How can Universities Become Transformative Change Agents? Sustainability Strategizing in European Technological Universities

The paper discusses the challenges universities face in responding to the calls to contribute to sustainability transitions. In these calls, universities are expected to be reflexive and co-creative and act as transformative change agents. Universities also face other expectations to improve the strategic management of their traditional missions of teaching, research, and societal service. We discuss how these latter expectations create especially for technological universities complex managerial challenges that become hurdles in becoming transformative change agents for environmental sustainability. Empirically, we examine sustainability strategizing in four European technological universities and ask: a) How are technological universities balancing their delivery of traditional missions and sustainability-oriented expectations? b) What role does co-creation play as a potential tool for developing capabilities to carry out sustainability-oriented roles? We show that sustainability tends to be added to existing activities without redesigning core strategies, structures and managerial practices. This "add-on" approach tends to be ineffective, and universities need to consciously focus on developing novel capabilities to implement complex tasks such as contributing to sustainability transition.