Publications
Cultural Sustainability Tourism Lessons from the Amazon to the Mediterranean
Sharon M. Jackson, Rosa V. Espinoza and Stella I. Diomantaraki (2025)
The European Sustainability Academy, Crete, Greece and Amazon Research Internacional, Lima, Perú.
Academic and practitioner studies demonstrate increasing global sustainability crises including climate-change, biodiversity loss and waste. This has catalyzed the rise of terms ‘net-zero’, ‘green transition’ and ‘green-skills’. Many employees beyond the energy sector do not know what this means, nor the relevance of green-skills in their own roles. Management Institute studies reveal limited sustainability education and training in sectors including tourism and hospitality.
This study builds on existing sustainable tourism programs by focusing on the overlooked area of workplace learning, competencies development, for the people increasingly expected to manage and lead the green transition. Massive levels of change require new approaches and transversal skills. The aim is a multidisciplinary, conceptual framework for knowledge, skills and behaviours, in sustainable tourism management and leadership, informed by existing management competency frameworks and underpinned by theory in learning transfer and experiential learning. Proposed pedagogy is anchored in transferable community cultural insight, including bee-keeping, with storytelling for making sense of sustainable tourism.
Through a Greece tourism lens of enquiry, the methodology includes a review of academic and practitioner studies on existing sustainable tourism management education and citizen-science models from The Amazon. The validity of the conceptual framework is measured through a wide range of perspectives from tourism sector bodies, tourism education, citizen-science initiatives, management development institutions, policy makers and explorer researchers. A discourse analysis and coding approach makes sense of the data.
Findings suggest most Greek tourism professionals do not know what green management competencies are. This manifests in not knowing how to adapt operational decision making to meet net-zero and sustainability objectives, and feelings of inadequacy when responding to business partners and clients. Adaptation of citizen-science expedition tourism could play a role in developing sustainability management competencies for tourism sector employees. The emerging framework is a proposal for adaptation and escalation for other locations.
KEYWORDS: Sustainability; Tourism; Greece; Green-skills; Citizen-science, Management
Presented at the 6th International Conference on Cultural Sustainable Tourism (CST), The University of Maia, Portugal, May 2024.
Full publication available for download, open access
Quantifying the Carbon Footprint of Events: A Life Cycle Assessment-Based Framework for Evaluating Impact of Location and Timing.
Yagmur Atescan Yuksek, Sanjooram Paddea, Sharon Jackson, Mark Jolly and Konstantinos Salonitis (2025)
Sustainable Manufacturing Systems Centre, School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing, Cranfield University, MK43 0AL, UK and European Sustainability Academy, Drapanos 73008, Greece.
The rapid expansion of the global events industry in recent decades has been acknowledged as a significant contributor to environmental pollution, intensifying the need to urgently address global climate change mitigation goals. In this research, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based framework is proposed to quantify the carbon footprint of events, taking into account the event's location and timing. This framework provides principles for conducting inventory analysis, aiming to establish a standardized approach for calculating the carbon footprint of events. To validate this framework, a comparative analysis of two events with same scale and nature but held in different locations during the same time of the year, is conducted. One event takes place in Greece, while the other occurs in the United Kingdom in April. The carbon footprint assessment encompasses various factors, including emissions from attendee travel, energy consumption, and waste management. Furthermore, the assessment also considers the emission reductions resulting from attendees not using their personal household resources. This accounts for the actual additional emissions released into the atmosphere as a consequence of the event. By comparing the carbon footprints of events held in different locations, it becomes possible to identify significant emission sources and formulate targeted strategies for mitigation. Moreover, this study emphasizes the significance of considering the environmental credentials, the location and the timing when planning and making decisions regarding events.
Presented at GCSM – 19th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Argentina, 2023.
Book of abstracts
Full publication available for download, open access in the Book Series "Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering"
Valuing Public Perceptions of Biophilia Impact on Human Well-Being: 2 Sustainable Building Case Studies from Greece and India
S. M. Jackson, L. Singh, T. Doshi (2021)
This study focusses on valuing the ‘green technologies’ of designing and building with nature to encourage a wider dimension to the current ratings and evaluations of effectiveness of ‘green buildings’, by including the perceived impact on human well-being. The authors believe that for buildings to offer a ‘sustainable’ way of living, they must also include the technologies and intelligence to provide what all of life needs to thrive beyond just surviving. This study aims to give a wider understanding of ‘green buildings’ beyond reporting on energy, water and waste, to show a more sophisticated, wider evaluation of sustainable buildings by including the value of subjective perception of individuals’ experience, and, to contribute to changing existing paradigms about how ‘green buildings’ are valued. Other studies conclude that leading bodies for ‘green building’ certification have failed to provide a holistic measure of sustainable buildings. Current environmental measures of ‘green buildings’ conflict with the values of human health and there are conflicting ‘logics’ and technologies with little consensus on what defines a sustainable building. The perceived ‘value’ of the health and well-being benefits of a ‘green building’ appear to be disregarded as a measure of effectiveness; this chapter challenges that view. Findings from questionnaires and testimonials from the public using two green buildings in different countries suggest that people do believe that they experience physical and emotional health benefits from spending time in green buildings. Specifically, it related to their perception of the reduction of stress and anxiety. This suggests that valuing the ‘unmeasurable’ perceived benefits of sustainable buildings on health and well-being, equally alongside quantitative audits and environmental measures, could bring combined societal and environmental benefits. More research and evaluation with larger samples, more complex data collection, over longer time periods in different countries is necessary to build on the initial findings of this novel study. Further research could make an important contribution to greater understanding about the positive impacts of biophilia design for healthcare institutions, education buildings, community spaces, workplaces and homes.
