Joint Sustainability Reports (JSRs) to Promote the Third Mission of Universities

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) face increasing expectations to engage in sustainability reporting despite limited resources and heterogeneous practices. This study explores how Joint Sustainability Reports (JSR), built on the EU Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME), can serve as a cooperative and digitally supported framework to enhance transparency, comparability, and efficiency while strengthening universities’ third mission of societal engagement and knowledge transfer. Qualitative interviews with six sustainability experts from German and Austrian universities of applied sciences (UAS) highlight persistent challenges such as data gaps, staffing shortages, and weak strategic anchoring. The findings show that VSME-based JSRs, through shared data collection, centralised coordination, and modular reporting, enable resource and data pooling, standardised indicators, and cross-university synergies. By making social contributions more visible and credible, JSRs reinforce accountability and advance universities’ third mission in fostering community outreach and sustainable development.