Green Management at Razi University: What are the Drivers?

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 1. M.Sc. of Sustainable Agricultural Extension and Education, Agriculture Extension and Education Department, College of Agricultural & Natural Resources, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 Assistant professor of Agricultural Extension and Education Department, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

3 Postdoctoral Researcher of Agricultural Education and Lecturer in Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Abstract

University structure has become a key issue in leading the community and the university toward achieving the goals of  sustainable development. Therefore, determining the current state of GM in the universities and identifying its elements can help universities in developing activities related to GM. Hence, the purpose of this study is to determine the current indicators of GM at Razi University and then to identify the factors affecting its development from the perspective of staff and faculty members of this university (N = 965). therefor, using the proportional assignment sampling method (based on gender and degree), 250 individuals were selected as the statistical sample. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire which its validity and reliability was confirmed by calculating the "Content Validity Ratio", Average Variances Extracted (AVE), Composite Readability (CR), and Cronbach's alpha. Data were analyzed by using Smart-PLS and SPSSWin20 software. The findings show that Razi University focuses on land and building, waste and recycling, and water and energy dimensions of GM. In contrast, less attention has been paid to the educational and research dimensions. Findings from exploratory factor analysis showed that a total of eight factors effect the development of GM in the university which account for 54.717% of the total variables affecting GM in Razi University. These factors respectively were: 1) Strategy and university culture, 2) Environmental pressures (legal, imitation, and normative pressures), 3) Education and capabilities of academic actors, 4) Values of actors, 5) Attitudes of stakeholders towards GM, 6) Institutional cooperation, 7) Assessment and reporting, and 8) Culture making.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Adongo, C. A., Taale, F., & Adam, I. (2018). “Tourists' values and empathic attitude toward sustainable development in tourism”. Ecological Economics, 150, 251-263.
Ahamad, N. R., & Ariffin, M. (2018). “Assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice towards sustainable consumption among university students in Selangor, Malaysia”. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 16, 88-98.
Alas, R., Ennulo, J., & Türnpuu, L. (2006). “Managerial values in the institutional context”. Journal of business ethics, 65(3), 269-278.
Amran, A., Ooi, S. K., Wong, C. Y., & Hashim, F. (2016). “Business strategy for climate change: An ASEAN perspective”. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 23(4), 213-227.
Anwar, N., Mahmood, N. H. N., Yusliza, M. Y., Ramayah, T., Faezah, J. N., & Khalid, W. (2020). “Green Human Resource Management for organisational citizenship behavior towards the environment and environmental performance on a university campus”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 256, 120401.
Ávila, L. V., Leal Filho, W., Brandli, L., Macgregor, C. J., Molthan-Hill, P., Özuyar, P. G., & Moreira, R. M. (2017). “Barriers to innovation and sustainability at universities around the world”. Journal of cleaner production, 164, 1268-1278.
Berrone, P., Fosfuri, A., Gelabert, L., & Gomez‐Mejia, L. R. (2013). “Necessity as the mother of ‘green’inventions: Institutional pressures and environmental innovations”. Strategic Management Journal, 34(8), 891-909.
Binti Aman, A. L. (2011). “The Influence of Environmental Knowledge and Concern on Green Purchase Intention: The Role of Attitude as Mediating Variable” (Doctoral dissertation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah).
Bürgener, L., & Barth, M. (2018). “Sustainability competencies in teacher education: Making teacher education count in everyday school practice”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 174, 821-826.
Dagiliūtė, R., Liobikienė, G., & Minelgaitė, A. (2018). “Sustainability at universities: Students’ perceptions from Green and Non-Green universities”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 181, 473-482.
De Guimarães, J. C. F., Severo, E. A., & de Vasconcelos, C. R. M. (2018). “The influence of entrepreneurial, market, knowledge management orientations on cleaner production and the sustainable competitive advantage”. Journal of cleaner production, 174, 1653-1663.
Figueiró, P. S., & Raufflet, E. (2015). “Sustainability in higher education: a systematic review with focus on management education”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 22-33.
