142
M. C. D. S. e Benevides et al.
Fig. 1 Location of Santa
Catarina State in Brazil
Brazil
(HEIs) located in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina and compares these results with
those gathered from similar HEIs in Europe and North America. The principal aim of
the scheme is to capture data relating to a HEI’s approach to the concepts and practices
of green campuses, living laboratories and other economic and socioenvironmental
sustainability initiatives.
Benchmarking itself has a useful place in society and there are good examples
where this is applied to sustainability performance in HEIs,
1 but the potential disadvantage of this exercise degenerating into a process of simply collecting indicators
concerned only with establishing a position on a league table must be recognized
(Mayle et al. 2002). Instead, it is intended that this process should offer a useful means
of collecting and collating ideas with a view to revealing and importing best practices
in sustainability. The aim is to enhance the contribution of academia to a society that
is more focused towards sustainable development rather than a means of gaining a
competitive advantage. In this respect, the terms indicator-benchmarking provides a
more explicit distinction. Yet, it is acknowledged that a sense of competition can be an
important incentive to improvement, especially where complacency predominates.
However, it can be argued that the contacts established in face-to-face benchmarking
exercise rather than collecting and collating performance indicators offers a more
powerful driver for discovery and exploitation of good practice (Mayle et al. 2002).
In applying a benchmarking exercise to a group of HEIs in Santa Catarina, this study
attempts to highlight some of these issues arising from the experience.
Brazil’s state of Santa Catarina (SC—see Fig. 1) has one of the best set of socioeconomic indicators among the 27 Brazilian federative units. SC has 26 HEIs, which
accounts for just over 1% of the total number of the HEIs in Brazil. On the other hand,
SC is host to two of the 13 Brazilian universities to reach the maximum grade (grade
five) General Course Index, as assessed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in
2019. With a territorial area corresponding to 1.12% of Brazil’s 8,516 million-km2
1 An example is: https://peopleandplanet.org/university-league—accessed on April 5, 2020.
M. C. D. S. e Benevides et al.
Fig. 1 Location of Santa
Catarina State in Brazil
Brazil
(HEIs) located in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina and compares these results with
those gathered from similar HEIs in Europe and North America. The principal aim of
the scheme is to capture data relating to a HEI’s approach to the concepts and practices
of green campuses, living laboratories and other economic and socioenvironmental
sustainability initiatives.
Benchmarking itself has a useful place in society and there are good examples
where this is applied to sustainability performance in HEIs,
1 but the potential disadvantage of this exercise degenerating into a process of simply collecting indicators
concerned only with establishing a position on a league table must be recognized
(Mayle et al. 2002). Instead, it is intended that this process should offer a useful means
of collecting and collating ideas with a view to revealing and importing best practices
in sustainability. The aim is to enhance the contribution of academia to a society that
is more focused towards sustainable development rather than a means of gaining a
competitive advantage. In this respect, the terms indicator-benchmarking provides a
more explicit distinction. Yet, it is acknowledged that a sense of competition can be an
important incentive to improvement, especially where complacency predominates.
However, it can be argued that the contacts established in face-to-face benchmarking
exercise rather than collecting and collating performance indicators offers a more
powerful driver for discovery and exploitation of good practice (Mayle et al. 2002).
In applying a benchmarking exercise to a group of HEIs in Santa Catarina, this study
attempts to highlight some of these issues arising from the experience.
Brazil’s state of Santa Catarina (SC—see Fig. 1) has one of the best set of socioeconomic indicators among the 27 Brazilian federative units. SC has 26 HEIs, which
accounts for just over 1% of the total number of the HEIs in Brazil. On the other hand,
SC is host to two of the 13 Brazilian universities to reach the maximum grade (grade
five) General Course Index, as assessed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in
2019. With a territorial area corresponding to 1.12% of Brazil’s 8,516 million-km2
1 An example is: https://peopleandplanet.org/university-league—accessed on April 5, 2020.