Time to move from ‘integrated thinking’ to ‘integrated doing’

Time to move from ‘integrated thinking’ to ‘integrated doing’

South African universities are losing the sustainability race to the private sector, and outdated leadership styles are partly to blame, a strategy adviser to major institutions has warned.

Speaking at the Nelson Mandela University faculty of business and economic sciences’ Breakfast Club during Africa International Teaching Week (20-24 October), Dr Brian Chicksen said higher education was playing catch-up to business and industry when it came to sustainability, although there was an opportunity to learn and lead.

“When I came over to higher education, it was quite evident that, while universities were playing in the sustainability space, they were not at the front end of scholarship and teaching,” he said at the event held at the university’s business school in Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. “The private sector had gone further in terms of conceptual thinking.”

A physician by training, Chicksen has spent the past two decades in strategy and sustainable development after 22 years at the mining company AngloGold Ashanti. In his current role he also advises the University of Pretoria’s executive on strategy and sustainability and serves on the Sustainable Development Solutions Network South Africa’s local leadership council.

He credited South African business leader Mervyn King with popularising the concept of integrated reporting, but said universities now needed to go further.

Integrated thinking

“You need to start with integrated thinking,” he explained. “It then sets you up to advance reporting, but there’s a piece in the middle that’s missing.

“We need to think about integrated doing. In the absence of integrated doing, we’re still going to have combined reporting.

“When we do all three, integrated thinking, integrated doing and integrated reporting, it becomes a truly strategic approach.”

Universities, he said, must see themselves, not as detached intellectual hubs, but as institutions of society.

“They cease to exist in the absence of society,” Chicksen argued. “We need to make sure that what we do is relevant to societal needs. Sustainability should be hardwired into our DNA.”

He described operational sustainability as “the stewardship of people, infrastructure and resources under our care”, commending Nelson Mandela University for its community-based orientation.

Distinguishing feature of universities

“Your immersion in your communities presents a very distinguishing feature of who you are,” he said. He pointed to the university’s Missionvale Campus, where its new medical school has been deliberately positioned in an under-resourced area of Gqeberha, as an example of ‘anchoring’ within the host community.

He also cited the unique differentiator of the university’s Ocean Sciences Campus as a node for marine studies and research on the ‘blue economy’.

Through their teaching, research and engagement, universities produce graduates and knowledge that influence the world beyond campus.

Leadership for sustainability

Sustainability, he said, also depends on internal culture and leadership style. “Some of the challenges in higher education are that leadership remains largely ‘command and control’,” he said. “Universities talk about being agile and flexible but the reality often tells a different story.”

“There has to be enough central control to hold us together, but also sufficient discretion for activities at the periphery,” as this would encourage innovation, he said.

“We’ve been geared towards individualism, promotion based on personal success and publication. But it cannot be individualism at the expense of the collective.”

Collaboration and curiosity, he said, were essential to meeting South Africa’s grand challenges of poverty and inequality – and the talent was there: “We just need to find the trick to tap into it.”

Traditional metrics of success, such as journal citations, were not enough, he warned. “It’s nice to know our citation impact, but we’re not telling the full story. We need to get to a space where we can say: What is the difference we’re making in the lived experiences of people at community level?”

Transdisciplinarity

Chicksen urged an embrace of transdisciplinarity, and indigenous knowledge systems alongside Western academic models.

“We don’t have a monopoly on knowledge,” he said. “When you go into local communities, they have seriously embedded knowledge from their lived experience. We need to tap into that and form equal partnerships, without power imbalances. That’s what enables us to become more deeply connected with society in a very real way.”

Sustainability leadership, he said, must be seen at every level of the institution.

“What happens in the corner office is important, but what happens in the kitchen is probably even more important,” he said. “Leaders must create the conditions for people to grow.”

Without fundamental change, he warned, universities risk producing reports about sustainability rather than actually achieving it.

The Breakfast Club at Business School is a regular Nelson Mandela University event that brings together academics and industry professionals to explore leadership and innovation themes in business and society.