campus has a strong track record on environmental issues. It has
long been successful with the Green Campus programme and, since 2008, it has been
awarded a number of Green Flags, including for Energy, Waste and Water, Biodiversity,
and Transport. Secondly, a number of programmes running on the campus, including those
of outdoor education, social care, and construction, had already made links to issues of the
environment and/or sustainability. Thirdly, the first author was a member of staff working
on the campus. He had already been involved with the Green Campus work and was
familiar with the staff, the management structures and programme operations on campus
(for a discussion of conducting Change Laboratory projects in one’s own workplace, see
the work of Miles [60]). Yet it was increasingly recognised that most sustainability work on
campus had arisen from bottom-up initiatives, resulting in a lot of work being carried out
in isolated and uncoordinated ways; among other things, this recognition had prompted
some staff to set up an (informal) environmental and sustainability group on campus.
The project proceeded from the conviction that this existing (albeit fragmentary) work,
together with a perceived groundswell of support for sustainability, could serve as a starting
point for an effort to deeply transform work practices on the campus.

4.2. Participants
Two important criteria for selecting participants for a Change Laboratory project are,
firstly, trying to ensure that there is an appropriate range of voices (including, in this
case, a range of roles from senior management to frontline staff) and, secondly, that these
participants “are dealing with the same object in their daily work and are involved in
realizing the same final outcome despite differences in their occupation, task or hierarchical
position” [37] (p. 65). The first author already knew, from working on the campus, that
there was a widespread interest in both sustainability issues and in recruiting students to
the campus, which is located some distance from the larger institutional campuses. Thus,
an attempt was made to recruit participants who would be aligned with these objects.
Participation in the CL process was made open to everyone working on the campus.
An email was circulated to all campus staff, requesting expressions of interest in taking
part in a project about sustainability and ESD across the campus. Some participants were
also contacted individually, on the basis that they were members of the Green Campus
Committee or the (informal) environmental and sustainability group, were teaching subjects
directly related to the environment, or had a previous record of related work on the campus.
The project followed published guidance for sampling in Change Laboratory research
interventions, which states that 20 participants who meet the above criteria is a typical figure
for such projects [37], and so recruitment efforts ceased once 22 participants had agreed in
principle to participate. In actuality, 19 staff attended some of the subsequent workshops,
with 15 of these participants being interviewed about their experiences subsequently.
In addition to management and administration staff, there were participants from staff
working on programmes in Business, Construction, Outdoor Education, Heritage and
Environment, Social Care, Nursing, and Digital Media/Information Technology. Table 1
summarises the backgrounds of the participants, their attendance at the workshops, and
their participation in subsequent semi-structured interviews. The table also shows which
participants were also members of the Green Campus group, which focused on facilities
issues such as the provision of recycling bins and reducing the use of pesticides on campus.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 18 of 51

Table 1. Project participants, professional backgrounds, and workshop attendance.

Participants Workshops
No. Background 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total 1 SSI
P1 Information Technology ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 ✓
P2 Information Technology * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7 ✓
P3 Information Technology ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 3 ✓
P4 Outdoor Education * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 ✓
P5 Outdoor Education * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 4 ✓
P6 Social Care ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 4
P7 Social Care * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7 ✓
P8 Social Care ✓ ✓ 1 ✓
P9 Social Care ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 6 ✓
P10 Business ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7 ✓
P11 Nursing ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 4 ✓
P12 Heritage * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 ✓
P13 Heritage * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7
P14 Environment * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5
P15 Construction ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 7 ✓
P16 Management * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 ✓
P17 Management * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 5 ✓
P18 Admin * ✓ ✓ 1 ✓
P19 Admin * ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 4
P20 Researcher-interventionist ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 8
Total 1 15 16 12 14 13 12 11 13 11
1Totals refer to attendance at Workshops 1–8. ✓Refers to attendance in a workshop or interview. * Refers to
membership of the Green campus group. SSI refers to a semi-structured interview.

4.3. Timeline and Workshop Design

The main phase of the project, comprising the workshops, took place over an approxi-
mately six-month period, with the first workshop (Workshop 0, an introductory information
session) taking place in December 2015 and the final workshop (Workshop 8) occurring in
May 2016.
Following published guidance from Virkkunen and Newnham [37], we attempted to
schedule the workshops so that the project maintained a sense of urgency and momentum,
while also providing participants with time for reflection and investigation in between.
Most workshops were scheduled 2–3 weeks apart, although there were larger gaps of
around 4 weeks in two instances to accommodate the institutional calendar. Workshops
were scheduled for Wednesday afternoons to maximise the opportunities for staff atten-
dance; this afternoon is normally reserved for staff meetings and student sports activities
on the campus, and so lectures are not typically scheduled at this time.
The design of the workshops for the project has previously been documented in detail
elsewhere [12,13]. The workshops were designed using the framework of the expansive
learning cycle (Section 3.2). For example, the tasks in Workshop 1 were specifically designed
to stimulate actions of questioning current practices, while those in Workshop 4 were
oriented towards modelling new solutions [13] (p. 112). As for other Change Laboratory
projects, this planning structure was taken as a starting point only, and significant deviations
from the plan were encountered in practice and actively nurtured [50].
Tasks within the workshops were designed using double-stimulation principles
(Section 3.3), in which participants were given problem definitions (first stimuli), po-
tential solution frameworks (second stimuli), and evidence to consider (mirror materials).
Workshops made use of a variety of computers and projected screens, floor-standing
flipcharts and felt pens, and printed materials—including policy documents and published
research articles. Participants’ conceptualisation was, therefore, deliberately equipped and
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 19 of 51

resourced, and we refer to relevant task elements from the workshops when reporting our
findings in Section 5.

4.4. Methods for Generating Data

Data are generated within Change Laboratory projects in a variety of forms, with the aim
being to support both the progress of the intervention and later research analysis [37,38,61]. In
this case, the project generated a range of different kinds of data (see Figure 2 for a sample):
• Video recordings of all eight workshops. These were produced using two tripod-
mounted video cameras, positioned at angles which aimed to capture who was speak-
ing at any given moment, their expressions and gestures, and the reactions of others to
their speaking turns. The workshops totalled 777 min in duration, resulting in around
1554 min of footage from across both cameras, although footage from the first camera
was mainly used for analysis since that from the second proved less useful.
• Transcripts of workshops. These were produced from the video footage by the first
author and were used alongside the video recordings during analysis.
• Flip-chart materials and other public notes. These were generated within the work-
shops and collected and photographed at the end of each session.
• Minutes from each workshop. These were produced by the first author. They were
circulated to all project participants shortly after each meeting, as an aide memoire,
and later used for research analysis.
• Transcripts of 15 semi-structured interviews (with those interviews being conducted
with the participants indicated in Table 1). These interviews were conducted approxi-
mately six months after the final workshop and audio recorded specifically to support
transcription.

4.5. Data Analysis

Our priority for the current paper involves tracing the extent to which conceptual
development is evident in the project dataset described in Section 4.4. Data analysis in
Change Laboratory workshops, it should be emphasised, is a cumulative product of an
ongoing process [13] which, in this case, involved three different kinds of analysis:
1. Intra-workshop analysis: conducted jointly by all participants in the project when
meeting together, who together analyse materials and generate new knowledge in a
way that influences how the project unfolds subsequently;
2. Inter-workshop analysis: conducted by the researcher-interventionist (the first author)
between workshops, to allow for knowledge produced in workshops to influence
subsequent ones;
3. Post-intervention analysis: conducted by the research team (both authors), to construct
narratives for the purposes of research publication.
It is the post-intervention analysis (step 3) that will be most visible in this paper,
but it is important to remain aware that this analysis was built on top of the preceding
work, whose traces and influence are evident in the underlying dataset. Additionally,
as explained at the beginning of Section 4, reconceptualisation is central to the purpose
of Change Laboratory projects, and so all three aspects of the above data analysis were
concerned with conceptual development in some way (see [12]). Yet the explicit framework
we describe in Section 3.4 was used only for the post-intervention analysis.
Our approach to the post-intervention analysis is informed by several sources in the
relevant methodological literature. Firstly, we are influenced by researchers like Virkkunen
and Newnham [37] and Morselli [61], who emphasise the value of analysing different kinds
of Change Laboratory data, including video footage and artefacts from within workshops,
together in complementary ways. For this reason, we did not privilege the transcripts
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 20 of 51

alone; instead, we based our analysis on watching the video footage from camera 1 and
relating this to the other sources of data. Doing so proved difficult to accomplish using
the software we were familiar with, and so we instituted more manual forms of analysis,
which made use of handwritten notes, highlighted pages, and spreadsheets. Secondly,
we are influenced by scholars such as Haapasaari et al. [62], who emphasise the value
of work in which the “data of an entire CL [Change Laboratory] process is analysed in
great detail and with the help of elaborate categorical frameworks that seek to reveal the
epistemic and interactional dynamics” [62] (p. 240). Such work encouraged us first to
address the dataset from the entire research intervention and afterwards to trace how
particular interactions emerged within the broader context of the project. Thirdly, we are
influenced by researchers like Engeström and Sannino [63], whose work sensitised us to
understand how short interactions (such as speaking turns) can be related methodologically
Sustainability 2025, 17, x FOR PEER REVIEW 20 of 54
to the complex theoretical frameworks offered by activity theory.

Figure 2. Sample of dataset showing examples of workshop video footage (frame grab from first
Figure 2. Sample of dataset showing examples of workshop video footage (frame grab from
camera,
first withwith
camera, second camera
second visiblevisible
camera on lectern next tonext
on lectern monitor), flip-chartflip-chart
to monitor), materials,materials,
and project
and
minutes.
project minutes.

