EMBEDDING SUSTAINABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ANALYZING MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS OF VIETNAMESE BUSINESS SCHOOLS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18173/2354-1075.2026-%25xKeywords:
higher education; mission and vision statements; sustainable development; VietnamAbstract
Although sustainability is increasingly reflected in higher education strategies worldwide, little is known about how it is represented in the strategic statements of business schools in emerging higher education contexts such as Vietnam. This study examines sustainability-related concepts in the mission and vision statements of 95 Vietnamese business schools. A content analysis combining descriptive frequency analysis with contextual examination of coded text was conducted using a literature-informed framework of 16 sustainability-related concepts. Sustainability-related language was identified in the strategic statements of 81 institutions (85.3%), with “community”, “responsibility”, and “sustainable development” being the most frequently represented concepts. In contrast, explicit references to environmental issues were relatively rare. The findings indicate that sustainability is widely represented in the strategic discourse of Vietnamese business schools, although the emphasis placed on different sustainability-related concepts is uneven. The study extends research on sustainability in university strategic statements to an under-researched national and institutional context while highlighting the distinction between the strategic representation of sustainability and its implementation in institutional practice.
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