20.500.12556/DiRROS-23970 Joint sustainability reports (JSRs) to promote the third mission of universities Higher Education Institutions (HEI) face increasing expectations to engage in sustainability reporting despite limited resources and heterogeneous practices. This study explores how Joint Sustainability Reports (JSR), built on the EU Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME), can serve as a cooperative and digitally supported framework to enhance transparency, comparability, and efficiency while strengthening universities’ third mission of societal engagement and knowledge transfer. Qualitative interviews with six sustainability experts from German and Austrian universities of applied sciences (UAS) highlight persistent challenges such as data gaps, staffing shortages, and weak strategic anchoring. The findings show that VSME-based JSRs, through shared data collection, centralised coordination, and modular reporting, enable resource and data pooling, standardised indicators, and cross-university synergies. By making social contributions more visible and credible, JSRs reinforce accountability and advance universities’ third mission in fostering community outreach and sustainable development universities higher education institutions (HEI) sustainability reporting CSR ESG joint sustainability reports (JSRs) true false true Angleški jezik Ni določen © 2025 by the authors Neznano 2025-10-28 15:25:59 2025-10-28 15:26:00 2025-10-29 03:55:29 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2025 0 0 Nasl. z nasl. zaslona; Opis vira z dne 28. 10. 2025; str. 1-32 no. 21, art. no. 9587 Vol. 17 2025 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 2025-01-01 502.131.1:378 2071-1050 10.3390/su17219587 255119107 251029Biloslavo255119107.pdf 251029Biloslavo255119107.pdf 1 05A2EE090DE69D812F9E8A24DA910D8B 10ed6a08a89fda7d06611168c2b0173a74f8401809c47c13091e0dcfc22b696e 20f72721-b40a-11f0-9bb7-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=35604 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/21/9587 1 07314085-b40a-11f0-9bb7-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=35603 Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče Koper / Centro di Ricerche Scientifiche Capodistria 0 0 0