Prior to greenshift and beneath the green ceiling, actual and cultural compliance is produced as an end in itself. Annual green scorecards are made publicly available to meet internal and external performance measurement criteria. This should not blind us to their importance. As observed by Pascale: “we are more likely to act our way into new ways of thinking than thinking our way into new ways of acting” (Pascale, Millemann & Gioja, 1997). Beyond the green ceiling, compliance measures may guide some activities but sustainability is the continuing purpose, not as closure when triple bottom line targets are met but as an ongoing endeavor. At this aspirational level, there may be a recognition that institutional growth is incompatible with environmental sustainability and choices may be made to limit growth or to direct it into viable pathways. For instance this may include directing teaching resources towards more external or flexible learning initiatives to disperse the impact of campus populations. Action groups to advance specific environmental initiatives may be formed or a senior leader with academic (as well as managerial) standing may be appointed to direct and model active commitment for change. Such appointments have significant benefits for the university community but if they are not scaffolded by other and more widespread initiatives they may be insufficient. The recently appointed Pro Vice Chancellor for Sustainability at La Trobe University has observed that: “Some universities have made ‘green’ appointments and have established stand alone operational groups focused on ‘sustainability’. They then find that that they fail to embed change within the culture. Change requires leadership from the top. It requires each operational unit taking ownership of plans for change. It requires green thinking and doing becoming part of everyone’s job. Targets need to be set and performance measured and managed” (Adams, 2009). According to this understanding, the transformational point in the functional dynamic of green universities occurs where there is a systematic endeavor to embed change with regards to sustainable behaviors and thinking across the university at all levels. It occurs as well when there are indications of institutional learning and when the isolated greenspots across campuses diffuse their knowledge across whole universities through distributive leadership and communities of practice. The transformational stage is also enacted through sustainability focused explicit and implicit third stream activities, where there is a process of dense, ongoing, interactive integration between the university and its surrounding communities. Part Three provides brief, individual case studies of six Australian universities in the context of the functional dynamic model, maps some of the ways in which they demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and in particular, considers the nature and transformative possibility of these developments.
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The Functional Dynamics of Green Universities