405 - Corporate Sustainability & Value Creation
Core/Elective: Core
Credits: 1.0
Quarter Taught: Winter
Synopsis:
Orthodox economic theory tends to assign responsibility for social and environmental welfare to governments and limits the responsibility of business to maximizing profits within legal constraints. No longer so.
The current wave of corporate sustainability sees entrepreneurship and corporate innovation as a (often the) solution to issues like climate change, gender and racial equity, pollution, social service delivery and economic development. Does the so-called win-win-win scenario between turning profits and contributing to global sustainability really exist? More importantly perhaps, how can a company or a new venture identify and realize sustainable business models and practices?
This course examines these questions from the perspective of a for-profit company or entrepreneur that must generate economic value in competitive markets to persist, focusing on practices and frameworks for integrating many of these understandings forging a viable sustainable businesses: assessing the drivers for corporate sustainability, pathways for creating public value while appropriating private value, and developing organizational strategies for sustainability transformations.
This course is not a basic management or strategy class applied to a particular industry, technology or environmental or social challenge. It builds on basic frameworks for running effective businesses, and then integrates new frameworks and practical tools for an advanced understanding of sustainability management.
Course Objectives:
By the end of this course, students will:
- Understand the fundamental functioning and governance of contemporary corporations as they relate to economic value creation, understand basic principles of planetary, biological and social systems that generate resources needed for value creation; and central tensions that result;
- Be familiar with basic tools and standards for measuring and reporting corporate sustainability, and know how, from the perspective of business leaders, to use them in decision-making;
- Be able to analyze the main external drivers of corporate sustainability (market and non-market);
- Understand principles, strategies and business models that companies can use to create economic value while simultaneously helping people and planet;
- Be able to think about business models and decisions, and their environmental and societal consequences in an integrated and systemic way;
- Have enhanced their skills to communicate persuasively about complex and contentious issues, and to determine the most effective implementation for strategies aimed at improving sustainability;
- Be conversant in contemporary corporate sustainability issues, such as SDGs, ESG, CSR, etc.; and
- Understand trends and future scenarios in key areas, such as investing, technology and resources