Universities That Learn to Tackle the Challenges of Sustainability: Case Study of the University of Córdoba (Spain)

On their path to sustainability, universities must consider both individual and organizational components. Universities are organizations that also have the capacity to learn and evolve. By means of an analysis conducted over the past 20 years at the University of Córdoba (Spain), this article identifies the variables present in the University’s environmental sustainability process, characterizing its evolution through different stages and proposing an organizational model that orders these variables into a system within the framework of complexity. This model highlights the importance of a scientific-technical structure as catalyst, facilitator, and attractor of transformative flows within the organization, which could be a key component of its evolution towards sustainability. It also underscores the possibility of using environmental awareness and the perceived norm as indicators of the system. This characterization reveals the potential of these variables as indicators of progress and anchoring points for the permanent monitoring of the system, and it will also help to design potentially more effective and forceful actions and could prove valuable as a comparison indicator between universities.