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Due to the complexities involved in disasters and due to the peculiar nature of post-disaster reconstruction, built environment professionals require continuous updating of their skills and knowledge to contribute effectively to disaster resilience. The purpose of this paper is to identify the ways in which higher education institutions (HEIs) can address this need through the provision of lifelong learning.

This paper is based on both a literature review and on empirical evidence obtained through interviews, a workshop and group validation.

The challenges faced by HEIs in accommodating lifelong learning are presented. Furthermore, good practice guidelines are provided to enable HEIs to respond effectively to industry requirements; to provide lifelong learning via through-life studentship; to promote collaboration amongst HEIs, industries, professional bodies and communities, and to promote the adoption, diffusion and exploitation of the latest learning and teaching technologies.

The empirical focus of the research is limited to three EU countries, namely UK, Lithuania and Estonia. This paper focuses on role of HEIs in enhancing the disaster risk reduction (DRR) capacity in the built environment, especially at the stage of post-disaster reconstruction.

The recommendations provided on good practice suggest how HEIs can integrate disaster related knowledge into their curriculum faster than previously and how they are able to assist their educators and learners in building up their knowledge base on a continuous basis.

Capacity building in enhancing DRR during the post-disaster reconstruction stage through the provision of lifelong learning will create social implications within the responsiveness of built environment professionals to cater for disaster resilience.

The appropriateness of lifelong learning as an approach to disaster management education is justified. The challenges HEIs face in accommodating lifelong learning and the recommendations on good practice guidelines in order to make the HEIs more responsive to educational needs are discussed.

While prior control studies typically focus on organizations with an instrumental approach to corporate sustainability, this study concentrates on organizations with an integrative approach, as the latter is needed to address the grand challenge of sustainable development. As such organizations do not single out the financial objective as the dominant one, they pursue a hybrid mission. This study investigates how a control package can be designed that ensures the persistence of such a hybrid mission.

A case study is undertaken at a luxury hotel chain in which a financial and an environmental objective are continuously balanced. Self-determination theory is used to substantiate insights into how psychological need-supportive controls can be designed at all organizational levels.

This study highlights how controls are not only needed to direct staff behaviour towards the environmental objective but also to ensure that staff at all organizational levels prioritize the objectives in such way that the hybrid mission can be sustained. Besides structural differentiation and centralization of decision-making, the case organization designed need-supportive controls to foster staff's internalization of the environmental objective and value as well as of the integrative approach.

As the need-supportive socialization process fostered staff's integration of the environmental value, this study highlights the transformational potential of controls.

This study provides a unique account of a control package directing staff behaviour towards the balancing of multiple objectives.