Methods for engaging higher education stakeholders in transdisciplinary value discussions

In May 2025, Haaga-Helia organised an international online workshop where 41 higher education students, teachers, and researchers from Europe and beyond gathered to gain knowledge and hands-on practice in sustainable leadership and transdisciplinary collaboration. This article demonstrates an interactive and experiential methodological approach to engaging stakeholders in cross-border value discussions in digital environments.

New leadership skills and competences are required from both individuals and organisations, as stakeholder engagement and interaction are affected by constant technological developments and evolving digital opportunities to form communities and drive initiatives across borders.

As part of an EU-funded RDI project on global thought leadership (SHUTTLE), the Haaga-Helia project team was responsible for organising and facilitating an online workshop on the principles and practices of sustainable business leadership, transdisciplinary stakeholder collaboration, and digital community building. The aim was to encourage higher education stakeholders to think and act as thought leaders and agents of sustainable change in the digital era.

Sustainable leadership and transdisciplinary learning

There are numerous theoretical accounts of what constitutes sustainable leadership, but key characteristics often cited include influencing and guiding individuals, organisations, communities, stakeholder networks, and entire societies towards long-term strategic collaboration and shared value creation. Sustainable leadership has the purpose of solving common human problems while driving positive economic, social, and environmental impacts (Vesala-Varttala 2025).

According to Liao (2022), sustainable leadership can be seen as a holistic and value-based leadership approach consisting of intersecting levels: 1) individual level, 2) organizational level, and 3) cross-level. The individual level refers to critical awareness of individual values and assumptions, while the organisational level refers to the organisational culture, purpose, and strategic guidance encompassing the entire societal value chain. The cross-level, then, refers to the interaction between individuals and organisations in aligning their values for co-creating a shared sustainability vision and establishing long-term collaboration.

Overall, these three levels can be seen as working together to achieve systemic sustainable changes on a societal and global level in line with such overarching sustainability frameworks as the UN Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), and Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG).

In practice, impactful multi-stakeholder collaboration for sustainability transformation requires competences in transdisciplinary learning, research, and leadership (Barret et al. 2019; Lawrence et al. 2022; Barth et al. 2023). In transdisciplinary learning contexts, people from both in and out of academia and representing different backgrounds come together to co-create and test solutions to real-world sustainability challenges.

Barth et al. (2023) propose a conceptual framework that divides transdisciplinary learning into three dimensions:

• individual competence development and reflexivity
• experience-based collaboration involving organizations and communities
• societal interaction that goes beyond individual and group boundaries and triggers learning as a society.

Transdisciplinary learning can be seen as an ongoing journey that starts with an individual level of sustainable competence development, progresses to collaborative value negotiations and co-creation of solutions to real-world problems in specific contexts, and culminates in societal learning among diverse stakeholders such as educational institutions, businesses, non-profits, and public policymakers to achieve system-level changes. Barth et al. (2023) underline the importance of continually transferring new insights, innovative practices, and reflexive learning processes from context-specific projects to wider societal and global initiatives.

As transdisciplinary collaboration involves participants from diverse disciplinary, professional, and cultural backgrounds, it is of crucial importance to negotiate norms, values, and assumptions in the early stages of any transdisciplinary learning process. According to Lawrence et al. (2022) this is to ‘ensure that space for ongoing reflection and dialogue is embedded in the process’. This in turn can help address challenges and conflicts in transdisciplinary collaboration and facilitate ‘reflexive processes that continually bring out participant perspectives, attitudes, and goals’.

From theory to practice: engaging participants in value reflections

After an introductory lecture about the topic, the online workshop participants engaged in interactive reflections on their individual perspectives to sustainable leadership. The focus was on increasing people’s self-awareness of personal values, practicing value-based dialogue, and learning to negotiate values across disciplines, generations, and cultures. The reflections were visualized as word clouds using Mentimeter, which provided a basis for critical discussion.

The values most frequently mentioned included respect, freedom, equality, and nature, reflecting a strong emphasis on mutual respect, equality, and sustainable living. Other recurring values mentioned, such as trust, honesty, responsibility, and creativity, highlighted the importance of integrity and innovation. Participants also mentioned socially oriented values, such as support, community, and feminism, which indicated commitment to ethical and societal issues.

