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The CEO of Embraer, reflects on his company's dramatic ascent to its position as the world's leading regional aircraft manufacturer. Since becoming a private company, Embraer had successfully introduced seven commercial aircraft models to the market, including its latest, the 118-seat EMBRAER 195. Now, he is concerned because Embraer does not know what to expect from Bombardier, Boeing, and Airbus regarding their competitive response to his company's recent attacks on the commercial aircraft market. How would they respond to Embraer's successful launch of its recent family of jets? Would Bombardier really follow through with its launch of the CSeries? Would Airbus and Boeing perceive the latest attacks by Embraer and Bombardier as attacks on its own family of jets? Most importantly, given Embraer's expectations of rivals' future competitive moves, what should it do next to protect its position and influence its competitors' actions?

This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution.

This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainability council and an energy management program.

Because of the institutional focus of this study, the research may lack generalizability to other institutions. Thus, researchers are encouraged to explore what other imaginaries may exist at other institutions.

This paper includes implications for how universities can manage conflicting expectations and definitions in relation to new sustainability initiatives on campus.

This paper offers reflections on the concept of sustainability imaginaries and what they might offer the field of sustainability in higher education.

This study provides a country-specific and sector-wide study of campus sustainability. Campus sustainability is a key consideration for the higher education (HEI) sector, and campus sustainability officers and managers manage its reporting and planning. Global and country-specific studies to date have focussed on individual organisation narratives, interviews with faculty and management and content analysis of reports and plans. Findings show wide divergence on scope and scale of formalised planning and reporting, few references to sustainability officers and managers’ perspectives and limited reference to organisational theory to explain tactics and strategies adopted. As a result, there are a few country-specific and sector-wide studies. The purpose of this paper is to address the scarcity of country-specific and sector-wide studies into campus sustainability practices in HEI by combining qualitative and quantitative analysis.

The authors provide the first sector-wide overview of formal campus sustainability commitments for the Australian public sector HEI (n = 41) in terms of several key indicators – plans, reports and other indicators. Second, the authors use reflexive thematic analysis of interviews (n = 21) with current and former sustainability officers and managers to examine sector organisational reasons for such variation. Third, the authors analyse HEI sector isomorphism and divergence on planning and reporting of campus sustainability from the perspective of institutional theory of organisations.

This study finds some convergence on the need for plans, reporting and other engagement elements, albeit without any sector-wide standards being followed. The authors observe a trend towards carbon-neutral (CN) declarations before 2030 although with nuances on emissions scope and increasing inclusion of renewable energy. Interviews identify a range of strategies and tactics adopted for campus sustainability relative to internal and external organisational pressures. Overall, the sector still exhibits weak institutionalisation of sustainability.

This study interviews a specific and limited cohort (n = 21) and presents an overview of sector reporting, planning and target setting although not a detailed content analysis. Other interview cohorts may have different views on the strategic and tactical purposes of reporting practices, and more in-depth analysis of formal plans and reports should be conducted in the future.

This study concludes that the Australian HEI sector should consider greater public transparency of its data and reporting actions. Common standards and a benchmarking platform for the sector would improve overall engagement with all internal and external stakeholders. At present, the HEI sector’s message to its key internal and external stakeholders is mixed and needs to change towards a more in-depth institutionalisation of sustainability on campus.

Particular insights are the value of organisational strategies and tactics as an interpretive framework for HEI campus sustainability and how interviewees attribute sector competitors and self-different motives and tactics. Albeit limited, this is the first mapping of sector approaches to sustainability reporting and planning.

Population worldwide has experienced several challenges related to sustainable development, such as scarcity of natural resource, unsustainable consumption, poverty, injustice, violence, social inequality and natural disaster (including floods, tsunami and landslide). These issues interfere in sustainable development and target to achieve societal balance, structuring without compromising economic and environmental resources of future generations. The higher educational institutions are included in this context because they play a role in professional training and in education to promote sustainable practices. The higher educational institutions can assume a prominent position in the 2030 Agenda implementation for sustainable development of the United Nations, especially in the Goals 4 and 10, quality education and reduced inequalities, respectively. The purpose of this research study aims to develop a literature review and analyze the higher educational and sustainable themes, involving the Brazilian scenario.

This research study develops a literature review based on researches that involve higher educational and sustainable themes in the Brazilian scenario. Inclusion criteria are papers in English, with the search equations in their titles, and peer-reviewed papers. Paper publication year was not an exclusion criterion. This research aimed to understand opportunity and challenge processes in the Brazilian higher educational institutions and their actions, so that the Sustainable Development Goals are completely achieved and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is fulfilled. For this, a research central question was established: What are the opportunities and the challenges to achieve the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in the Brazilian higher education?

A total of 636 papers were recovered. The “Higher Education AND Opportunities,” “Higher Education AND Challenge,” “Higher Education AND Challenges,” “Higher Education AND Opportunity,” “Brazilian AND Higher Education” and “Brazil AND Higher Education” search equations found, respectively, 165, 146, 131, 74, 62 and 25 papers, involving 94.8% of the total number of the papers found. The papers recovered enabled the vision of five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy. The paper analyses found that innovation process, sustainable practical implementation and holistic look, involving professors and students, can allow the 2030 Agenda achievement.

The authors of this research study presented a framework based on the literature analyzed through five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy, considered from opportunity and challenge perspectives. The authors introduced and discussed the Brazilian higher educations and their opportunities and challenges. The Brazilian panorama was linked with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, in specific, with the Goals 4 and 10. Implications of this research study are related to the higher educational opportunities and challenges in policy, inclusive, cultural, sustainable and relationship contexts, involving governmental and nongovernmental sectors, professors and students for the Brazilian educational improvement.