Fissi, S., Romolini, A., Gori, E., & Contri, M. (2021). “The path toward a sustainable green university: The case of the University of Florence”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 279, 123655.
Gao, T. T., Leichter, G., & Wei, Y. S. (2012). “Countervailing effects of value and risk perceptions in manufacturers' adoption of expensive, discontinuous innovations”. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(4), 659-668.
Gast, J., Gundolf, K., & Cesinger, B. (2017). “Doing business in a green way: A systematic review of the ecological sustainability entrepreneurship literature and future research directions”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 147, 44-56.
Graafland, J., & Smid, H. (2016). “Environmental impacts of SMEs and the effects of formal management tools: Evidence from EU's largest survey”. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 23(5), 297-307.
Hoover, E., & Harder, M. K. (2015). “What lies beneath the surface? The hidden complexities of organizational change for sustainability in higher education”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 175-188.
Kapitulčinová, D., AtKisson, A., Perdue, J., & Will, M. (2018). “Towards integrated sustainability in higher education–Mapping the use of the Accelerator toolset in all dimensions of university practice”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 172, 4367-4382.
Karimi, F., Veisi, H., Nazari, M. (2021). “Assessing effective factors on carbon management at higher education institutions (Case study: Razi University)”. Environmental Education and Sustainable Development, 9(3), 33-54. [In Persian]
Khosravipour, B., Salarvand, Z., Monavarifard, F. (2017). “Identification of the Factors Influencing Awareness of High School Teachers about Environmental Protection”. Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 19(4), 583-591. [In Persian]
Krell, K., Matook, S., & Rohde, F. (2016). “The impact of legitimacy-based motives on IS adoption success: An institutional theory perspective”. Information & Management, 53(6), 683-697.
Leal Filho, W. (Ed.). (2018). “Handbook of sustainability science and research”. Springer International Publishing.
Leal Filho, W., Manolas, E., & Pace, P. (2015). “The future we want: Key issues on sustainable development in higher education after Rio and the UN decade of education for sustainable development”. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 16 (1), 112-129.
Leal Filho, W., Will, M., Salvia, A. L., Adomssent, M., Grahl, A., & Spira, F. (2019). “The role of green and sustainability offices in fostering sustainability efforts at higher education institutions”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 232, 1394-1401.
Lee, K. H. (2009). “Why and how to adopt green management into business organizations? The case study of Korean SMEs in manufacturing industry”. Management decision, 47 (7), 1101-1121.
Levy, B. L., & Marans, R. W. (2012). “Towards a campus culture of environmental sustainability: Recommendations for a large university”. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 13(4), 365-377.
Liang, H., Saraf, N., Hu, Q., & Xue, Y. (2007). “Assimilation of enterprise systems: the effect of institutional pressures and the mediating role of top management”. MIS quarterly, 31 (1), 59-87.
Lin, J., Luo, Z., & Luo, X. (2020). “Understanding the roles of institutional pressures and organizational innovativeness in contextualized transformation toward e-business: Evidence from agricultural firms”. International Journal of Information Management, 51, 102025.
Liu, P., Teng, M., & Han, C. (2020). “How does environmental knowledge translate into pro-environmental behaviors? The mediating role of environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions”. Science of the Total Environment, 728, 138126.
Loknath, Y., & Azeem, B. (2017, October). “Green management–concept and strategies”. In National Conference on Marketing and Sustainable Development (Vol. 13, pp. 688-702).
Lozano, R., Lukman, R., Lozano, F. J., Huisingh, D., & Lambrechts, W. (2013). “Declarations for sustainability in higher education: becoming better leaders, through addressing the university system”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 48, 10-19.
Lukman, R., Lozano, R., Vamberger, T., & Krajnc, M. (2013). “Addressing the attitudinal gap towards improving the environment: a case study from a primary school in Slovenia”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 48, 93-100.
Ma, Y., Hou, G., Yin, Q., Xin, B., & Pan, Y. (2018). “The sources of green management innovation: does internal efficiency demand pull or external knowledge supply push?”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 202, 582-590.
Maier, C., Laumer, S., Weinert, C., & Weitzel, T. (2015). “The effects of technostress and switching stress on discontinued use of social networking services: a study of Facebook use”. Information Systems Journal, 25(3), 275-308.
