Online sustainability reporting at universities: the case of Hong Kong

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the current state of online sustainability reporting in the Hong Kong higher education sector from a variety of perspectives. Design/methodology/approach The multiple case study was the research method for this research. Content analysis of the university website, as well as interview with university management, personnel in the sustainability office, academics and students, were adopted for data collection. An assessment framework for sustainability reporting was developed as an instrument for content analysis, based on G4 guidelines and prior literature. Findings The authors observe that most Hong Kong public universities have a specific webpage for sustainability reporting on the website, which consists of an amount of sustainability-related information in terms of general aspects, specific aspects and stakeholder participation. Moreover, they notice that Hong Kong public universities attach importance to sustainability and its reporting, and they would like to communicate their sustainability activities to various stakeholders and the community where they operate. Practical implications This paper indicates some practical implications for academics, university management, policymakers and sustainability education amongst universities in Hong Kong and beyond. Social implications This paper argues that universities, as a central place to foster talents and future leaders, should operate in a sustainable manner at the first place and then report their sustainability-related activities taking full advantage of the current information and communication technologies, so as to discharge accountability to various stakeholders and meet the expectations of the community where they operate. Originality/value This paper uses a multiple case study approach to explore the status of online sustainability reporting at Hong Kong universities, which contributes to limited research in the area, particularly for online sustainability reporting in the higher education institutions, and makes some contributions to the extant literature.

Sustainability Reporting in the Public Realm—Trends and Patterns in Knowledge Development

“…Moreover, particular issues related to sustainability have also been approached, such as accountability [5,8,15,35] and disclosure [12,13,36], mostly published in public thematic journals (Public Money and Management, International Journal of Public Sector Management, Public Performance and Management Review). Besides, there was a high focus on studying the topic in a particular public sector area, namely higher education, since universities were, by far, frequently approached [8,15,30,31,[37][38][39]. Besides, we analyzed the structure of top publishing sources (such as journals and cited journals) in developing knowledge on the main topics of sustainability reporting in the public sector.…”

“…It is characterized by the presence of topics typically related to transparency and disclosure, thus approaching various other types of reporting, such as Internet reports [12,32,33,38,[46][47][48], stand-alone sustainability reports [43,54] or popular reports [59][60][61]. Web-page disclosure has recently become an innovative reporting tool, an instrument of transparency for sustainability information [48], which confirms the lack of specific law requirements supporting the preparation of sustainability reporting [11,56].…”

“…From the beginning, the absence of any mandatory requirements may lead to the use of multiple overlapping guidelines based on contemporary sustainability philosophies [49]. Within this debate, scholars approached various core issues represented by environmental, social and/or economic disclosure [6] by various means, including online reporting [33,38,47,48] or popular reports [59][60][61]. In terms of the frameworks approached, even though GRI standards gained their relevance as appropriate guidelines in supporting the sustainability disclosure of institutions interested in enhancing accountability and transparency [15,36,44,54], <IR> seems to provide more balanced disclosures of material aspects of sustainability [53], thus becoming a key-node of this pathway.…”

Sustainability Reporting in Higher Education Institutions: a systematic approach using VOSViewer and Iramuteq softwares

“…In the blue cluster, the article: "Online sustainability reporting at universities: the case of Hong Kong" (1 citation) examinates the state of online sustainability of Hong Kong HEI sector by a multiple case study and the article "Sustainability reporting at a New Zealand public university: A longitudinal analysis" (23 citations) evaluated sustainability reports from a New Zealand public university by conducting a content analysis [14,15].…”

Sustainability accounting, management and policy in China: recent developments and future avenues

“…First, three papers discuss CSR and sustainability reporting among listed firms and universities, as well as a study related to corporate philanthropy. The three articles expanded the CSR research perspective by considering a broader range of stakeholders, including employees (Zhang et al , 2019) and external media (Zhang and Chen, 2019), illustrating a bottom-up approach emerging with the awakening of stakeholders, which differs from previous company-centered CSR research, An et al (2019) analyzed sustainability reporting by universities. Information disclosure by Chinese non-profit organizations that are pertinent to the public stakeholders, including tertiary and healthcare institutions, is a research area that deserves growing attention.…”