2.

2 Sustainability in education

Brundtland Commission of the United Nations (1987) initiated and introduced

the discourse about sustainability and acknowledged three major constituents of
sustainable development namely, economic, social and environmental. The perception
and perspective of Brutland towards sustainability resulted in a rise of scientific
confabulations, which gives greater attention to responsibilities of people in various
aspects such as business, economics and ethics (Kramar 2014; McCann & Sweet
2014). Interpretations and elucidations given by scientists portraying sustainability as
an allied and interconnected agent with societal development, which retains its
equilibrium with the aspects economical, social and ecological, good quality in
offering products and services, recognizing for all organizational stakeholders as
assets, continual growth and putting ethical considerations into practice.

Sustainability is the cardinal and fundamental principle of sustainable

leadership. Sustainable leadership revealed its influence in many different settings and
contexts where educational settings and contexts are not exceptional (Filho, 2000).
The prominence and exigency to rationalize and commit in preserving sustainability
in our environment underlines the essentiality of fostering sustainability in many
aspects of lives, significantly in education and the leadership that leads the
stakeholders in the educational pool. In spite of many misapprehension and
misinterpretation about the concept of sustainability, it is primarily concerned with
developing, preserving what matters, spreads, and lasts by generating positive
association and development among people without destroying others in the present
and in future. In educational perspective, Fullan (2004) viewed sustainability as the
ability of a system to involve and participate in the intricacies of uninterrupted
improvement, consistent with deep values of human purpose. Studies conducted to
investigate the notion of sustainability documented contrasting and diverging
perspectives and this established an evidence in giving an indispensable consideration
in how organizations functionalize the concept. In this aspect, it has been asserted that
sustainable leadership practices permit a swift, resilient response, which is
competitive and captivating for stakeholders (Avery & Bergsteiner, 2011).