From participation to transformation: mapping collaborative pathways to sustainability in UK higher education

Abstract

This paper aims to examine how collaboration is enacted within sustainability agendas in UK higher education, positioning it as the mechanism through which sustainability integration is realised. Building on the Sustainability Integration Framework, it interrogates the gap between policy rhetoric and institutional practice through critical discourse analysis of policies and practitioner interviews. It develops a Collaboration Continuum – participation, collaboration, co-creation and transformation – to explain how agency, decision-making authority and resources are distributed. Findings show collaboration is often consultative and voluntary, limiting power redistribution. The paper identifies enabling conditions for deeper integration and offers a governance lens for achieving embedded, equitable, whole-institution sustainability practice. This study employs a qualitative design using critical discourse analysis of eight institutional sustainability policies and semi-structured interviews with staff across diverse UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Institutions were purposively sampled to reflect variation in type and mission. Policy documents and interview data were analysed iteratively using thematic coding and constant comparison to identify patterns across datasets and derive the Collaboration Continuum. Analytical focus was placed on how agency, decision-making authority and resources are distributed within institutional contexts, enabling examination of the relationship between policy discourse, institutional practice and governance structures shaping sustainability integration across institutional contexts. The study reveals that although collaboration is widely invoked in policy discourse, its operationalisation is uneven across institutions. Many HEIs remain at participation or advisory levels, where collaboration is framed as consultation rather than shared governance. Institutional practices are characterised by environmental dominance, optional engagement structures and fragmented authority. More advanced practices emerge where collaboration is formalised, including student participation in decision-making forums, staff–student co-design of modules and living labs with external partners. These cases align with higher levels of the Continuum and later stages of the Sustainability Integration Framework. Collaborative integration is strengthened when governance structures recognise relational labour, embed co-governance and resource cross-boundary roles. By positioning collaboration as the mechanism through which sustainability integration is realised, this paper offers a novel conceptual contribution through the Collaboration Continuum. Complementing structural models such as the Sustainability Integration Framework, it shifts attention from institutional commitments to the relational dynamics through which they are enacted. In doing so, it explains why institutions with similar structural arrangements demonstrate differing levels of integration. The paper advances understanding of how power, agency and resource allocation shape sustainability practice, offering a governance-oriented lens that bridges theory and practice. This provides actionable insight for higher education leaders seeking to move from rhetorical commitment to embedded, institution-wide transformation.