Stakeholder-Based Sustainability Governance in Higher Education: A Salience and Process-Oriented Framework

Universities increasingly rely on stakeholder engagement to advance sustainability. However, existing sustainability assessment frameworks often overlook how stakeholder influence varies across institutional processes. This study develops a conceptual stakeholder governance framework for university sustainability by identifying, classifying, and prioritizing stakeholders using Stakeholder Theory and the Stakeholder Salience Model. A structured integrative and interpretative literature review was conducted to examine stakeholder roles in higher education sustainability. An initial set of 36 stakeholder categories identified in the literature was consolidated into 17 functional stakeholder groups and subsequently classified as definitive, expectant, or latent according to the attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency. To represent stakeholder relevance across institutional functions, the study proposes a Stakeholder Influence Intensity Matrix that provides an interpretative synthesis of stakeholder influence across eight core university processes within the academic and management subsystems. The findings suggest that effective university sustainability depends on differentiated stakeholder governance strategies rather than uniform engagement approaches. Definitive stakeholders exert the greatest systemic influence, whereas expectant and latent stakeholders contribute through indirect or process-specific interactions that strengthen institutional legitimacy, adaptability, and resilience. The proposed framework provides a conceptual and analytical reference for stakeholder identification, prioritization, and sustainability governance in higher education institutions (HEIs), while offering a foundation for future empirical validation across diverse institutional contexts.