Sustainable Institutional Management and Educational Service in Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This systematic review aimed to synthesize the available scientific evidence on sustainable institutional management and educational service in higher education institutions, with an emphasis on technical and vocational education. Structured searches were conducted across academic search engines and databases (Scopus and its derivatives, SciELO, Redalyc, Dialnet, MDPI, ScienceDirect, Springer Link, and Google Scholar), combining the terms sustainable management, institutional sustainability, educational service, and educational quality in Spanish and English for the 2018-2026 period. After screening titles, abstracts, and full texts, 26 empirical, review, and conceptual studies were included. The findings show that institutional sustainability in higher education has mainly been examined through environmental, governance, and institutional reporting dimensions, with limited research from developing countries, while university sustainability management - the area directly related to sustainable institutional management - remains underexplored. In parallel, available Peruvian and Latin American studies confirm an association between educational management, leadership, and educational quality or service in technical institutions. However, none of the identified studies explicitly examines the relationship between institutional sustainability and educational service in technological higher education institutes, particularly in the Piura region. This specific empirical gap provides a methodological basis for conducting a correlational study of both variables in that context.