4 research outputs found
Opening up the Pandora's box of sustainability league tables of universities: a Kafkaesque perspective
The aim of this paper is to explore the institutional impact of sustainability league tables on current university agendas. It focuses on a narrative critique of one such league table, the UK's âGreen League Table', compiled and reported by the student campaigning NGO, âPeople & Planetâ annually between 2007 and 2013. Through a Kafkaesque perspective, this paper offers the proposition that such league tables could be acting as an institutional hegemonic mechanism for social legitimacy, through the desire by universities to show that environmental issues are effectively under control. Espoused eco-narratives of the âcarbon targets imperativeâ and âengagement' can serve as a form of deception, by merely embracing the narrative as a rhetorical device. Moreover, they can serve the exclusive, particularistic self-interests of a growing legion of âcarbon managersâ, âsustainability managersâ and âenvironmental managers' in satisfying the neo-liberal institutional drive from their vice chancellors