4.5. Data Analysis

Our priority for the current paper involves tracing the extent to which conceptual
development is evident in the project dataset described in Section 4.4. Data analysis in
Change Laboratory workshops, it should be emphasised, is a cumulative product of an
ongoing process [13] which, in this case, involved three different kinds of analysis:
1. Intra-workshop analysis: conducted jointly by all participants in the project when
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 21 of 51

To accomplish the post-intervention analysis in a manner consistent with the above

precepts, we undertook our work using a Dialectic Thematic Analysis approach [64], which
we conducted in the following stages:
1. Exploring the conceptual products of the research intervention. To undertake this
work, we considered the entire dataset from all data sources on an initial pass, al-
though, in practice, the workshop minutes and semi-structured interview transcripts
were particularly useful in establishing the most important concepts. Our work at this
point took the form of deductive qualitative analysis (DQA) [65], sensitised by the
concept of objectification, which was discussed as part of our theoretical framework
(Section 3.4). To be regarded as a conceptual product, we did not regard it as suffi-
cient for an idea (abstract projection) to be discussed in speech turns alone. Instead,
participants must have attempted to draw together a material artefact to represent the
projection in a way intended to be sufficiently comprehensive, stable and intelligible
for their own later use and/or for use by others. As Section 5 will make clear, this
work identified four such conceptual products.
2. Tracing the evidence for conceptual development across the project. To undertake
this work, we explored the data from the workshops, and, in particular, the video
recordings, transcripts, flipchart materials, and minutes. Once again, our work at this
stage used a DQA approach, but this time sensitised by the four conceptual products
we had already identified. We mapped the evidence for each of these concepts
being developed longitudinally through the successive workshops. As Section 5 will
make clear, this process led us to conclude that conceptual development had been
distributed across all workshops, but in a way that was highly uneven between the
different concepts. The development of one concept had been addressed in 7 of the
8 workshops; two had been developed in four each; and one had been worked on in
only three workshops. It was at this point that we decided to focus on the CSS for the
subsequent analysis.
3. Bounding the conceptual development of the CSS within the dataset. Having decided
to focus on the CSS, we wished to conduct an in-depth analysis of that subset of our
data which addressed this concept. Doing so involved using the DQA approach to
highlight the relevant subset of data. This was an active and careful process, since
actions which might appear irrelevant to the CSS in isolation could be identified as
important in the context of prior or subsequent actions, thereby necessitating a process
of traversing backwards and forwards between the data from different workshops.
4. Delineating the stages of development of the CSS. At this stage, we used the DQA
approach on our bounded dataset, sensitised by the full range of constructs in our
theoretical framework as summarised in Figure 1. As Section 5 will make clear,
we were able to identify four stages of development which were important in the
development of the CSS, and to assign data to the different types of actions our model
suggests may be present at each stage.
5. Naming and describing the actions comprising each stage of development of the CSS.
Undertaking this work was a largely inductive process undertaken for those chunks of
data which had already been closely delineated at the previous point in our analysis—an
analytical approach sometimes called the modular method [64]. Undertaking this
work allowed us to qualitatively categorise and describe the actions of conceptual
development that we later present in Sections 5.1–5.4. For instance, it allowed us
to understand that there were three key actions undertaken by participants which
involved consideration within the first stage of development: participants identifying
aspects of their own teaching practices, highlighting that some important campus ac-
tivities were not related to teaching, and noticing that existing sustainability activities
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 22 of 51

were ‘piecemeal’. A long chain of 32 such actions in the conceptual development of

the CSS is synthesised and categorised in Section 6.
The above work was carried out by the authors in a collaborative process, in which
the work at each point was discussed critically and next steps considered, in regular online
meetings over a period of around six months. Our approach aimed to avoid interpretive
bias by triangulating between different sources of data, by being explicit about which
concepts were guiding our analysis, by maintaining detailed records of the analysis process
within spreadsheets, and through discussions between the two members of the research
team (cf. [66]).
Our findings below summarise an account of conceptual development throughout
the project. To accomplish this, we analyse our data using the theoretical framework set
out in Section 3.4 and structure the account to consider how this conceptual development
occurred as the project proceeded through successive workshops. Doing so builds on
our previously published analysis of how transformative agency emerged across this
same project [13], where we identified and analysed five “turning points” in that agency
occurring in Workshops 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 (p. 115).

4.6. Ethics
Our approach to research ethics in this project aimed to be both relational and reflex-
ive, an approach used for other comparable projects [67]. We drew inspiration from the
work of Nodder [68], who usefully highlights the importance of explaining the ethos and
arrangements of the Change Laboratory methodology to participants, from the beginning,
in a respectful, open, and professionally appropriate way. We were also mindful of the
analysis of Nuttall [69], who draws attention to complex issues, such as agency, relationality,
and decision-making, which arise across the process of Change Laboratory projects. Our
approach at all times was to attempt to be open about the purpose and process of the
project, and to display a nuanced understanding of the unanticipated ethical dilemmas
which might arise. While this approach involved regularly reiterating the ethical approach
we aimed to use, it did not involve claiming to be ‘neutral’ about the project’s processes or
outcomes. As Virkkunen and Newnham [37] make clear, those undertaking a Change Lab-
oratory project are interventionist researchers who combine a range of project management
and administrative roles with those of being a participant in the project itself. Such a stance
is entirely conversant with the “activist” approach, which has been associated with activity
theory research over many decades [70].
In terms of institutional approval, this study was approved by the University Research
Ethics Committee (UREC) of Lancaster University (date of approval: 16 December 2015,
approval code UREC-15-12-16-DK1). The approach we took to documenting the project
was consistent with that suggested by Yardley [71].

5. Findings
The analysis we present in this section addresses the research question set out at the
start of this paper: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process,
during a higher education sustainability initiative?
Our focus on addressing this question leads us, in this section, to trace the development
of the concept that eventually became known as the Campus Sustainability Statement (CSS).
We focus on this strand of work from within the wider project because doing so allows
us to challenge many preconceptions in the literature about the status of sustainability-
related concepts; because it emphasises the centrality of conceptual development to change
processes; and because this particular concept has had a substantial impact on local campus
practice subsequently. In what follows, we trace this conceptual strand through the various
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 23 of 51

stages of development evident in the empirical data. We use the framework outlined above
to structure our exposition, with each evident return to a conflict of motives in the data
taken as indicating the commencement of a new stage.
It should be emphasised, as a precursor, that several new concepts were developed
during the broader research intervention, with the strand of conceptual development we
trace in this paper interwoven with several others. The four main concepts that arose from
the project are as follows:
• Campus Sustainability Statement (hereafter ‘CSS’; the core focus of this paper): A state-
ment of purpose for the specific campus on which the work was carried out, eventually
objectified in a plaque on public display;
• Centre for the Study of Sustainability: A research centre on the campus, which would
serve as an interdisciplinary hub for work related to sustainability from across
the institution;
• Sustainability paragraphs: A mechanism for embedding issues of sustainability into
existing academic programmes, across all disciplines and areas of study (whether or
not those programmes are ‘obviously’ related to sustainability concerns);
• Interdisciplinary programmes: New programmes of study explicitly focused on sustain-
ability, leveraging existing campus interdisciplinary expertise and enthusiasm.
Table 2 illustrates how these four strands of conceptual work are manifest in the
recorded and transcribed data from the eight workshops that formed the backbone of the
research intervention; the table focuses on identifying qualitative developments in relation
to each concept, rather than quantifying the amount of time each issue was discussed.
It can be seen from Table 2 that the name “Campus Sustainability Statement” was
only put forward in Workshop 5, yet that development built on an underlying thread of
conceptual development which had, by that time, been underway for several workshops.
Furthermore, the circumstance that gave rise to participants’ recognition of the need for a
“shared framework” arose in the very first workshop. From Workshop 2 onwards, such
“framework” issues were discussed in every session, accounting for 23.7% of the time
spent on speaking turns in Workshops 2–8. Apart from in Workshop 7 (when participants’
discussion of the issue mainly concerned waiting for feedback from a wider array of
stakeholders), qualitative conceptual development for this strand can be discerned in the
transcript for every workshop.
Table 2 also highlights the possibility of different strands of conceptual work influenc-
ing each other. For example, the groundwork for the concept of a Centre for the Study of
Sustainability proceeded from a contention, in Workshop 2, that this campus already had a
strong ethos of sustainability, which could be further leveraged by positioning those on
the campus as leading discussions on the issue within the wider institution. Subsequently,
in Workshop 3, it was suggested that the “shared framework” that had previously been
discussed might be oriented towards this campus specifically. While the dataset contains
no direct acknowledgement by participants of links between these two specific points of
discussion, we do wish to highlight in our account, to the extent that this is possible, the
ongoing parallels between different conceptual strands of work.
In what follows, we trace the development of the CSS concept through four stages of
development, drawing on the framework set out in Section 3.4. In each case, we denote
the stage based on the abstract projection, the simple idea being put forward, because it was
this aspect about which participants pivoted their discussion. These abstract projections
are concerned, in turn, with a purposeful definition of sustainability, identifying a shared
framework, a mission statement, and a Campus Sustainability Statement.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 24 of 51

Table 2. Key stages of concept development during the research intervention.

Workshop
Concept 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Discussing Identifying Wording
Mission statement framed From mission statement to Campus
definition of shared adjusted to
specifically for the campus. Sustainability Statement.
‘sustainability’. framework. express concept.
Campus Mission
Exploring (Statement
Sustainability statement
meaning of adopted at
Statement concept Wordings proposed, reviewed Draft wording agreed and issued to
‘sustainability’ in subsequent
suggested as and revised. all staff for comment and feedback.
relation to own all-staff
alternative to
practices. meeting.)
definition.
Suggestion of
Discussing
sustainability as Sub-committee Discussing that
Centre for sub-committee
central focus of formed to work on formal feasibility
the Study proposal. To be
this campus proposal for study study has been
of Sustainability presented to
within centre approved.
Governing Body.
institution.
Need to highlight Five Five
sustainability across Discussing and programmes programmes
Sustainability programmes. developing have agreed have a definite
paragraphs Paragraphs example to use paragraph. How
suggested to paragraphs. sustainability to ensure that all
highlight ‘linkages’. paragraphs. include one?
Sub-committee
Need for Sub-committee
formed to
developing a to look at
Interdisciplinary investigate
sustainability- interdisciplinary
programmes potential for
focussed potential of
programme
programme. modules.
development
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 25 of 51

5.1. A Purposeful Definition of ‘Sustainability’

This first stage of conceptual development coincided with Workshop 1. The design of
this workshop aimed to involve participants in expansive learning actions of questioning [12]
(pp. 118–122). Specific tasks asked participants to discuss their opinions about sustainability
in higher education, their existing practices and personal passions related to the topic, and
their feelings about how sustainability was currently being addressed within the institution.
At this stage, a conflict of motives centred on the issue of ‘clarity of definition’ led to
an abstract projection based on re-defining the term ‘sustainability’ in a purposeful way,
based on a ‘social and cultural’ framing of the term within existing teaching activities.
Subsequent consideration highlighted the overall fragmentation of the existing activities
related to sustainability, leading to the conclusion that the abstract projection was insuffi-
cient for challenging that fragmentation. Participants did not reach so far as embedding or
objectification at this stage.

5.1.1. Conflict of Motives

The initial conflict of motives driving this first stage of development was concerned
with the need for conceptual clarity. One motive was to establish a clear definition and
thereby provide a firmer footing for the project, while the other was to avoid excluding
some campus practices (and some participants) from the process.
One participant exposed this conflict very quickly, at the start of Workshop 1, by
posing the following question:
P16: Are we all starting with a common definition of sustainability?
The participant suggested that, in order to make progress and develop coherent plans,
it was necessary to have a common starting point. The researcher interventionist tried (un-
successfully) to assist this discussion by drawing attention to some specific resources made
available within the workshop materials. Those materials referred, in particular, to a widely
used definition, based on the work of the United Nations Brundtland Commission [72], of
the related term sustainable development:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
This contribution, contrary to the researcher interventionist’s expectation, failed to
resolve the query. The Brundtland definition was considered insufficiently ‘clear’ as
a starting point for a specific project of institutional change, and participants strove
for alternatives.
Subsequent contributions emphasised that ‘sustainability’ has different meanings in
different disciplines. One participant (P16) highlighted that, in business settings, the word
often refers to the question of whether a business will be in existence at some point in the
future, whereas a more holistic view might question the nature of the future itself. The
researcher interventionist suggested that the narrower (business) definition be referred
to as “viability”, which was accepted by participants. Yet establishing this distinction
provoked an acknowledgement that more “ambitious” discussions of sustainability were
often associated with specifically environmental issues, and that adopting such a perspective
might run the risk of the initiative being seen as irrelevant for some disciplines (or by some
practitioners from those disciplines) within the institution.
Participants acknowledged that this issue was difficult to resolve and that the discus-
sion had developed a repetitive character. The dominant view in the group, at this point,
was that it was important to have a definition that could support collaboration. That was
considered difficult to achieve because narrower definitions (including environmental ones)
might be perceived as irrelevant by some stakeholders, while broader definitions might
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 26 of 51

effectively sidestep the issue and restrict the development of what one participant called
“shared goals or visions”.
This conflict of motives eventually reached a (temporary) resolution, after one participant
suggested that the focus should be on the purpose of the definition adopted:
P13: I am not keen on taking the idea of sustainability as a box-ticking exercise,
in order to achieve targets and look good and all the rest of it. I think you need to
have a deeper purpose beyond that to make a contribution.

