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Healthcare systems are facing persistent challenges, such as dealing with an ageing population, related increases in chronic diseases and healthcare costs facilitated by technological progress. The authors argue that the boundaries of optimisation are being reached and a more fundamental change or transition is necessary. The purpose of this paper is to explore the contours of this transition in the Netherlands. The authors do this from the perspective of healthcare organisations that have participated in the “Expedition to Sustainable Healthcare”: a learning programme organised by the Dutch Network for Sustainable Healthcare aimed at creating frontrunners in this transition.

The paper combines conceptual with experimental empirical work. The authors use the transition research frameworks to conceptualise persistent problems and transitional dynamics in the healthcare system. In a longitudinal study, the authors analysed how the participating organisations developed after the expedition.

The process validated the initial understanding of persistent sustainability challenges. An integral approach to sustainable healthcare is translated as a transformation of culture, structures and practices and the development of capacity for crossing borders and domains, inside and outside of the organisation. To facilitate and stimulate such a process the authors found that problem structuring and collective identification of persistent problems and the unsustainability in the healthcare system is a crucial step towards a shared view and discourse that supports change.

A transition in the Dutch healthcare system is just starting to emerge and has barely been subject of research. This paper provides an empirical description of a transition management process in this context. The authors hope to lay a foundation for future work that seeks to explore transitions in healthcare in theory and practice.

This study aims to explore students’ sustainability attitudes and behavioural intentions and their relation to energy use, to promote energy saving and decarbonisation in higher education settings.

The authors used a validated energy literacy survey to assess undergraduate students’ attitudes and behavioural intentions towards energy saving in two countries (Brazil and Belgium). The questionnaire, administered online, comprised 23 Likert scale questions and three questions eliciting socio-demographic information. Results were analysed using a linear regression model and compared with previous research using the same energy literacy instrument.

The research identified three dimensions of sustainable attitudes: citizens’ role, scientists’ role and government’s role, explaining 65.5% of respondents’ energy-related attitudes. Three dimensions of sustainable behaviours were identified, explaining 64.5% of energy-related behavioural intentions: consumption of eco-friendly products, financially driven behaviours and household energy saving. The linear regression model identified scientists’ role, consumption of eco-friendly products and financially driven behaviour as the key predictors of student energy use. Differences between the two contexts also emerged.

Individual action to improve energy saving is necessary, but not sufficient for decarbonisation. However, student attitudes and behavioural intentions towards energy are an important element of campus decarbonisation: these “micro” experiments can become a “network” searching for synergies at the campus level (in collaboration with the neighbourhood) and act as a catalyst towards a more profound carbon-free society. Limitations of the research include the use of a survey to ascertain estimates of energy use; however, the study offers a model for further research and a mode of analysis that would be useful to other researchers.

This research enables universities to better understand the drivers and barriers to student energy-saving activities and thereby promote decarbonisation on campus. This is a crucial underpinning in the creation of sustainable universities, linking education and campus developments. This survey was one of the catalysts to set up a total new maintenance energy performance contract (MEPC) at one of the authors’ institutions, where energy efficiency was realised alongside other sustainability aspects, such as water saving, circular renovation and waste reduction.

This research illustrates the challenges and opportunities of working with key stakeholders in university settings for university-based decarbonisation efforts. Intensive involvement of students and teachers in the new MEPC offers an example of co-creation with building “users” – which may have implications for other university building developments. Increasingly, universities need to consider the need for a new business model in which shared and multiple value creation is a key feature. Treating societal challenges as business opportunities is an important new dimension of corporate strategy and a powerful path to social progress, which higher education institutions should not overlook.

Student attitudes and behavioural intentions towards energy are an important element of campus decarbonisation and can act as a catalyst towards a carbon-free society. Although energy literacy research has been undertaken in the USA and UK, this research is the first of its kind for Belgium and Brazil, and the mode of analysis – using a linear regression model – differs from the earlier work, offering a novel methodological approach.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the convenience of the Viable System Model (VSM) as a framework to guide organisational adaptive response and resilience in times of instability and change.

A thought experiment based on the case study of an eco-village where a project based on action research was conducted following the introduction of the VSM.

This paper provides evidence of the efficacy of the VSM and its recursive structure to facilitate resilience and organisational adaptation and provides evidence of its advantages over conventional management tools to deal with uncertainty in complex environments.

Based on a case study, the scope of this paper is limited and context specific. The comparison of tools is also limited to the ones related to the allocation of resources aiming to provide resilience, viability and adaptive response to critical events, used by the observed community.

The case study invites to revisit and discuss the fitness of conventionally used management tools to cope with complexity – from an organisational perspective.

This paper invites to a reflection on the nature of dominant management tools used in contemporary management to cope with complexity. This paper provides insights on the value of organisational cybernetics and its capability to guide organisations in times of instability and change while facilitating resilience and adaptation through the management of variety.