Framework de sustentabilidade para instituições de ensino superior comunitárias

Abstract

The concern with sustainable development in organizations, and especially in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that have precursor and developing characteristics has stopped being a proactive attitude and has became a premise of its management, teaching and research. The objective of this research is to propose a framework of sustainability facing the context of community HEIs, through a qualitative study of exploratory nature in the form of multiple case study. The reality of the community HEIs differs from other organizations, demonstrating the need for the existence of a framework designed specifically to its context. The research focus is the management of sustainability on university campi, with reference to the proposition of Fouto (2002), the role of universities facing the sustainable development, noting that the university campi should be models and examples. In a first research effort, it was carried out a survey of models, standards, frameworks and sustainability indexes existing and publicly recognized for their guidance of the incorporation of sustainability in organizations. From an analysis of the community HEIs features and this material, it was defined as a base framework the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (2006a), with some contributions from other tools and adjustments, where considered appropriate facing the reality of a community HEI. The proposed framework has been validated by experts and tested in four universities. In general, the community HEIs surveyed considered all the proposed categories in the framework as the most representative and relevant to a university and, moreover, showed an alignment of their actions with the issues that comprise the categories of the framework of sustainability. The test results allowed some adjustments to the framework of sustainability. The importance of the relationship between the management of the university campi with their educational role was one of the factors raised by the four community HEIs, because the learning acquired by students, through the experience and knowledge of sustainable practices on university campi, has a multiplier effect in their respective areas.