5.1.2. Abstract Projection

The abstract projection put forward at this stage of development was an attempt to
encapsulate purpose and passion. The word ‘sustainability’ was taken as projecting a
useful idea, if it could be imbued with a specific meaning understood by those involved, as
related to their teaching work.
That specific meaning was, in turn, generally framed in ‘cultural’ or ‘social’ terms by
the participants:
P13: In terms of applying it to myself, I am aligned with environmental sus-
tainability. And there are things I teach specifically such as the idea of cultural
sustainability—traditions and crafts and the importance of built heritage—and I
think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the past in terms of understand-
ing sustainability too.
P6: I suppose the passion I would have is, I just think the universe is so absolutely
incredible, so I teach on community and sustainability. We take the three strands
‘environment’, ‘economic’, and ‘community’, and I really think that if we were
looking at the programme as a whole, a lot of it is around compassion rather
than passion, and I think that is very much the social element, or the ‘community’
element. And we try to include that in the whole programme.
In the above transcript extract, it can be seen that P13’s initial statement concerning
their personal views is subsequently modified by their discussion of what they teach. That
focus on teaching is then taken up and generalised in the subsequent contribution.
This abstract projection was highly tentative. Yet, participants were eager to explore its
potential for mediating their conflict of motives. (The researcher interventionist speculated
in their workshop notes whether this eagerness was perhaps because participants had been
frustrated by the sense of repetition in their earlier discussion).

5.1.3. Consideration
Participants quickly engaged in consideration using this new abstract projection. The
idea of applying a ‘cultural’ or ‘social’ understanding of sustainability was considered in
relation to the conflict of motives around conceptual clarity. Doing so, in practice, involved
highlighting a range of existing activities and practices that the project would need to
engage with, and examining how this understanding of sustainability could be related
to them.
This process of consideration initially involved many participants identifying
sustainability-related aspects of their own existing activities. Examples articulated included
‘environmental awareness’ components in a programme on outdoor education, ‘theories of
sustainable development’ in a heritage programme, and ‘sustainable building technologies’
in a construction programme. One participant commented the following:
P16: I teach on operations management. In a case study we were looking at the
implications of the supply chain in the fashion industry, on both the environment
and on climate change.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 27 of 51

Participants also referred to other existing initiatives that were not directly concerned
with teaching. For example, there had recently been an implementation of a printer
cartridge scheme; the institution’s estates office had discontinued the use of artificial
pesticides; and the campus had been the first in Ireland to achieve a “Green Flag” award.
A number of participants referred to the work of the “Green Campus group”, who were
responsible for a number of these latter initiatives (as noted in Section 4.2, some participants
were also members of that group).
Yet this discussion, while positive for a time, quickly reached obvious limits. Partici-
pants noticed that much of the teaching activity they had identified was being performed on
a piecemeal basis—“by individuals”—rather than being generated by a plan or supported
by a structure. The Green Campus group, meanwhile, had pursued very specific actions,
most of which were not really linked to specifically educational activities. Listing these
activities had prompted participants to notice their practical fragmentation. The current
abstract projection, however, was not helpful for addressing this situation.
Focusing on the word ‘sustainability’ and framing it in ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ terms
had allowed participants to discuss and critique a range of current activities, but it did not
help them understand how the present situation could be changed. In terms of expansive
learning, this concept could mediate various actions of questioning and analysis, but was an
inadequate basis for modelling.
The above consideration occurred in the later moments of Workshop 1, and the discus-
sion had not been resolved when that workshop concluded. As detailed elsewhere [12,13],
the researcher interventionist left Workshop 1 feeling that the proceedings had been diffi-
cult, and that a new basis would be required moving forward, starting from recognising
the lack of a sustainability framework or policies in the institution. This early period of
consideration was also consequential, as subsequent sections will highlight, in sensitising
participants to the problematic and charged nature of ‘definitions’ for the project.

5.2. Identifying a Shared Framework

The next stage of conceptual development was largely bounded within Workshop 2.
The design of this workshop aimed to involve participants in expansive learning actions of
questioning and analysis [12] (pp. 123–128). Specific tasks asked participants to discuss how
they would identify a ‘sustainable campus’; suggest which aspects of sustainability should
be brought to the fore on their campus site; and identify actual current levels of progress
and barriers. Participants had access to various resources, including the flipchart sheets
they developed in the previous workshop. Yet the overall aim was to encourage them to
focus on an institutional object rather than on abstract definitions.
At this stage of development, the abstract projection of a shared framework was sug-
gested as a way to mediate a conflict of motives concerned with incorporating sustainability
into teaching. Subsequent consideration elaborated the potential for passivity in the frame-
work approach, and the undue narrowness of a focus only on ‘teaching’. Once again, this
stage of development did not persevere to attempt either embedding or objectification.

5.2.1. Conflict of Motives

The conflict of motives driving this second stage of development was concerned with
the challenge of incorporating sustainability into teaching. One motive was to ensure that
sustainability was incorporated across all teaching activities in a coherent way, while the
other was to avoid imposing a prescriptive definition of sustainability. Both motives were
clearly informed by the outcomes from the preceding stage of conceptual development.
An early discussion in Workshop 2 reinforced the importance of incorporating sus-
tainability into all programmes, rather than seeing it as relevant to only a particular subset
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 28 of 51

of disciplines offered by the institution. Revisiting this issue prompted participants to

consider the difficulties associated with discussing sustainability in some disciplines. The
following is an example:
P7: That could end up leaving you with some tension between irreconcilable
concepts, between trying to teach business students, for example, sustainability,
and trying to teach them a certain type of economics, at the same time.
Contributions such as that provided by P7 were indicative that the drive towards a
purposive definition of sustainability (Section 5.1) retained some degree of attraction, notwith-
standing that the conversation was now oriented towards more specifically institutional
matters. Yet other participants were keen to recall that this approach had been previously
found to be unproductive. The following is an example:
P1: We were saying that the definition of sustainability is not important. You
would be reducing it by defining it in one sense, it’s a very broad term.

5.2.2. Abstract Projection

The abstract projection put forward at this stage was an attempt at ‘contextualising’
different practices. The word ‘framework’ gained currency at this stage, sometimes paired
with sustainability (‘sustainability framework’) but most often as a ‘shared framework’.
To some extent, this concept was a more ‘pragmatic’ variant of the previous purposeful
definition approach, however, and some participants did persist in using the term ‘definition’
(as the quotation below illustrates).
The essence of this abstract projection was an attempt to develop a coherent approach
across campus teaching activities. Yet the idea was not to provide a prescriptive definition.
Instead, the priority was to allow practitioners to see how their activity, and its particular
focus, with regard to sustainability, was situated within a wider context. One participant
emphasised the following fairly early in Workshop 2:
P15: I would certainly need some sort of definition of sustainability. Bigger than
just what we see from a building construction aspect, because that is the only bit
of it that I know. I’d like to see where that fits into the bigger picture.
As for the preceding stage of development, this abstract projection was highly tentative.
Yet participants were motivated to explore how the idea could be made more concrete
because it seemed to offer a way of addressing the focus on the campus as a whole:
P15: When we talk about a sustainable campus, what do we mean? What are we
looking for? What do we expect it to look like? And until we can articulate that
then. . . [tails off]

5.2.3. Consideration
Participants subsequently engaged in consideration using this new abstract projection.
The idea of applying a shared framework, which would contextualise specific foci within a
“bigger picture” of sustainability, was considered in relation to the conflict of motives around
incorporating sustainability into all campus teaching practices. Doing so quickly high-
lighted difficult problems, including the potential for passively receiving such a framework
and, given that the university is a site for more than just ‘teaching’, its lack of applicability
to all campus activities.
The most immediate issue that participants highlighted with this abstract projection
was that it could serve a mainly descriptive role: to contextualise existing practice, rather
than challenging it. Indeed, it might even serve to provide a vocabulary to justify the status
quo. It was felt important, however, that “lecturers” should have more than a passive role
in embedding sustainability into their practice and should also be actively encouraging
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 29 of 51

their students to think critically about related issues. One participant framed such concerns
in the following way:
P13: We talked about interacting with the outside world and integrating the
campus as a community. In a sustainable campus it should work critically with the
outside world, and it should look critically at itself and what it does—transport,
diversity, biodiversity. . . [tails off]
Soon afterwards, another participant affirmed this point in a more specific way:
P2: In an institute of technology, technology should be a driver for making stuff
more sustainable. We talk about the paperless office, but we don’t really strive
toward that. We still photocopy and use paper a lot. Technology should be
explored more and used as a driving force for sustainability. [. . .] Lecturers
should be getting students to think more critically and alternatively in relation to
sustainability.
In further discussion, the group reached a consensus that any framework would
need to be something that would become personalised and made relevant to one’s own
practices in the institution, as well as helping to contextualise that practice. This discussion
served briefly to reignite the preceding debates about the role of prescriptive definitions in
the project.
The other key issue raised in consideration of this abstract projection was that a focus
on ‘teaching’ was problematic. While participants wanted to retain the broader educational
focus of this project (and they acknowledged once again the existing work of the “Green
Campus group”, focused on issues such as recycling bins and campus pesticide use), it
was felt that the group was in danger of defining its remit too narrowly. One participant
commented the following:
P13: Students learn from the totality of their experience, it’s not just from the
curriculum, and so it’s not what they learn in class here, it’s also the whole
experience they have here.
Another contribution to the consideration of a shared framework came in the form of
suggesting a better alternative. One participant, reporting back from some small group work,
used the phrase “mission statement” for the first time in the project, in the following way:
P5: We felt that there should be a mission statement. It would be useful in that it
would provide a framework, by which we are the individuals that drive it, and
you are open to interpret that mission in terms of your own practices.
The perceived advantage of a mission statement, at this stage, was that it could
encourage individuals to interpret sustainability while still avoiding being prescriptive.
For a short period of time, the discussion positioned a mission statement as a form taken
by the shared framework idea. Subsequently, however, given its apparent potential and
the nature of the other problems identified, the idea of a mission statement became a core
focus of the project in its own right.

5.3. A Mission Statement

The next stage of conceptual development was evident in the actions from across
Workshops 3 and 4.
The design of these workshops aimed to involve participants in expansive learning
actions of analysis and modelling [12] (pp. 129–138). Specific tasks in Workshop 3 asked
participants to cluster and prioritise the widely varied issues raised in the previous work-
shop, and to formulate a framework they would be willing to take to management for
support. Those in Workshop 4 focused on the title and wording of the emerging “mission
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 30 of 51

statement” idea; elaborating a previous proposal for a Centre of Sustainability Studies;

developing interdisciplinary modules; and engaging with institutional strategy to ensure
that sustainability became a ‘pillar’ of institutional activity, rather than an ‘add-on’.
At this stage, an abstract projection, an idea for a mission statement focused on what
the institution could offer to students, was worked up as a way of mediating a conflict
of motives concerned with communicating content with genuine meaning. Subsequent
consideration affirmed that the idea accurately reflected differing views (including among
teaching staff), conveyed something achievable, and could guide real decisions. Actions
of embedding involved proposing forms of wording, which highlighted the need to offer a
simple promise to students, ensure relevance to all campus operations, and find synergy
with existing initiatives. This stage of development reached as far as objectification, since
three wording options were “put on the table” for subsequent discussion.

5.3.1. Conflict of Motives

The conflict of motives driving this third stage of development was concerned with the
challenge of communicating content with genuine meaning. One motive was to put forward
something with genuine meaning, while the other was to support clear communication.
Some aspects of this conflict were expressed as an immediate reaction against the very
idea of a ‘mission statement’:
P7: This is the kind of corporate stuff that has been popular for the last 15 years,
“mission statements”. The question is, what actual function do they serve? Are
they emblems that one presents to the public as a statement of virtue? But whether
that actually means anything, that’s an entirely different thing.
For several subsequent turns of speech, other participants attempted to explore the
potentially positive role of a mission statement, while P7 responded in each case by noticing
more cautionary implications. With regard to the issue of ‘genuine meaning’, for example,
P7 offered the following observation:
P7: This causes a problem, because if we are going to have conceptual clarity, we
either have a concept of sustainability so tame and so co-opted that Donald Trump
will agree with it. Or we have a concept of sustainability that is so subversive and
unsettling to the status quo, that it is very troubling, and it renders our capacity
to continue doing and the way we do it disabled.
Exploring this conflict of motives not only took the form of putting forward different
viewpoints, however. Because it was becoming clear in the discussion that members of the
group had different views, P7 also offered some observations about how such conflicts are
often resolved in a negative way:
P7: There are the two polarities, the natural thing in group dynamics is that we
move somewhere into the middle, so we end up with a bit of a thing that’s a
little bit dangerous and a little okay, and then it’s a mission statement, and then
we’ve done the mission statement, and we say we are committed to sustainability,
and we all feel virtuous, and we have a virtuous statement, but it’s not actually
transformative at a radical level.

5.3.2. Abstract Projection

The abstract projection put forward at this stage was an attempt to focus the mission
statement idea on what the participants thought the institution could realistically offer to
students, rather than on the participants’ own individual opinions or beliefs. More specifi-
cally, the focus was on offering students the ability to look at issues in a different way. This
abstract projection, once put forward, generated much discussion, suggesting it coincided
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 31 of 51

with what we have elsewhere identified [13] as a ‘turning point’ in the transformative
agency of the group. The basic idea was a germ cell for the future conceptual development
of the project.
The abstract projection was initially posed by one participant as a response to the
challenge of ‘group dynamics’ identified by P7 (see Section 5.3.1):
P18: I am not a fan of mission statements, but it might be something that might
focus the group. But the other side of it is, instead of saying we are on one extreme
or the other. . . [pauses]. It’s just to say that what we are offering students, is
the ability to look at things in a different way, and not just in what could be the
mainstream way, but enabling them to think for themselves and make a choice,
and maybe in the future, make a decision. So we are not, like, trying to convert
them to one way or the other, but enabling people to make an informed choice.
One early indication that this idea had some traction in the discussion was that P7,
who had commented so actively on the attendant conflict of motives, responded positively to
the suggestion:
P7: I agree with that. What is good about that, is that it is more realistic. It’s
actually more accurately saying what we would do. It’s not making a claim
that we are going to be sustainable, that we are going to commit ourselves to
sustainability education. We are not. But we could do that, it’s more realistic and
more modest. I suppose this is as good as it gets.

5.3.3. Consideration
Participants’ subsequent engagement in consideration using this new abstract projection
involved exploring how a mission statement focused on offering students the opportunity to
think in a different way might address the conflict of motives concerned with communicating
genuine meaning. Doing so had, at this stage, a more positive character than in the previous
stages. In particular, participants noted that this abstract projection accurately reflected
differing views among teachers and students; did not appear to promise actions that could
not be achieved; and yet could guide decision-making rather than simply justifying the
status quo.
One theme of consideration affirmed the genuine way in which the abstract projection
accurately reflected differing views among teachers and students. It was emphasised that not
only students but also the teaching staff of the institution had such heterogeneous views.
Notwithstanding this variety of personal beliefs, the broad consensus was that, as a teaching
institution, there is an inherent responsibility to present alternative views and thus to
promote critical engagement; the latter being quite distinct from any attempt to impose a
definite worldview. The following is an example:
P18: That is the way it is though, there are different beliefs among the lecturing
staff. You are going to be informing people about different things in different
ways. By doing that, you are enabling people to make their own decision about
what their beliefs are. But you have to give them opposite views, and a variety of
views, in order for them to be able to make an informed decision.
A second theme of consideration noted positively that the discussed idea did not appear
to promise actions that could not be achieved. The participants expressed, in this regard, the
importance of being honest and realistic. As the contribution below highlights, it was
understood that being “modest” comes with certain risks, but these were not seen to
invalidate the abstract projection:
P7: We should be quite rigorous about our concepts and make sure that they are
meaningful. Now, I think a modest one [mission statement] makes perfect sense
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 32 of 51

to me. Instead of a big mission we have a tiny little mission, with a really modest
claim. Our claim is modest, but the mission is a dramatic concept. Another
contradiction, but it can also be a signal of aspiration.
Consideration at this stage also involved exploring how the abstract projection could
guide decision-making rather than simply justifying the status quo. Doing so involved reprising
the theme of passivity from consideration of the previous framework idea (see Section 5.2.3).
Yet, where the previous framework’s focus (on contextualisation) was seen as permitting
such passivity, by contrast, the focus of this mission statement on offering different perspec-
tives to students was seen as offering a common purpose:
P16: Whatever it is, it has to be meaningful, and guide decision making and guide
what we do, in the sense that values guide the decisions we make. But it does
mean, as well, that it’s more than just a sense making of what we do here. There
will be some difficult decisions, and things won’t fit neatly. If we got a common
purpose that we could agree on—forget if it was a mission, or a goal, or whatever
it is, if it was just a common purpose.

5.3.4. Embedding
This third stage of development was the first to engage in that aspect of conceptual
development we call embedding. Such embedding involves participants exploring how
their abstract projection relates to actual activity, rather than merely their initial conflict of
motives. At this point, doing so involved proposing wording for the mission statement
and exploring the potential consequences. We consider this initial proposal of wording
to constitute embedding, rather than objectification, because it was put forward to stimulate
discussion, rather than with any intention of stability or longevity.
Both the wording and exploration we elaborate in this section remained hypothetical,
encapsulated in the workshops, rather than guiding action elsewhere in the institution.
Participants anticipated embedding this mission statement in more practical ways, but that
did not eventually happen at this stage of development. Actions of embedding at this stage
were oriented towards goals of offering a single promise to students, anticipating staff
support and resistance, making the mission statement relevant to all campus operations,
and finding synergy with existing Green Campus initiatives.
One theme of embedding was related to offering a simple promise to students. That
discussion commenced when one participant verbally suggested a hypothetical form of
wording for the mission statement:
P7: “All our students will critically engage with sustainability in their programme
of study”? Achievable, modest, but radical.
For the moment, this suggestion was received positively. One participant highlighted
that the word “will” suggested a “promissory tone”—yet this was considered to be accept-
able, because the ‘promise’ was aligned with participants’ beliefs and could be plausibly
achieved. Another participant affirmed that the focus should indeed be on “programmes”
of study rather than individual modules, stating the latter would have made the promise
less plausible, it was suggested, since not all members of the teaching staff would feel
compelled to engage.
A second theme related to staff support and resistance. While the broader aim was to
provide a tool to drive an institutional sustainability agenda and critique ongoing actions,
for this to be effective, the mission statement would first need to gain traction. Participants
suggested that the mission statement would be less likely to meet resistance at the level
of programme boards if staff found it reasonable and straightforward, and if they did
not perceive it to be forcing an “ideology”. Thus, it was felt that the key was to keep
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 33 of 51

any mission statement general, as well as simple. This thread of discussion, it should be
noted, involved participants relating this strand of conceptual development with that on
the developing notion of sustainability paragraphs (see Table 1).
A third theme concerned the necessity of making the mission statement relevant to all
campus operations. One participant recalled an earlier discussion (Section 5.2.2), which
had established that students experience education holistically. It was suggested, as a
consequence, that the mission statement should be amended to emphasise consistency
between “what is taught in the classroom and what is done on the ground in the institution”.
As a consequence, a “second line” for the statement was suggested, as follows:
P10: There’s just one question I might ask. Do we need a second line, not to
do with our programme, but to do with our processes? I just think maybe is
it something to do with our. . . [pauses] that we should kind of be pushing our
processes as well as, around how we run things, or is that something we want to
engage in or introduce into this?
Another theme of embedding was related to finding synergy with existing Green Campus
initiatives. Those initiatives were acknowledged as an important underpinning for existing
sustainability activities being carried out on campus. Considering the current direction of
development, two workshop participants who were also members of the Green Campus
working group agreed that some synergies could probably be found. One participant felt
that the development and adoption of a mission statement might encourage the wider
institution to follow the campus’s lead and pursue a strategy of obtaining green flags
(which relate to priorities such as reducing energy usage and waste) at its other institutional
sites. The forms that this synergy would take remained somewhat abstract by the end of
the workshop, however.

5.3.5. Objectification
Subsequently, this stage of development involved some action of objectification: partic-
ipants put together a material artefact, which attempted to capture some aspect of their
emerging concept, for later use. Doing so, in this case, involved putting forward a number
of wording options.
The idea of having a mission statement for the campus had, by the end of Workshop 4,
been developed quite considerably and gained traction within the group. Yet, while
previous discussion had set out a basic idea, the content of the mission statement was still
understood in only a fairly abstract way. Participants had (as set out in Section 5.3.4) put
forward fragmentary formulations to stimulate discussion, but the group had decided
on nothing intended to be permanent. Cognisant of the impending end of the workshop,
participants decided to put forward three wording options which represented the existing
threads of discussion while these were fresh in their minds. The aim was to return to
consider these options in more detail in the subsequent workshop.
The three options which were considered to be “on the table” (a phrase used in the
workshop by several participants) were as follows:
1. “The Mayo Campus endeavours to embed sustainability into the core of its activities
and operation. We aspire to provide a teaching and learning space that delivers
quality higher education that promotes critical engagement with sustainability”.
2. “We aspire to provide a teaching and learning space that promotes critical engagement
with sustainability”.
3. “The Mayo Campus endeavours to embed sustainability into the core of its activities
and operations. We aspire to provide a teaching and learning space that promotes
critical engagement with sustainability”.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 34 of 51

5.4. A Campus Sustainability Statement

The next stage of conceptual development was evident within the actions from Work-
shops 5, 6, and 8, and continued for a period after the final workshop. Beforehand, there
was a gap of three weeks between Workshops 4 and 5, with participants asked to reflect
during this time on the three wording options that had been put forward. The designs of
Workshops 5 and 6 were closely interrelated; the overall aim was to involve participants
in expansive learning actions of examination [12] (pp. 139–145). Specific tasks asked par-
ticipants to consider relationships between the underlying purposes of the project and
the four core ideas being worked up (see Table 2), including the mission statement, and
to propose and map out concrete future steps by which the models could be further de-
veloped and implemented within the institution. The design of Workshop 8—the final
workshop—aimed to involve participants in actions of process reflection and consolidation,
with specific tasks asking participants to reflect on the artefacts being put forward in light
of the group’s motivations for working on the project.
At this stage, an abstract projection, a Campus Sustainability Statement (CSS), was put
forward as a way of mediating a conflict of motives concerned with communicating at the
correct institutional ‘level’ while retaining a firm focus on sustainability. Consideration at this
stage involved re-visiting the previous wording options; relating the CSS to existing policy
priorities; inviting ownership by a wider layer of stakeholders outside the project; and
informally canvassing campus management. Actions of embedding consisted of attempting,
with limited success, to obtain meaningful input from a wider array of stakeholders.
Objectification involved making some specific final amendments to the wording of the CSS,
taking the CSS for approval at a staff meeting, and eventually embedding it in a wooden
plaque for public display, which was unveiled at a public launch event.

5.4.1. Conflict of Motives

The conflict of motives driving this fourth stage of development was concerned with the
challenge of communicating clearly about sustainability within the institutional structure.
One motive was to put forward an artefact that clearly prioritised sustainability as a
distinct issue, while the other was to frame communication at the correct ‘level’ within
the institution.
The motive to frame communication at the correct ‘level’ arose because of concerns about
whether the proposed mission statement would really achieve the underlying purposes
of the project. A number of participants mentioned that they had already been through
the process of formulating mission statements in the institution before, in relation to other
institutional development activities, and said that they had not experienced doing so as an
effective process or outcome. One participant noted the following:
P1: I’ve gone through about five mission statements for this college at this stage.
They’ve been put through, you know. . . [tails off]. We have a mission statement
appearing and then life goes on as normal.
This and similar observations served to undermine the group’s previous confidence in
the previous abstract projection of a mission statement. Participants had spent considerable
time in previous workshops discussing their idea for a mission statement, and yet, before
this point, nobody had previously thought to mention that other mission statements existed
in the institution. That was taken as evidence, in itself, that mission statements typically
failed to capture the attention of institutional stakeholders. Participants also began to
question how the mission statement they were in the midst of developing would relate
to other, existing mission statements, and whether it was appropriate to develop their
own mission statement for one specific campus, when existing mission statements were
invariably framed at the level of the institution. As a consequence, some participants voiced
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 35 of 51

views that the mission statement needed to be developed in some way that would make
clear its place in the context of the existing strategy of the institution, with explicit reference
to the “strategic thematic areas” which were assigned to this specific campus within that
strategy. Others suggested different names for the statement that could adequately convey
the ‘level’ within the institution that was being aimed for (for instance, by using the word
“charter” as something that would convey a more limited focus on the specific campus).
The motive to put forward an artefact that clearly prioritised sustainability arose out of these
exchanges about framing communication, but soon developed into a distinct theme within
the discussion. The focus on framing the mission statement in different ways to adapt to the
structures of the institution reminded some participants of concerns, expressed in previous
workshops (see Section 5.3.1), that mission statements were inherently a corporate tool.
One participant stated their objections, and another continued the same chain of thought in
the following way:
P2: To be honest I think it’s kind of a red herring, the whole “mission statement”,
“charter”, you know. Let’s put a working title on it. And if the big wigs, those
who are further on up, decide that it’s not what we call that then . . . [tails off]. It
needs to be a vision of sustainability.
P1: A “sustainability statement”?
This theme within the conversation developed around this basic point. It was felt
that the artefacts being produced by the project should clearly address sustainability and
that the group should avoid becoming sidetracked or diluting the focus by engaging with
other issues.

5.4.2. Abstract Projection

The abstract projection put forward at this stage was an apparently modest amendment
of that transmitted from the previous stage of development: the reframing of the name
of the concept from a “mission statement” to a “Campus Sustainability Statement”. In
doing so, participants were affirming that their priority remained a focus on the campus,
rather than the institution as a whole, even if this meant that they should abandon the
name “mission statement” to avoid conflict with the wider institutional constellation of
artefacts. This new abstract projection also aimed to be what P2, above, had called “a vision
of sustainability”, rather than an artefact that could be misconstrued as encompassing a
wider range of issues. One participant voiced both of these priorities in the following way:
P17: I’m happy to go with “sustainability statement for the Mayo campus”,
I mean, that’s fairly firm.
This proposal received broad agreement from within the group, and, from this point
forward, participants referred variously to a “sustainability statement” and “sustainability
statement for the campus” before the formulation “campus sustainability statement” came
gradually into common use.

5.4.3. Consideration
Participants’ consideration using this new abstract projection involved exploring how
a Campus Sustainability Statement, which focused specifically on sustainability issues
and on one particular campus, might address the conflict of motives concerned with com-
municating clearly about sustainability within the institutional structure. Doing so had,
at this stage, a more exploratory character than the previous stages: participants were
comfortable with what was being proposed but understood that taking their idea forward
would need to be handled with care. In particular, this consideration involved participants
in reconsidering the wording options that had previously been tabled, relating the abstrac-
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 36 of 51

tion to existing policy priorities, discussing how to invite ownership by a wider layer of
campus stakeholders (outside the project group), and informally gauging the views of the
campus management.
One theme of this consideration concerned reconsidering the wording options that had
previously been put forward (Section 5.3.5). Participants’ move from a ‘mission statement’
to a ‘Campus Sustainability Statement’ did not immediately involve them in developing
new wording but instead led them to re-examine their prior work from Workshop 4. The
group’s recent decision to focus distinctively on the campus and on sustainability issues
served, in the event, to make one of those previous options seem preferable. Wording
option 1 referred to constructs, such as “quality higher education”, which were felt to be in
danger of addressing unrelated matters, while wording option 2 did not refer specifically
to the campus. Thus, by a process of elimination, the group came to favour wording
option 3. Yet, as elaborated below, these discussions were not seen as conclusively deciding
the issue.
A second theme of consideration at this stage concerned relating the abstraction to existing
policy priorities. The underlying issue was that the campus already had a specific position
within the institutional policy landscape; for example, it was positioned as leading the
institution’s work on specific “strategic thematic areas”. The argument was that the Campus
Sustainability Statement could be formulated in such a way that it referred explicitly to
these areas. This thread of conversation had a fairly minor eventual impact on the direction
of the discussion; it was mentioned in a few isolated turns of speech by the same few
participants before being replaced in the discussion by the themes described below.
A third theme of this consideration concerned the need for inviting ownership by campus
stakeholders. Initial recruitment to the Change Laboratory project had been fairly open, and
many participants were involved in ongoing campus discussions with other stakeholders.
Nonetheless, participants were aware that the Campus Sustainability Statement had, thus
far, been developed by themselves and had not involved all stakeholders. The idea to
engage wider layers of stakeholders, and the necessity for doing so, were discussed in the
following way:
P12: So, I’m thinking of the people outside of this group here, and how we can
engage them more. So, if we had any ideas of how to engage people outside
of this group. Ensure that there are opportunities for buy in for people that are
outside of this group as well.
P4: If someone turns up [at a staff meeting] then and says, “well, that’s only from
one small faction, I’m not in favour of this so why not. . . I don’t think we should
adopt this”, and that gets carried. Back to stage one then.
Subsequently, this thread of conversation was taken as the basis for particular actions
of embedding, as elaborated below in Section 5.4.4.
Consideration at this stage also involved informally exploring the views of management
about the various concepts that were being developed within the project. The parallel
development of the concept for a Centre for the Study of Sustainability (see Table 2) was
already necessitating ongoing discussion with management, outside the workshops, by
members of the project. Now, the idea was expressed to “informally” gauge the likely
reaction of management to the proposed content of the Campus Sustainability Statement.

5.4.4. Embedding
At this stage of development, the main actions of embedding were oriented towards
obtaining input from a wider array of stakeholders. Doing so was motivated by a desire to
go beyond participants’ own conflicts of motives and to engage with the experiences and
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 37 of 51

activities of other campus stakeholders. In practice, such engagement was undertaken by

requesting feedback from campus stakeholders by email.
Participants’ prior consideration of their abstract projection had emphasised the issue
of inviting ownership by campus stakeholders (see Section 5.4.3). Because the emerging
concept was now to be a Campus Sustainability Statement, the main theme of embedding
at this stage concerned making the abstraction available to a wider set of campus stakeholders for
comment and feedback. One participant voiced that concern in the following way:
P16: I’m suggesting that we have a way of sharing it with all staff, allowing them
to contribute to it, and maybe just at the staff meeting closing it out as to. . . [tails
off]. Well, what does this mean, what are we doing with it and are we going to
take it forward?
The subsequent discussion briefly emphasised which stakeholders should be targeted
when inviting comment and feedback. Overall, the group felt that “campus staff” should
be the main target, because the Campus Sustainability Statement would challenge them to
change their practices. Participants remained concerned about the potential for staff resis-
tance, and also felt that staff might be best placed to offer new suggestions when expressing
their resistance. The agreed course of action was that the researcher-interventionist would
issue a brief email containing a short statement about the project’s intentions, all three
wording options, and an invitation to comment with a stipulated deadline. That action was
taken by the first author shortly after Workshop 6.
Unfortunately, this action provoked neither the quality nor quantity of feedback that
the group had hoped for. At the start of Workshop 7, the researcher interventionist reported
that he had received a number of verbal comments (campus staff had certainly seen the
email, because they brought it up in conversation when they saw him in corridors and the
catering area), but only two email responses by the deadline. Furthermore, the feedback
received, whether by email or verbally, expressed passive forms of support, rather than
either resistance or new suggestions. While participants were relieved at the absence of
active resistance, they were otherwise disappointed by the lack of engagement.
In Workshop 7, therefore, they turned their attention to the other strands of their work,
only returning to reconsider the Campus Sustainability Statement again in Workshop 8.