You can obtain a soft copy of our research (Chapter 16) or the whole book which includes other excellent studies on Green Urbanisation via the publisher Springer.
Lessons from Sustainable Entrepreneurship towards Social Innovation in Healthcare: How green buildings can promote health and wellbeing
S. M. Jackson, J.K. Maleganos, K Alamantariotou (2017)
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest a connection between the competitiveness of an organization and the health of the communities in which it operates. These communities consist of ‘stakeholder groups’ (Freeman, 1984), both inside and outside the organization, with the term ‘stakeholder’ being broadly defined as anyone who affects or is affected by an organization (Clarkson, 1995; Freeman, 1984; Mitchell et al., 1997). Where the organization is seen to be operating in the positive interest of local society and the natural environment, studies have shown that creative and innovative solutions to everyday ‘internal’ organizational challenges can often come from external ‘secondary stakeholder groups’ and people in the local community (Beleno and Andres, 2014; Howaldt et al., 2014). Green building design is becoming a popular area of sustainability innovation for minimizing impacts on the natural environment and improving human health through improved working conditions indoors. Environmental health studies suggest that people spend 90 per cent of their time indoors and therefore the ‘health’ of the indoor environment has a direct impact on human health and holistic wellbeing (Allen et al., 2015). However, most studies rely on people’s perceptions of comfort and aesthetics of ‘green buildings’ and there is conflicting debate about the real impact of ‘green building’ on improved human health (Paul and Taylor, 2007). The issue of ‘innovation’ towards sustainable development of improved performance and enhanced quality of service in healthcare is an ongoing international challenge (EURAM, 2012). Some studies have developed ‘health performance indicators’ which suggest the benefits of green building hospitals include faster patient recovery, improved staff performance and reduced infection rates (Allen et al., 2015). With this in mind, this chapter addresses the following questions, through a literature review and a single case study approach. • What can the healthcare sector learn from sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation? • Can ecological buildings and ‘sustainable spaces’ positively impact on the performance and quality of services provided by healthcare organizations, for the benefit of stakeholder groups, including clients, patients and employees? The conclusion of the study is that health performance indicators do suggest that patients recover faster in hospitals with eco-design and connectivity with nature (Allen et al., 2015) and both patient recovery and staff morale and performance are improved by the adoption of biophilic design to connect people to nature and bring buildings to life (Kellert et al., 2008). More broadly there is evidence of a sense of improved health and wellbeing in communities that are connected with nature (Tracada and Caperna, 2012).
You can obtain a copy via the publisher Routledge.
Sense and Sustainability
S. M. Jackson (2012)
In Cranfield on Corporate Sustainability, Chapter 11, pp.184 – 198. Routledge, 2012. Ebook September 2017. Editor: David Grayson. To download the full chapter
This paper is based on academic research, however it is written in a practitioner, management style. This chapter explains the importance of ensuring congruent stories in companies to encourage managers’ sensemaking to be aligned with the organisation’s corporate sustainability aspirations. This is illustrated through real business case examples and suggestions for practical action.
How Managers Make Sense of CSR: The impact of Eastern Philosophy in Japanese Owned Transnational Corporations
S. M. Jackson (2012)
In G. P. Prastacos, F. Wang and K. E. Soderquist (Eds.), ‘Leadership & Management in a Changing World: Lessons from Ancient East and West Philosophy’, Springer- Verlag.
This paper was presented at a conference in Athens in June 2011 ‘Leadership & Management in a Changing World: Lessons from Ancient East and West Philosophy’. The conference was an inaugural collaboration between Athens and Beijing Universities. This paper discusses an empirical research study conducted at two transnational Japanese consumer electronic product manufacturers to explore whether the underpinning corporate Japanese philosophy has an impact on how the operational mangers made sense of the organisational CSR aspirations.
Making Sense of Sustainability from a Business Manager’s Perspective
S. M. Jackson (2010)
Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility- Occasional Paper.
This paper is a summary of research conducted between 2007 and 2009 about how managers’ sensemaking process can lead to enacting or not enacting their organisation’s CSR or sustainability initiatives.
Apokoronas Environment Handbook
This contains a short articls about ESA. It is a concise compilation of very useful information on environmental related topics including recycling and waste, pollution, water conservation, energy management, access to the country and illegal building. Apokoronas Environment Handbook.
The official website of the Apokoronas Environmental Group which is committed to finding practical solutions to the challenges in the Apokoronas region.
