A 5 pillars approach to the sustainable development goals performance and reporting in Portuguese higher education institutions. Proposal for an applied framework

• Autor(a) principal: Monteiro, Sónia
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Ribeiro, Verónica, Molho, Cristiana
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11110/2710
• topic: Sustainabledevelopmentgoals; 2030Agenda; Pillars; Portuguese higher education institutions; Times Higher Education Impact Ranking; Performance; SDGs reporting assessment framework

Purpose – The implementation and reporting of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is one of the emerging challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs), but the lack of well-de!ned reporting structures and topics for this sector makes it dif!cult to map and evaluate HEI performance in relation to 2030 Agenda. This study aims to assess the SDG performance and reporting by the 13 HEIs that integrate the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking (THE_IR), from the perspective of the !ve pillars of the 2030 Agenda in the Portuguese context, where research on this topic is quite scarce. Design/methodology/approach – Considering the THE_IR methodology, an SDG reporting assessment framework with 85 key topics has been developed to search for in the institutional reports of the 13 studied HEIs. For each topic, depending on the number of institutions that disclose it, a reporting index (RI) has been calculated, which was used to compare the level of reporting between the different SDGs and pillars. Findings – Concerning HEIs’ SDG performance in the THE_IR, the People pillar was the one with the most HEIs ranked, followed by the Prosperity pillar. The Planet pillar was less highlighted. SDG reporting varied widely among Portuguese HEIs. The SDG RI presented a mean value of 43.1%. The Kruskal–Wallis test revealed that the RI for the Planet pillar (RI 23.6%) was statistically and signi!cantly lower than those for the People and Prosperity pillars (RI 48.6% and 53.5%, respectively). The results thus demonstrated some conformity of the SDG reporting with Portuguese HEI performance in THE_IR. Aside from Goal 5, the SDGs 4 and 3 stood out in the !rst four positions of the HEIs in the THE_IR. Goals 3 and 4 were also the most disclosed in institutional reports. Originality/value – This study proposed and applied a new SDG reporting assessment framework for HEIs, contributing to better evaluation of the inclusion of important SDG-related topics in their institutional reports.