Promoting sustainable development in higher education institutions: the use of the balanced scorecard as a strategic management system in support of green marketing

Abstract

Purpose Sustainability is understood as a complex and integrating area, involving the most diverse areas and fields of knowledge. Because of the innumerable socio-environmental challenges in the current scenario, a sustainable development that finds the necessary changes and advances for communities, industry and the various stakeholders involved is required. In this process of promoting sustainable development, universities stand out for being institutions capable of taking an analytical and questioning look at the directions of the society in which they are inserted and not just helping them to pursue them, serving as a model and living laboratory for the implementation of greener practices in cities. One of the actions that contributes to the consolidation process of a more sustainable university and the development of the green campus is the use of green marketing, understood as a set of all the practices that involve conventional marketing, focused on the search to reduce the negative impact or promote positive effects on the relationship between the institution and the environment. This paper aims, based on the balanced scorecard (BSC), to propose a strategic management tool as support for green marketing strategies, thus promoting, more quickly, the promotion of sustainable development in higher education institutions (HEIs). Design/methodology/approach Four universities were chosen, from the literature, in terms of best practices for sustainable development, where the main dimensions used by green marketing were mapped. Based on them, the BSC structure was adapted to enhance its strategies. Findings To achieve the objective of this work, this paper proposed an adaptation of the original BSC for better management of green marketing strategies for universities, based on four dimensions: community members, university members, product and strategy. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is to propose a BSC as a strategic management system focused on the green marketing of universities to accelerate the promotion of sustainable development in HEIs.