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This study aims to convey lessons learned from two sustainability initiatives at Norway’s largest university. This contributes to knowledge-based discussions of how future, sustainable higher education institutions (HEIs) infrastructures should be envisioned and planned if the fundamental uncertainty of the future development of learning, researching and teaching is acknowledged.

This study was submitted on 24 January 2023 and revised on 14 September 2023. HEIs, particularly when they are engaged in research activities, have a considerable environmental footprint. At the same time, HEIs are the main producers and disseminators of knowledge about environmental challenges and their employees have a high awareness of the urgent need to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. In this study, the gap between knowledge and environmental performance is addressed as a question of infrastructural change, which is explored in two case studies.

The first case study presents limitations of ambitious, top-down sustainability planning for HEI infrastructures: support from employees and political support are central for this strategy to succeed, but both could not be secured in the case presented leading to an abandonment of all sustainability ambitions. The second case study exposes important limitations of a circular approach: regulatory and legal barriers were found against a rapid and radical circular transformation, but also more fundamental factors such as the rationality of an institutional response to uncertainty by rapid cycles of discarding the old and investing in new equipment and facilities.

Being based on qualitative methods, the case studies do not claim representativity for HEIs worldwide or even in Norway. Many of the factors described are contingent on their specific context. The goal, instead, is to contribute to learning by presenting an in-depth and context-sensitive report on obstacles encountered in two major sustainability initiatives.

Research reporting on sustainability initiatives too often focuses descriptively on the plans or reports the successes while downplaying problems and failures. This study deviates from this widespread practice by analysing reasons for failure informed by a theoretical frame (infrastructural change). Moreover, the juxtaposition of two cases within the same context shows the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to infrastructural change particularly clearly.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework (pragmatic constructivism) for a new paradigm for accounting practice. The paradigmatic base of practice is an important element in explaining, understanding, justifying and defending practice.

The paper is designed to argue the case for the use of pragmatic constructivism as a basis for the development of a paradigmatic foundation of accounting practice. To achieve this, pragmatic constructivism is explained and its application to accounting is illustrated and contrasted with the traditional paradigm of realism.

The analysis shows how the use of a less reductionist paradigm than realism can assist accountants both in the creation of a rationale and a defence for practice.

The analysis is exploratory in the sense that a new paradigmatic framework is outlined and used to illustrate its potential to develop a paradigm for practice. The creation of a full practice paradigm for accounting is beyond the scope of one paper. Hence this analysis should be viewed as only a first step towards developing a paradigm of accounting practice.

The proposal of pragmatic constructivism for this purpose is novel to the accounting literature. The value of its application lies in its potential to explain and defend accounting practice.