Institutional Sustainability Capacities and Mission Integration Challenges: An Analytical Case Study from an Ecuadorian University

Higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly seek to translate sustainability commitments into coordinated teaching, research, and community engagement. This analytical case study examined whether favorable perceived institutional conditions were accompanied by mission integration in an Ecuadorian university. A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design was applied to a census of 125 faculty and academic-administrative staff using a nine-item exploratory questionnaire with a three-category ordinal response scale. Respondents generally reported favorable perceptions of organizational culture, faculty training, research relevance, community engagement, and institutional planning, whereas mission integration was concentrated around the middle response category. Association analyses showed positive relationships between all operational domains and mission integration; however, psychometric and multivariable sensitivity analyses also indicated substantial overlap among the institutional-capacity indicators. The findings support the mission integration gap as an interpretive description of the divergence between favorable institutional conditions and comparatively weaker coordination among university missions, rather than as a validated latent construct or evidence of causal effects. The case suggests that sustainable higher education management requires explicit organizational mechanisms that connect institutional planning, academic development, knowledge production, and societal engagement.