5.4.5. Objectification
This stage of development—the last we consider in this paper—was finalised with
some work of objectification. Participants worked on material artefacts for later use, which
would capture and represent the essence of their conceptual work. Doing so, in this
case, involved amending the wording of the Campus Sustainability Statement to express
commitment to action, clarifying that the group of Change Laboratory participants would
not own the statement, and (later) suggesting that the statement itself be embedded into a
plaque for public display.
By the time of Workshop 8, participants had reached a firm conceptual understanding
of what they hoped to achieve. In the discussion, several participants felt that the artefact
they were working on was broadly in line with the group’s aspirations, but that the
statement expressed their ideas in an inadequate way. Thus, suggestions were made to
amend the wording of the Campus Sustainability Statement.
Discussion at this moment hinged on the meaning conveyed, to readers of the state-
ment, by words such as “endeavours” and “aspire”. Such words were felt not to express
sufficient commitment to action. One participant voiced this view in the following way:
P4: There’s a commitment, whether people act on it or not, that’s why “commit”
would be better.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 38 of 51

Such suggestions provoked a new dilemma among participants. While many agreed
with the points being made, they worried whether changing the wording again, after having
already consulted staff, could be justified procedurally, since the participants present should
no longer consider themselves the sole owners of the text. The potential emergence of a
new conflict of motives (between meaning and ownership) was quickly mediated, however.
Consensus was quickly reached that changing the wording was acceptable, since the existing
version had been distributed for feedback with the intention of further modification. The
Campus Sustainability Statement was still at a draft stage, and participants agreed that it
could still be modified so long as any new version was subject to formal approval:
P14: I prefer “committed” of course, but it has to be passed at an academic
meeting or a staff meeting as well. I far prefer “committed”.
Participants now agreed that they were working on a resource for others, and that they
would not own the eventual Campus Sustainability Statement; it might be subsequently
amended by people outside the participant group.
Two changes were made to the wording of the Campus Sustainability Statement in
the final session, whose significance was to express a definite commitment to carrying out
sustainability-related activities. The final agreed-upon wording is given below, with the
changes indicated using italics for additions and strikethroughs for deletions:
“The Mayo Campus is committed to embedding (endeavours to embed) sustain-
ability into the core of its activities and operations. We (aspire) endeavour to
provide a teaching and learning space that promotes critical engagement with
sustainability”.
The first word change, from “endeavours” to “is committed to”, was intended to
represent a change in agency of the group: moving from an emphasis on effort towards a
pledge to carry out relevant tasks. The second change, from “aspire” to “endeavour”, was
intended to indicate a corresponding shift from general hope towards efforts at achievement.
The new Campus Sustainability Statement was now seen as a promising commitment to
action on campus activities and operations, and a commitment to effort in relation to a
pedagogical engagement with sustainability in a critical way.
Another action of objectification was taken after the final workshop. This action did
not, as the participants had anticipated, involve further amending the wording of the
statement. On the contrary, when the Campus Sustainability Statement was presented at
a campus staff meeting, it was accepted without modification and officially adopted for
the campus.
Instead, subsequent objectification involved suggesting that the statement itself be em-
bedded into a plaque for public display. This action was taken in the context of subsequent
institutional meetings about establishing the Centre for the Study of Sustainability, another
concept from the research intervention (see Table 2), which was also taken forward. Several
research intervention participants, including the first author, subsequently participated in
establishing this centre alongside other institutional stakeholders. As part of that work, it
was discussed how it could be made visible to the public that the campus was a hub of
sustainability, and the idea of mounting the Campus Sustainability Statement on a public
plaque was put forward.
Work on this artefact was undertaken in collaboration with the National Centre of
Excellence in Furniture Design and Technology (NCEFDT), associated with the university
but located on a different campus. The head of that centre (who had not been a participant
in the Change Laboratory) offered a piece of timber from a tree which had fallen in the
grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, an important national location and official residence of the
President of Ireland. The working group felt that using a piece of wood recycled from a
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 39 of 51

culturally important location was a suitable manner of objectifying the meaning of the
statement itself. The plaque (Figure 3) was subsequently manufactured and engraved
at the NCEFDT. As documented elsewhere [12], the Campus Sustainability Statement,
as objectified in the plaque, was officially unveiled by national television 41
Sustainability 2025, 17, x FOR PEER REVIEW presenter
of 54 and
environmentalist Duncan Stewart at a campus launch event.

Figure 3.
Figure 3. Public
Publicplaque
plaqueobjectifying
objectifyingthethe
Campus Sustainability
Campus Statement.
Sustainability Statement.

6.6. Discussion
Discussion
In this
In this section,
section,wewesynthesise ourour
synthesise findings and demonstrate
findings their distinctive
and demonstrate contri- contri-
their distinctive
bution. Having traced a strand of conceptual development in a university sustainability
bution. Having traced a strand of conceptual development in a university sustainability
initiative in close detail, we now seek to draw out an overall picture. We do so, firstly, by
initiative in close detail, we now seek to draw out an overall picture. We do so, firstly, by
interpreting our findings with reference to our theoretical framework and, secondly, by
interpreting our findings with reference to our theoretical framework and, secondly, by
highlighting the contributions our findings make to the areas of debate in the literature
highlighting the contributions our findings make to the areas of debate in the literature we
we reviewed earlier.
reviewed earlier.
6.1. A Theoretical Synthesis
6.1. A Theoretical Synthesis
Our analysis aims to foreground conceptual development as an important aspect of
Our analysis aims
sustainability-related to foreground
change conceptual
in higher education, development
rather as anfrom
than a distraction important
the ‘real’aspect of
sustainability-related
work. To do so, we draw change in higher education,
on a framework rather than
which emphasises a distraction
that concepts, from the ‘real’
understood
through
work. Toando
activity
so, we theory
drawperspective, are artefacts
on a framework which developed
emphasisesin an ongoing way by peo-
that concepts, understood
ple struggling with problems in their practice, and subsequently used
through an activity theory perspective, are artefacts developed in an ongoing way by to influence human
activity struggling
people in consequentialwithways. Viewedinthrough
problems this lens, several
their practice, aspects of the conceptual
and subsequently used to influence
development documented in our findings are worth elaborating specifically.
human activity in consequential ways. Viewed through this lens, several aspects of the
Figure 4 provides a map of conceptual development for the Campus Sustainability
conceptual development documented in our findings are worth elaborating specifically.
Statement (CSS). The figure, which uses the notation introduced in Figure 1, synthesises
Figure 4 provides a map of conceptual development for the Campus Sustainability
the actions which developed the CSS, as previously described at length in Sections 5.1–
Statement (CSS).
5.4; it can be The figure,
read alongside thewhich
earlieruses the notation
summary introduced
of conceptual work ininthe
Figure 1, synthesises
overall project the
actions which developed the CSS, as previously described at length
provided in Table 2. The dotted grey line indicates the path of work undertaken by par- in Sections 5.1–5.4; it can
be read alongside
ticipants, the earlier
through multiple summary
stages, when of conceptual
developing thiswork in the
concept. overall
That project provided in
path commences
Table
from 2. anThe dotted
initial grey
conflict ofline indicates
motives, the path
between of work
needing undertaken
a clear footing forby participants,
the project and through
avoidingstages,
multiple excludingwhen some participants
developing (inconcept.
this the bottom
Thatleft).
pathIt moves,
commencesthrough an an
from interme-
initial conflict
diate
of tapestry
motives, of disparate
between work,a to
needing the eventual
clear footing forembedding
the projectof the
andCSS into a plaque
avoiding for some
excluding
public display (at the top right).
participants (in the bottom left). It moves, through an intermediate tapestry of disparate work,
The rows in the figure, which should be read from the bottom upwards, are derived
to the eventual embedding of the CSS into a plaque for public display (at the top right).
from the framework described in Section 3.4. They delineate a stagewise movement
 Sustainability 2025, 17, x FOR PEER REVIEW 43 of 54

Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 40 of 51

Figure 4. Conceptual
Figure development
4. Conceptual map for
development mapthefor
Campus Sustainability
the Campus Statement.
Sustainability Statement.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 41 of 51

The rows in the figure, which should be read from the bottom upwards, are derived
from the framework described in Section 3.4. They delineate a stagewise movement
stimulated by a conflict of motives (with, in each case, two poles), reaching towards actions
of abstract projection, consideration, and (in later stages) embedding and objectification.
The columns within the figure represent four successive stages of development, with
each proceeding from an initial conflict of motives. These stages are concerned, in turn,
with a purposeful definition of ‘sustainability’, identifying a shared framework, a mission
statement for the campus, and a Campus Sustainability Statement. The first three stages
are shown as becoming deprecated by participants due to their conceptual inadequacies,
with stages 1 and 2 doing so after actions of consideration and stage 3 after some early
work at objectification. In each case, participants’ realisation that their abstract projection is
inadequate stimulates them to attempt a new stage of conceptual development. Stage 4,
unlike the preceding stages, persists through to the end of the work analysed in this paper.
As for any concept, however, this objectified work may later be modified further, adapted
for different practice settings, or simply abandoned.
Our framework affirms that concepts are developed to be practical and future-oriented,
by which is meant providing a means to handle the object of activity and help organise
action (Section 3.4). That understanding holds in this case. The CSS was developed to be
practical in this sense because participants worked on it, alongside three other concepts
(Table 2), for the specific purpose of pursuing their objective (changing campus activity
systems to make the campus into a hub for sustainability work). They did not engage in
this work for the purpose of debate about the meaning of sustainability; on the contrary,
their early actions in the project (during Stage 1) specifically sensitised them to the danger
that doing so would prove inadequate for their work. The CSS was developed to be future-
oriented because it specifically aims to guide future action—based, among other things,
on an understanding of what the institution can actually offer to students, a principle
of challenging rather than merely contextualising existing practices, a publicly visible
commitment to action, and an acknowledgement that a wider set of stakeholders are the
owners of the statement.
The framework also emphasises that, while concepts can be categorised theoretically
(differentiating between true concepts, which grasp the essence of a situation, and gen-
eral notions, which fail to do so), they are also positioned culturally (as part of existing
constellations of artefacts, in which concepts are socially understood as having various
forms of status). Our analysis reinforces that developing new concepts to address spe-
cific situations requires an act of volition—breaking away from existing cultural artefacts,
even those which have considerable standing. Participants did not develop the CSS in a
cultural vacuum; they were propelled to do so by the inadequacies of their attempts to
apply existing artefacts, such as the United Nations Brundtland Commission definition,
which they understood to be scientific and established. Given the nature of the discussion
about sustainability in higher education (discussed in Section 2.1), it was unsurprising that
participants turned to address foundational definitions early in their work. Indeed, the
sense of obligation to do so was shared by the researcher interventionist (first author), who
drew attention to the Brundtland definition (Section 5.1) to address questions about the
project having a firm footing (one pole of the Stage 1 conflict of motives). Yet this early work
with definitions proved both inadequate and frustrating, and sensitised the participants
not only to the need for conceptual development but also to forms of conceptual work they
wished to avoid. Subsequently, participants strived to grasp the essence of the situation.
They settled on an image of a student being offered the ability to make a conscious and informed
choice about sustainability issues, which other participants recognised as realistic and modest
(Section 5.3.2). This simple image served as the basis for subsequent work and was also,
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 42 of 51