Mancha, R. M., & Yoder, C. Y. (2015). “Cultural antecedents of green behavioral intent: An environmental theory of planned behavior”. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 43, 145-154.
Marques, C., Bachega, S. J., & Tavares, D. M. (2019). “Framework proposal for the environmental impact assessment of universities in the context of Green IT”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 241, 118346.
Marrone, P., Orsini, F., Asdrubali, F., & Guattari, C. (2018). “Environmental performance of universities: Proposal for implementing campus urban morphology as an evaluation parameter in Green Metric”. Sustainable Cities and Society, 42, 226-239.
Monavvarifard, F., Baradaran, M., & Khosravipour, B. (2019). “Increasing the sustainability level in agriculture and Natural Resources Universities of Iran through students’ engagement in the value Co-creation process”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 234, 353-365.
Moon, M. A., Mohel, S. H., & Farooq, A. (2021). “I green, you green, we all green: Testing the extended environmental theory of planned behavior among the university students of Pakistan”. The Social Science Journal, 58(3), 316-332.
Moore, T. J., & Asay, S. M. (2017). “Family resource management”. Sage Publications.
Oliver, C. (1991). “Strategic responses to institutional processes”. Academy of management review, 16(1), 145-179.
Pullman, M. E., Maloni, M. J., & Carter, C. R. (2009). “Food for thought: social versus environmental sustainability practices and performance outcomes”. Journal of supply chain management, 45(4), 38-54.
Rayner, J., & Morgan, D. (2018). “An empirical study of ‘green’workplace behaviors: ability, motivation and opportunity”. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 56(1), 56-78.
Spira, F., Tappeser, V., & Meyer, A. (2013). “Perspectives on sustainability governance from universities in the USA, UK, and Germany: how do change agents employ different tools to alter organizational cultures and structures?”. In Sustainability Assessment Tools in Higher Education Institutions (pp. 175-187). Springer, Cham.
Stough, T., Ceulemans, K., Lambrechts, W., & Cappuyns, V. (2018). “Assessing sustainability in higher education curricula: A critical reflection on validity issues”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 172, 4456-4466.
Tarafdar, M., Cooper, C. L., & Stich, J. F. (2019). “The technostress trifecta‐techno eustress, techno distress and design: Theoretical directions and an agenda for research”. Information Systems Journal, 29(1), 6-42.
Teo, H. H., Wei, K. K., & Benbasat, I. (2003). “Predicting intention to adopt interorganizational linkages: An institutional perspective”. MIS quarterly, 27 (1),19-49.
Verhulst, E., & Lambrechts, W. (2015). “Fostering the incorporation of sustainable development in higher education. Lessons learned from a change management perspective”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 189-204.
Vicente-Molina, M. A., Fernández-Sáinz, A., & Izagirre-Olaizola, J. (2013). “Environmental knowledge and other variables affecting pro-environmental behaviour: comparison of university students from emerging and advanced countries”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 61, 130-138.
Wang, S. T. (2014). “Consumer characteristics and social influence factors on green purchasing intentions”. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32 (7), 738-753.
World Health Organization. (2020). “WHO global strategy on health, environment and climate change: the transformation needed to improve lives and wellbeing sustainably through healthy environments”.
Yong, A. G., & Pearce, S. (2013). “A beginner’s guide to factor analysis: Focusing on exploratory factor analysis”. Tutorials in quantitative methods for psychology, 9(2), 79-94.
Yu, Y., & Choi, Y. (2016). “Stakeholder pressure and CSR adoption: The mediating role of organizational culture for Chinese companies”. The social science journal, 53(2), 226-235.
Zhu, Q. (2016). “Institutional pressures and support from industrial zones for motivating sustainable production among Chinese manufacturers”. International Journal of Production Economics, 181, 402-409.
Zhu, Z., & Lin, S. F. (2019). “Understanding entrepreneurial perceptions in the pursuit of emerging e-business opportunities: The dimensions and drivers”. Computers in Human Behavior, 95, 252-261.
Zsóka, Á., Szerényi, Z. M., Széchy, A., & Kocsis, T. (2013). “Greening due to environmental education? Environmental knowledge, attitudes, consumer behavior and everyday pro-environmental activities of Hungarian high school and university students”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 48, 126-138.
 
    
Journals of Environmental Education and Sustainable Development
Volume 11, Issue 1
November 2022
Pages 21-43

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics