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This study aims to analyse student and teaching staff views on how higher education (HE) can contribute to sustainable development, and to provide examples of how a medical university has adopted the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as part of its institutional strategies and practises.

The study is based on participant views from a conference, which aimed to identify actions needed for HE to contribute to the SDGs. More than 500 students, teachers and academic leaders participated at workshops to discuss and reflect on the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in sustainable development. The discussion key points were recorded on flipcharts, and the analysis builds on all written statements from the nine workshops. Based on the findings from the workshop, steering documents and activities of a medical university were identified as examples of implementation.

Two overarching interdependent themes were identified and indicated a need to rethink the role not only of HE per se but also that of HEIs at large, to meet the challenges of sustainable development. The study also provides an example of how such organizational change can be practically implemented at a medical university, through the establishment of overarching institutional strategies, funding opportunities and external collaborations.

The findings reflect a “bottom-up” call from students and educational staff for HEIs to step up and contribute to systems change – both through a change in pedagogies, as well as through an institution-wide approach and a shift in the role of HEIs in society.

The study is unique in providing an exemplar of the implementation of sustainable development in HE at a specific medical university.

Urbanisation is trending globally, leading to population densification and housing shortage and people living increasingly in isolation. This entails challenges to sustainable development including ecological, social and well-being issues. This paper aims to evaluate the effects of a six-month onboarding self-leadership programme including exercises in mindfulness and acceptance and commitment therapy, amongst residents in a co-living space (n = 24) and a waiting list (n = 21).

At baseline and post-intervention, participants filled out questionnaires and two waves of in-depth interviews (n = 24) were conducted. Repeated measures one-way analysis of variance and thematic text analyses were performed.

Participation in the programme significantly (all ps < 0.000 to 0.050) improved relationship quality and communication about one’s needs regarding work-non-work boundaries, especially amongst residents at the co-living space. Moreover, programme participation significantly increased perceived work-non-work boundary control, work-life balance, psychological well-being, psychological flexibility and self-compassion, with effect sizes (hp2) in the medium to the large range (0.14 to 0.39). Qualitative findings suggested that increased psychological flexibility and self-compassion encouraged co-living residents to be more vulnerable and trusting, which enabled communication regarding one’s needs and enhanced mutual social support and relationship quality. This, in turn, improved overall boundary management, work-life balance and well-being.

Co-living settings – while contributing to overall sustainable development through more efficient use of space and resources – can also contribute to societal and individual sustainability. However, to ensure this contribution, the physical environment including private areas and common and semi-public areas, as well as the socio-emotional environment need to be considered.

Contemporary workplaces undergo frequent reorganizations in order to stay competitive in a working life characterized by globalization, digitalization, economic uncertainty, and ever-increased complexity. Managers are in the frontline of these challenges, leading themselves, organizations and their employees in high stress environments. This raises questions on how to support managers’ work-life sustainability, which is crucial for organizational sustainability. Mindfulness has been related to enhanced capacities to cope with challenges that are associated with organizational change. The authors evaluated short- and long-term effects of an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention in a company setting, which was going through reorganization.

Forty managers (42.5% males), mean age 54.53 (SD 5.13), were randomized to the mindfulness intervention or a non-active wait-list control. Self-report data were provided on individual sustainability factors in a work context: job demands and resources, psychological detachment, i.e. possibilities for letting go of work-related thoughts during leisure, control over work-nonwork boundaries, work-life balance, and mindfulness at baseline, postintervention, and at 6-month follow-up.

Linear mixed models (LMMs) analysis (all ps < 0.005 to 0.05) showed that the intervention group had a larger decrease in job demands and a smaller decrease in job resources, a larger increase in psychological detachment, work-nonwork boundary control, work-life balance, and mindfulness from baseline to postintervention when compared with the reference group. These initial effects were sustained at 6-month follow-up.

The study provides evidence that mindfulness practice can enhance managers’ long-term capacity to cope with challenging working conditions, and increase their work-life sustainability in times of organizational change and disruption.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of groundwater‐surface water interaction when studying, modeling and assessing climate change impacts on river water management.

The investigations were focused on River Vantaa and its tributaries in southern Finland. The main methods used involved aerial infrared photography, thermal profiling of river sediments, water quality measurements, isotopic composition of oxygen and hydrogen δ¹⁸O, δ²H and river water temperature measurements. The authors present the first results of the field measurements targeted to identify the groundwater recharge and discharge zones within the river system.

Groundwater discharge zones were found to have a significant impact on water quality and volume in River Vantaa and its tributaries. In the drainage basin, the aerial infrared photography seemed to be a feasible and cost‐effective method to identify areas of groundwater discharge across the entire river basin. Around 350 groundwater/surface water interaction sites along the 220 km river system could be identified.

The interaction sites identified during the season of low flow rate should be considered as potential risk areas because during flood periods groundwater quality might be at risk due to bank infiltration. This should be considered in river basin management within predicted changing climatic conditions.

This is the first attempt in Finland to map systematically groundwater and river water interactions. The focus of the paper is relevant, because according to the existing climate scenarios, flooding of the main rivers in Finland will be more frequent in future, increasing the probability of groundwater‐surface water interaction.

Higher education, and in particular libraries, have changed significantly over the last decade due to the adoption of technological advancements such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. The multitude of ways patrons can interact with librarians and library resources has been only the latest step in a very long process which started with traditional snail mail and the phone. As educators, librarians have always been interested in using new tools to improve services. These services are increasingly being made available to patrons who do not physically enter a library building. This paper looks at what library services are currently being offered to students at a distance in order to better plan for the future.

This chapter presents the development of Comparative Education in the most representative countries for this discipline in Western Europe, taking into account the diachronic evolution (since the first texts of Jullien de Paris in 1718 or the written work of Sadler in 1900) and the synchronicity of the discipline from which our patterns of committed intellectual activism have been perceived and have consequently allowed the regulation of its current mapping.

Special reference will be given to some of the classic and renewed dilemmas that have prevailed over the decades as cross-cutting themes of interest for specialists in Comparative Education with issues related to denomination, its purposes of ideographic or nomothetic nature, its sometimes problematic entailment with International Education, the significance of the lending and transferring policies in the current scenarios or the present increasing globalization phenomenon in our educational reality, among others.

The chapter also aims at recognizing the possibilities and, at the same time, the limitations currently faced by “Comparative Educations” in Cowen´s words, through working effectively with the most idiosyncratic signs of identity in the discourse and its most immediate future projection in the coming years.

We focus our article on the reasons that support the importance of the discipline: the global evolution of the current supranational scenarios from a social, economic or cultural perspective; the state of education since the contribution of educational policies or the situation of higher education in the context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that, among other aspects, mark the good stage through which the analyzed discipline is experiencing.

Finally, the ratification of this statement is complemented by the firm consolidation of Comparative Education in the European context, giving reference not only to the articulation of its own associations or societies created but also to the journals emerged from them, with a notable impact on the rest of the world and their special contribution to the dissemination of the purposes of the discipline related to the generation and diffusion of policies and practices from a comparative view.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role that elapsed time and culture may play in affecting intergenerational influence (IGI) on brand preference. The results of an empirical study conducted in Mexico reveal that coincidence in family life‐cycle stage emerges as an important factor in determining IGI strength.

A total of 600 questionnaires were collected from 300 dyads of mothers/daughters. This research extends Moore et al.'s basic methodology and findings to the Mexican context by including daughters at different stages of their family life cycle covering a time frame of up to 15 years out of the parents' household.

The findings support results from previous research conducted in the USA, signaling IGI as influencing brand preferences. However, the results diverge by demonstrating that in certain cultural contexts (e.g. Mexico), coincidence in family life‐cycle may have a stronger influence on IGI than the amount of elapsed time not living with parents.

Understanding how IGI evolves in different cultural contexts may be applicable in the design of product and communication strategies leading to brand preference.

This study contributes to the literature by providing knowledge about the factors affecting consumers' brand preferences in Mexico, a country sharing cultural values with an important number of nations (including Latin America) where research conducted on these issues is scarce and where effective brand strategies need to be developed.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of voluntary non-financial reporting on the evaluation of audit risk from the auditors’ viewpoint in a post-crisis period. Furthermore, this paper analyses whether auditors perceive that voluntary non-financial reporting impacts audit risk differently for old clients as compared with new clients.

This study is conducted on a sample of Italian audit firms through a paper-based questionnaire. Both Big4 and non-Big4 audit firms have been included in the sample.

Results show that integrated reporting is perceived to be the most relevant reporting method and intellectual capital statement the least relevant. Surprisingly, empirical findings over the sample period show that auditors do not perceive statistically significant differences between old and new clients.

Auditors can identify opportunities to adapt their assessment model to include voluntary non-financial report information. Moreover, they can use different assessment models regarding the research variables in the case of new and old clients.

Empirical findings highlight the growing role of voluntary non-financial reporting in the auditors’ perception of their client’s audit risk. All the observed voluntary non-financial reporting forms, except for intellectual capital, are considered as relevant by auditors in the evaluation of their client’s audit risk when compared to an indifference point. In addition, findings reveal that female auditors perceive a reduced gap in the relevance between integrated reports and intellectual capital reports compared to their counterparts.

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes – defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together – are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.