as our analysis elsewhere has indicated, an important turning point in developing the
transformative agency of the participants [13].
Our analysis also attests to the cyclical nature of conceptual development. Our frame-
work (Section 3.4) highlights how five aspects of conceptual development work are recur-
rently revisited in successive stages of such work. Each stage of development we analyse in
this paper encompasses a conflict of motives being addressed via work such as abstract
projection and consideration, and also, in stages 3 and 4, via embedding and objectification.
Yet concept development is cyclical rather than circular, in the sense that work strives to
build on and respond to earlier stages of development. The conflicts of motives from which
each stage proceeds, for instance, are not identical; they are developed, in each case, as
a consequence of participants’ earlier work. Similarities between the poles of conflict at
each stage are discernible and can be understood as a recurrent conflict between priorities
for clarity of principle and organisational contextualisation. Yet a conflict of motives be-
tween (a) putting forward an artefact that clearly prioritises sustainability and (b) framing
institution communication appropriately (the conflict stimulating Stage 4, in Figure 4) is
not reducible to that between (a) having a firm footing for the project and (b) avoiding
excluding some participants (the conflict stimulating Stage 1). In other words, even the
fundamental conflict of motives stimulates participants’ work changes as a consequence of
their developing understanding and the layers of meaning and artefacts accreted across
previous stages of development. Other lines of development can be discerned, such as in
the abstract projections put forward at each stage, which reflect how participants strive to
construct projections that build on their earlier ideas and respond to identified inadequacies
with those ideas. As the project proceeds, it develops its own local history, and moments of
work explicitly draw on artefacts established at previous stages. For example, the work of
embedding and objectification at Stage 4 explicitly builds on artefacts already put forward
during Stage 3. Participants, moreover, explicitly seek to avoid repetition or circularity in
their work. Indeed, the fact that their early work in Stage 1 had started to become repetitive
is viewed as frustrating (Sections 5.1.1 and 5.1.2), leading participants to express reluctance
to revisit the same issues again (Section 5.2.1). In other words, our analysis highlights that,
while conceptual development is cyclical, those undertaking it actively strive to avoid it
becoming circular, which they sense as a sign that development is not occurring.
It remains important to attest that concepts are but one form of artefact, which mediate
human activity as part of a wider constellation of other artefacts. The CSS is no exception.
We have highlighted earlier that the CSS was not developed as an end in itself but instead
to address the objective of transforming campus activity systems. Yet it is also necessary to
understand that participants did not conceive the CSS alone as sufficient for pursuing that
object—they were aware that the mere existence of the CSS would hardly transform campus
activity systems. Instead, they perceived the CSS as one artefact, useful for their work. Some
of the artefacts mediating such work, such as tools for distributing online questionnaires
and the equipment in the meeting rooms, were already part of the institutional and cultural
infrastructure of artefacts. Yet others, such as those set out in Table 2, needed to be
developed by participants within the project. At some moments, the strands of conceptual
development crossed over and influenced each other. Examples include the navigation
of staff resistance that occurred during the work of embedding in Stage 3 (Section 5.3.4),
where work on the CSS intertwined with work on the sustainability paragraphs; and the
canvassing of management (Section 5.4.3), and the development of the public plaque in
Stage 4 (Section 5.4.5), where work on the CSS dovetailed with the development of the
Centre for the Study of Sustainability.
Overall, participants worked from the belief that it was the overall constellation of
artefacts—including the CSS, the Centre for the Study of Sustainability, the sustainabil-
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 43 of 51

ity paragraphs, and a suite of interdisciplinary programmes, as well as more established

artefacts—which would equip them to pursue their object of making the campus a sustain-
ability campus.

6.2. Contributions to Debates in the Literature

In this section, we set out five core contributions to the literature on sustainability in
higher education, with particular reference to the strands of the literature we reviewed
in Section 2.
One contribution made by this paper is to clarify the process of developing sustainability
concepts within an institution. We referred at the outset to a major review which concluded
that “the key to success is for a university or college to define sustainability for itself and
build a unique strategy and structure” [9] (p. 2). Yet the literature, as Section 2 makes
clear, does not explore why such work is “key to success” or the processes by which
such strategies are developed. Instead, as Section 2.1 demonstrates, the literature on
sustainability terminology typically positions concepts as something appropriated from
external sources, with attendant difficulties understood as frustrations to be overcome by
domain specialists providing more standardised definitions and further ‘clarity’.
Our analysis, by contrast, takes an institutionally influential concept and traces the
process by which it was produced through four successive stages of development. Our
findings acknowledge that project participants proceeded from a professed interest in clarity
and found their attempts to engage with an external definition frustrating (Section 5.1.1).
Yet they resolved such frustrations by breaking away from official definitions and working
on something more relevant to their institution. Doing so, moreover, involved qualitative
conceptual development rather than mere refinement towards a precise definition. The
very idea of a “purposeful definition of sustainability” was abandoned in favour of a shared
framework, then a mission statement, and, eventually, a Campus Sustainability Statement.
It is the institutional relevance of the CSS which was important for its later influence, and
we specifically do not claim that this CSS concept should be the outcome of sustainability
initiatives in other institutions. Instead, we suggest that future research should focus less
on the proliferation of competing concepts put forward by domain specialists and more on
the processual importance of developing concepts specifically for each institution.
Another contribution is to illustrate the benefits of explicitly addressing value tensions
within sustainability initiatives. The relevant literature, as we outline in Section 2.1, dis-
cusses value tensions extensively, with points of contention including the pre-eminence of
specifically environmental concerns, any legitimation of economic growth, and a broadening
of focus towards equity issues. The attendant communication problems, it is suggested,
can be addressed by the provision of more accurate information about Education for Sus-
tainable Development and/or Environmental Education, and by breaking out of silos and
supporting ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration.
The findings of this paper reinforce the value of ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration.
Several participants’ early verbal contributions involved relating workshop discussions to
their own disciplinary teaching (Sections 5.1.2 and 5.1.3). The subsequent move towards
attempting to identify a “shared framework” (Stage 2 of the conceptual development)
attests to their motivation to move away from such a specific focus, while the concentration
of the eventual CSS (Stage 4) on the campus achieved this aspiration. Yet this triumph was
not achieved by the provision of ‘accurate’ information about developments in ESD, which
might have served to close down the discussion and suggest a tacit primacy to certain
disciplinary voices. Instead, people argued out their points of view forcefully, especially in
Workshop 3 (Section 5.3.1), and in doing so reached towards genuine solutions and sought
to avoid the pitfalls of tokenism or paying mere lip service to sustainability commitments.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 44 of 51

We suggest that researchers on this topic place more emphasis on the creative potential of
addressing value tensions explicitly within initiatives of this kind.
A further contribution is to explore how a sustainability project can help stakeholders
communicate across silos. Both areas of the literature we reviewed earlier in this paper contain
existing recognition that the issue of silos is important. The literature on approaches to
embedding sustainability (Section 2.2), for instance, identifies a silo ‘mentality’ as a barrier
to integrative development, and suggests striving for horizontal reach as an antidote.
The literature addressing sustainability terminology (Section 2.1), on the other hand, sees
the siloed structure of many universities as a barrier to clear communication between
stakeholders about sustainability.
Our analysis sheds light on the mechanisms by which communication between stake-
holders about sustainability can develop and initial ‘mentalities’ can shift. Unlike other
documented approaches, our project neither assumed that stakeholders would have com-
patible visions at the outset nor that certain stakeholders would be receivers for information
from established experts or activists. Instead, the structure of the project was based around
the expansive learning cycle (Section 3.2), meaning that participants were asked together
(among other things) to actively analyse their own circumstances and to propose and
iteratively refine their own solutions. Communication developed as part of a process
of building new knowledge, in which successive stages built on the products of earlier
ones, and participants could see how their inputs had contributed to the products of the
project, which were under continuing development. We suggest that scholars working
on sustainability transformation focus more on how communication between silos can be
supported and nurtured, rather than on how differences can be overcome or avoided.
Our next contribution is to affirm the transformative power of developing coalitions. The
existing literature reflects extensively on who should be involved in sustainability initiatives
within HEIs. Yet, as our overview in Section 2.2 makes clear, such issues are often viewed
through managerial prisms—such as discussions of sponsors, champions, and leads, or
of providing incentive structures (such as internal funding) to further nurture the work of
established agents of change.
The account presented in our work differs from such perspectives in valorising joint
endeavour and understanding the associated potential to generate new forms of agency.
Participants for this research intervention were recruited, as explained in Section 4.2, on the
basis of trying to represent a broad cross-section of stakeholders. While these stakeholders
were understood to have an interest in the objects of the project, they varied in their levels
of institutional seniority, disciplinary and professional background, prior activism on
sustainability issues, and agreement with the project’s initial aims. Yet this was not seen as
an obstacle to the project’s work, but rather a starting point for nurturing a new coalition.
A core aim, rather than leveraging the existing work of individuals, was that this new
coalition would develop its own joint agency. The associated process involved participants
developing their own individual identities within the project, such as the devil’s advocate
role of P7 (a lecturer in Social Care) in Workshop 3. Yet it is also evidenced collectively in
the shift in focus of discussions: from personal beliefs (especially about sustainability), to
individual practices (especially in relation to teaching duties), to the experience of students
of the whole institution (rather than only of their taught programme), and onwards to the
wider ownership of the products of the project. This process of coalition building dovetails
with our own earlier analysis of the shifting transformative agency evident in the research
intervention [13]. We suggest that researchers working on this topic direct more attention
in future papers towards nurturing new and collective agency rather than only toward
leveraging existing and individual agency.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 45 of 51

A final contribution is to insist on the potentiality deriving from sustainability projects set-
ting their own agenda. We referred, in our literature review, to an emphasis on differentiating
sustainability initiatives by their institutional point of focus. Doing so emphasises correctly
that sustainability change is not uniform and that particular initiatives will have different
dynamics depending on the object of their activity. Projects focused on teaching, research,
campus operations, or external social responsibility, for instance, will often have their own
distinct drivers, dynamics, and challenges. However, such ways of thinking also bring
forth potential hazards, such as arbitrary categorisation and placing artificial constraints on
particular institutional projects from their outset.
It would be a misreading of our work to imagine that the project we document
proceeded from an initial mission to formulate a Campus Sustainability Statement. As
set out in Section 4, stakeholders were recruited on the general basis that they would be
interested in pursuing “a sustainable campus”, with this initial object eliciting a wide
variety of personal interpretations, including some related to financial viability. The CSS
was developed alongside a range of other initiatives and was only one of four key new
concepts put forward by the coalition. Moreover, the CSS was developed from a need
identified within the project, with the solution widely debated and the name “Campus
Sustainability Statement” not emerging until Workshop 5. We contend that the usefulness of
the CSS arose precisely because the need was identified by participants, rather than having
been predetermined in the remit of the project. We also suggest that the project overall
was successful because it produced a constellation of ideas which mutually influenced
each other at important moments. For instance, as Section 5.4.5 makes clear, the impetus
to objectify the CSS into a public plaque derived from work on setting up a research
centre (Centre for the Study of Sustainability), which was a separate concept derived
within the initiative. We suggest that researchers explore further the potential for remits
of sustainability projects being something which can develop and progress, rather than
merely being defined.

