Sustainability mapping

The mapping and coordination of sustainability and sustainability transition related research at IOA aimed at giving a quantitative overview of how the department relates and contributes to the topic of sustainability, green transition and other climate associated matters. That meant shedding light on all the different educational activities IOA has to offer that fall within the scope of these topics. And it meant listing those publications from 2018 till 2022 where IOA staff have contributed with assessing the topic, so-called green publications. The results from the mapping are presented below. For clarity, the phrase green transition (GT) is used as an umbrella term for all the sustainability related topics.

Education

Many of the courses that’s being taught at IOA operate within the scope of GT. This includes both mandatory courses and electives, and courses taught at both bachelor and graduate level. In total, 12,6 % of all courses administrated by IOA can be said to have a relation to GT.

The programs in International business and politics, European business and cand.merc. stand out with several courses meeting the relevant criteria.

The relation is evaluated based on the official course descriptions and whether these mentions GT as a course focus point. This is for example the instance with the bachelor elective with the suiting title Financing the Green Transition. Here the course description states that an attending student will “acquire systematic knowledge about the financing channels of the green transition”. Another example is from the graduate course Organizing Change. Here students will “discuss and frame grand challenges e.g. The Climate Emergency”.

It is statements like these that the mapping has sought out and included in the dataset in the category of education.

Publications

Another part of the mapping consisted of counting how many green publications IOA have contributed to over the last 5 years (from 2018-2022). Many publications come out of IOA, and GT is frequently a topic that’s written upon. In total, 34 staff members, 25 of them current, have been involved in green publications from 2018-2022. Overall, IOA has had an increase in green publications from 2018 to 2022.

In 2018: out of a total of 94 articles, 11 of them are categorized as green.
In 2019: 82 articles, 9 of them green.
In 2020: 106 articles, 20 of them green.
In 2021: 111 articles, 18 of the green.
In 2022: 121 articles, 25 of them green.

Examples of themes that green publications often center about are things such as sustainable finance and economy, environmental protection and urbanization and sustainable innovation and technologies.

Writing about GT continues to be a hot topic; and since the mapping, more green publications have already been published.

All of IOA’s publications can be accessed here.