Cybersociety and University Sustainability: The Challenge of Holistic Restructuring in Universities in Chile, Spain, and Peru

Cybersociety and University Sustainability: The Challenge of Holistic Restructuring in Universities in Chile, Spain, and Peru

Guillermo Domínguez-Fernández, Esther Prieto-Jiménez, Peter Backhouse, Eduardo Ismodes

The global challenge of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals present a framework of opportunities, in which universities must respond to the demands of a sustainable social organisation by addressing the issues of quality education, the participation and inclusion of different sectors, and the need to promote university social responsibility. In response to this situation, we examine three experiences that highlight the reorganisation demanded at each of the three organisational levels: 1) Macro: the need for cooperation between different universities in Chile’s “macrocampus”; 2) Meso: the organisation and running of faculties in light of the challenges to renew curriculums with the experience implemented by the Social Sciences Faculty of Pablo de Olavide University in Spain; and, 3) Micro: the integration of students and commitment to the needs of the social surroundings, with the E-QUIPU experience implemented at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) in Peru. The report we present is based on a case study, and the findings and conclusions lead us to propose a new holistic-organisational paradigm to facilitate the sustainability of universities. The results of the restructuring allowed us to conduct a meta-evaluation of the sustainability of organisations within a problematic situation (COVID-19), which tested the results of the restructuring objective of Cybersociety.

2020

sustainability, crisis, University, networks, knowledge society, cyber society

10.3390/su12145722

Biotemas

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Environmental effects of industries and plants, Renewable energy sources, Environmental sciences