7. Conclusions
We took as our starting point for this paper those vibrant debates occurring inter-
nationally about sustainability-related change in higher education. Such debates often
hinge on the discrepancy between the leading role that higher education institutions play
in research, policy, and public proselytising about sustainability, and the poor record of
those institutions when it comes to embedding sustainability in their own organisations.
This situation significantly undermines the credibility of the higher education sector with
external partners, as well as harming the educational mission of institutions.
Our literature review addressed two areas of focus in the research on sustainability
in higher education. One area is concerned with sustainability terminology in the sector.
By focusing on this scholarship, we were able to emphasise that vocabulary and language
are widely recognised as a crucial issue when pursuing sustainability in the sector, but
that they are mainly addressed through lenses such as the clarity of terms created by
experts, value tensions, and communication problems. The other area is concerned with
strategic approaches for embedding sustainability in higher education institutions. We
interrogated strands of work in this area concerned with the character of the change
process—for instance, whether it is initiated top-down or bottom-up, and the influence
of institutional silos—and the strategic aims of particular initiatives, where a range of
drivers are seen as motivating categorically distinct sustainability work in areas such as
research, teaching, campus operations, and outreach. Our conclusion was that these areas
of the literature have crucial shortcomings with regard to understanding the links between
sustainability concepts and change initiatives, and in terms of understanding sustainability-
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 46 of 51

related change as a process. We, therefore, committed to addressing the following research
question: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher
education sustainability initiative?
To address this question, we analysed the conceptual development which occurred
in a successful sustainability initiative in which institutional stakeholders came together
in Change Laboratory workshops, over the course of several months, to attempt to create
“a sustainable campus”. The first stage of our analysis identified that the practical work
of the initiative had involved, among other things, creating four novel concepts, whose
development we summarised in Table 2. To better understand the conceptual development
which occurred as a process, we selected one of these concepts—the Campus Sustainability
Statement (CSS)—for in-depth study. We chose to focus on this specific concept because it
was the one most consistently discussed within the workshops (and was, therefore, the best
represented in our dataset of video recordings) and because it had subsequently exerted
considerable influence in the local institution. Our analysis, synthesised previously in
Figure 4, shows how the CSS emerged from a long sequence of actions in the workshops,
which had previously comprised attempts to put forward a purposeful definition of sustain-
ability, a ‘shared framework’, and a mission statement for the campus. Each of these stages
of development arose from a conflict of motives expressed within the coalition working
on the project and involved putting forward a simple idea to address the conflict, which,
in some cases, was sufficiently promising to be developed further. In various ways and
for distinct reasons, the three preceding ideas were judged inadequate for the purposes of
the project and were thus superseded as new conflicts of motives were expressed. Figure 4
provides an overview map of this conceptual development process, which synthesises our
answer to our research question using a diagrammatic notation derived from our theoretical
framework. Having documented, drawing on excerpts from transcripts, this sequence of
conceptual development in Section 5, we then discussed the theoretical implications using
activity theory in Section 6.1.
Based on our preceding, in-depth analysis, we put forward the following synthesis as
a summary response to our research question:
• There is considerable potential for conceptual development to occur within higher
education sustainability initiatives. In the project we studied, four key concepts were
put forward (Table 2). These concepts had not been proposed prior to the project and
nor were they explicitly borrowed from external sources.
• The concepts are developed to be practical and future-oriented. The four concepts
developed in the project we studied were not created for conceptual or theoretical
ends, and, indeed, participants became increasingly sceptical about endlessly debat-
ing the minutiae of sustainability (such as definitions) (Section 5.1). Instead, they
were developed through attempts to realise and work on the object of their activity:
developing a sustainable campus.
• Conceptual development processes in higher education sustainability initiatives are
propelled by the inadequacies of existing artefacts. These inadequacies spur partici-
pants to break away from their existing frames of reference, generating new concepts
as part of developing their own agency in relation to the situation they face. One
instance of this, in the project we studied, arose from an abortive attempt to rely on the
well-established Brundtland definition (Section 5.1.1). This definition is authoritative
and globally renowned. However, it proved inadequate to mediate the conflict of
motives already arising within the project, even at a very early stage. Participants
thereafter started a process of conceptual development of their own.
• Conceptual development processes in sustainability initiatives are cyclical. Our analy-
sis of the development of the CSS showed that it arose out of four successive stages
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 47 of 51

of development. Each commenced from a conflict of motives and involved putting

forward and considering an abstract projection, and the more successful later stages
also involved attempts at embedding and objectifying a conceptual artefact (Figure 4).
Yet the process was not circular, with the actions taken in later stages of development
building on or reacting against earlier ones rather than repeating them. Indeed, some
participants voiced irritation if the work of the group seemed in danger of becoming
repetitive (Section 5.2.1).
• Conceptual development processes are challenging and may be unsuccessful. From
a narrow perspective, even the eventually favourable development of the CSS came
only after three previous stages of development had been abandoned by participants,
for reasons including inadvertently facilitating passivity, being too narrowly focused
on teaching, and communicating at the wrong level within the institution. Yet our
analysis highlights that even apparently ‘failed’ work may provide a useful basis
for development when picked up again later, as is evident in the traces from earlier
stages, which can be found in the CSS (Section 5.4.5). Even where conceptual work is
abandoned and not taken up again later, the attendant actions can also provide the
basis for stimulating participant agency [12,13].
• Conceptual development occurs as part of wider efforts to transform activities, rather
than being undertaken in isolation or as an end in itself. Many existing concepts
and other forms of artefacts will continue to be used in sustainability initiatives.
Moreover, any new concepts which are developed will need to somehow work within
constellations of artefacts used within local activity, or they will not be effective. In the
project we analysed, participants undertook actions specifically aimed at embedding
concepts into existing activity, including anticipating staff support and resistance and
finding synergy with existing Green Campus work (Section 5.3.5). Doing so was far
from straightforward, but, without such effort, it seems doubtful that the eventual CSS
would have been realised in the form that later proved so influential (Section 5.4.5).
• The potential for conceptual development is not identical for each sustainability
strategy or initiative. It is for this reason that we put forward, below, suggestions for
future research and recommendations for those planning sustainability strategies or
initiatives in higher education.
Section 6.2 argued in some detail for what we consider our five core knowledge contri-
butions to the scholarly literature on sustainability in higher education. One contribution is
to clarify the process of developing sustainability concepts within an institution, which we
suggest is a valuable new perspective standing in contrast to dominant views of institutions
adopting existing concepts from outside (a practice widely understood as frustrating and
often unproductive). Another contribution is to illustrate the benefits of explicitly address-
ing value tensions within sustainability initiatives. Our work illustrates the potential for
such value tensions to be resolved in creative ways, which drive forward sustainability
integration, rather than as something to be feared or circumvented. A further contribution
is to explore how a sustainability project can help stakeholders communicate across silos.
We suggest that this contribution is valuable because it draws attention to how, with ap-
propriate support, the initial positions adopted by stakeholders might develop and shift
within sustainability initiatives rather than becoming entrenched. Another contribution
is to affirm the transformative power of developing coalitions for sustainability-related
change in higher education. We suggest that the stakeholders develop into a transformative
coalition, which works together for change, as a consequence of developing concepts to-
gether in the project. This perspective contrasts significantly with more typically expressed
views about recruiting institutional stakeholders, which tend to focus on their pre-existing
roles or activism and to understand their agency individualistically. A final contribution is
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 48 of 51

to insist on the potentiality deriving from sustainability projects setting their own agenda,
which we suggest is valuable given a tendency in the literature to categorise projects and,
on this basis, for institutions to circumscribe the remit of many initiatives from the outset.
We emphasise that the above contributions point towards new possibilities for scholar-
ship that researchers (including ourselves) need to further interrogate in future work. Our
findings cannot be generalised to all sustainability initiatives in higher education, and we
do not attempt to stake such a claim. Our own work, as reported in this paper, has a num-
ber of limitations, which we readily acknowledge. The project was conducted in a single
higher education institution in Ireland, whose internal dynamics and external policy terrain
will be quite different from those of many other institutions around the world. Moreover,
it was conducted on a single campus, where there was already some existing degree of
stakeholder support for sustainability agendas prior to the project (albeit on a somewhat
fragmentary and disorganised basis). The project we report did not benefit from input by
students, which is a major opportunity for future work (another Change Laboratory project
on sustainability, which does involve students, is currently being undertaken in another
institution, at the time of writing, with input from the second author [73]). In terms of our
analysis, we acknowledge a greater need for scrutiny in future of the cross-fertilisation
between different lines of conceptual development, and for more longitudinal studies of
how concepts become established and exert ongoing influence. We also acknowledge
that the use of the Change Laboratory approach is novel in this area and does not reflect
how other sustainability initiatives have been conducted, although we do recommend that
other researchers and institutions actively pursue this approach in the future, given its
abundant potential.
Based on the findings and contributions of this paper, discussed in detail in Section 6.2,
we suggest that future research should place more emphasis on the following:
• The processual importance of developing concepts specifically for each institution (rather
than merely appropriating the many concepts being developed by domain experts);
• The creative potential of addressing value tensions explicitly within sustainability
initiatives;
• How communication between silos can be supported and nurtured (rather than on
how differences can be overcome or avoided);
• Stimulating new, collective agency for sustainability-related change rather than lever-
aging existing, individual agency;
• The potential for remits of sustainability projects to develop productively, rather than
being closely circumscribed.
We also recommend that those planning sustainability strategies or specific initiatives
in higher education should consider the following:
• How to forge new transformative coalitions across a strategy, and within particular
initiatives, rather than only relying on the pre-existing activism and sponsorship of
key individuals.
• How to draw out and explicitly address value tensions and different voices within the
institution, rather than imposing a single perspective and suppressing opportunities
for dissent.
• How to provide structured opportunities for different professionals, and those with
divergent disciplinary backgrounds, to build new knowledge together, with such op-
portunities being crucial for overcoming siloed thinking as well as valuable ends
in themselves.
• How to set a remit for particular initiatives so that it provides a clear rationale for
people to come together to work, while not overly narrowing what kinds of discussion
are permitted within the process.
Sustainability 2025, 17, 3968 49 of 51

Author Contributions: Conceptualisation, J.S. and B.B.; data curation, J.S.; formal analysis, J.S. and
B.B.; investigation, J.S.; methodology, J.S. and B.B.; supervision, B.B.; writing—original draft, B.B.;
writing—review and editing, B.B. and J.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version
of the manuscript.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement: This study was approved by Lancaster University’s Uni-
versity Research Ethics Committee (UREC) (date of approval: 16 December 2015, approval code
UREC-15-12-16-DK1).

Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in
this study.

Data Availability Statement: The original contributions presented in the study are included in the
article; further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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