Participants’ reflections on sustainable leadership emphasised responsibility, balance, development, and collaboration, suggesting that they viewed sustainability as responsible action requiring collective effort to negotiate balance between competing interests. Additional concepts brought up were ecology, recycling, future, and long-lasting impact, which pointed to the need for environmental care and long-term solutions. Practical ideas such as reducing waste, consuming less, and buying local also emerged, linking sustainability to everyday choices and community engagement.

Overall, participants associated sustainability with both environmental responsibility and social and economic balance.

From individual reflections to collective value discussions

Sustainable change and sustainable leadership require skills for making transparent and negotiating different values, assumptions, and needs among diverse stakeholder groups. It is therefore important to get used to conducting and critically analysing value discussions in transdisciplinary contexts (Barth et al. 2023; Lawrence at al. 2022).

As the next step, the online workshop participants were divided into eight small groups consisting of both higher education staff and students from different age groups, disciplines and cultures. Each group had a 30-minute discussion based on predefined, and somewhat provocative, trigger statements about sustainability. The workshop facilitators encouraged bold discussions, openness, critical thinking, and active listening, with selected group members documenting key points in shared files.

Half of the groups discussed sustainable leadership, consumer values, and stakeholder expectations respectively. The trigger statements were:

• Sustainable leadership cannot change the way businesses pursue profit.
• I would not buy from a company whose values conflict with mine.
• The difference between opinions and values is the price. If you are not willing to pay extra for acting in accordance with your values, what you call values are just opinions.
• It is impossible for a company to give equal consideration to the expectations of all stakeholders in its decision-making processes.

In their discussions, participants felt that profit and sustainability can coexist if companies focus more on long-term value creation instead of short-term gains, though smaller firms may face greater challenges. Participants expressed willingness to avoid companies whose values they do not share, but affordability is often an issue that students need to prioritize in their current life situation.

Participants rejected the idea that the difference between values and opinions is the price. Rather, they stressed that practical actions and their impacts, not cost, signal value-based commitment. Finally, balancing all stakeholder expectations was seen as unrealistic: creating shared value requires negotiation, prioritization, transparency, and regulatory guidance to reach an optimal balance.

The other half of the groups discussed the role of laws and regulations, individual influence, stakeholder dialogue, and digital tools in promoting sustainable behaviour respectively. The trigger statements were:

• Only a change in the law can bring about genuine sustainable change.
• Individual consumers alone cannot influence the progress of climate change.
• Organizations should invite competitors and critics to participate in stakeholder dialogues.
• If my local grocery store had a digital application suggesting more sustainable products to me based on my purchase history, I would use it and try to change my buying behaviour.

Participants agreed that systemic measures and individual actions must complement each other. Laws provide structure and guidance, but cannot drive holistic change without education, awareness building, and co-innovation of practical solutions. Participants saw that individual efforts alone cannot solve climate change, but they can play a critical role in shaping demand and influencing businesses, especially if combined with collective action.

Lack of trust and transparency in stakeholder dialogues and digital platforms were key concerns, underlining scepticism about greenwashing and profit-driven motives. As the most effective communication strategies to engage stakeholders, participants preferred compact, visual, and emotionally engaging content in the form of informal stakeholder dialogue and education in various digital communities of practice.

Gaining insight into sustainable leadership and online engagement

The workshop helped the SHUTTLE project researchers gain critical insights into the challenges of sustainable leadership, transdisciplinary learning, and leveraging digital learning environments for community building. Concrete interactive and experiential methods and materials were tested and explored through guiding and engaging online participants to discuss their sustainability values.

According to feedback, workshop participants were pleased with gaining knowledge of sustainable leadership, particularly from the perspective of values and shared decision-making. They appreciated the interactive learning methods, value discussions, and reflection opportunities in a cross-disciplinary, cross-generational, and cross-cultural context. They also felt that the session opened new perspectives and encouraged them to engage in stakeholder dialogues and collaboration in the future. Overall, sustainability was understood as a balance of environmental, social, and economic responsibility requiring individual commitment, collective effort and systemic guidance.

As the SHUTTLE project workshop was integrated with the Erasmus+ funded blended intensive programme (BIP) Krea Spring School 2025 at Haaga-Helia, the participating students were immediately able to apply their knowledge and insights to practice. The aim of the BIP was to train students in hands-on sustainability storytelling and stakeholder engagement on digital channels. In September 2025, a group of around 20 SHUTTLE project researchers gathered to further analyse and critically discuss the workshop data in an offline staff training event at the UCT School of Business of the University of Technology and Chemistry in Prague, Czechia.

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