Corporate Sustainability Management in a Globalised World

2024/2025

Type: Mago-Lego

Delivered by: Department of Strategic and International Management

When: 3, 4 module

Open to: students of all HSE University campuses

Language: English

Abstract

This online course explores key issues and recent discussions within the field of corporate sustainability and social responsibility management, through theoretical and practical perspectives. Students will learn cutting-edge frameworks and tools for understanding the actors and corporate processes that shape organisations' management of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Spanning strategy, communication, changing regulation and governance, the course grapples with critical issues such as anti-corruption, labour rights and climate change, balancing incisive critique with suggestions for meaningful change. This analysis, supported by case studies, guest-speakers and experiential learning projects, equips students to tackle sustainability challenges effectively in their future work. Being a student-centered discipline designed with the application of the most innovative pedagogies focusing on creating a rich experience through action, reflection and learning the course aims to develop a new generation of responsible business leaders with a holistic mindset. It rests on a multi-disciplinary approach to learning and requires profound ecological awareness, development of systems thinking combined with emotional and spiritual intelligence.

Learning Objectives

Develop a mindset for responsible leaders managing corporate sustainability: a lens through which to analyze information in the contemporary globalized world and make business decisions for the sake of a thriving society and flourishing planet.
1) Knowing dimension: develop awareness and understanding of the contemporary challenges in the framework of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and major theories on corporate sustainability management;
2) Thinking dimension: develop systems and innovative thinking based on creativity, on both-and logic, long term thinking, applying principles of cyclical flow and interconnectedness;
3) Being dimension: learn about self and others by reflecting about values anchoring our identity, unexplored assumptions, habits of mind and creating/identifying student's personal mission;
4) Engage in action to make a difference: inspire to change habits and shape a new lifestyle for themselves.

Expected Learning Outcomes

1.1. Understand different motivations for organizations to adopt corporate sustainability.
1.2. Recognise key tensions that surround the debate of corporate sustainability.
1.3. Understand three historical perspectives on corporate sustainability: 1. the issues, modes and rationales; 2. the actors: society, business, government and the natural environment; 3. three historical phases: industrialisation; the modern corporation; internationalisation.
1.4. Discuss how ethical decisions are made and what influences them.
1.5. Understand why and how the stakeholder approach was pioneered and developed in the Nordic context.
1.6. Analyse the past, present and possible future of company−stakeholder relationships.
2.1. Reflect on differences between corporate and business strategy in the context of corporate sustainability.
2.2. Identify different stages of alignment between an organization’s strategy and its corporate sustainability activities.
2.3. Discuss corporate political influence at the national and international levels.
2.4. Learn about the profound and complex influence that corporate products and services can have on sustainability, politics and daily life.
3.1. Provide five key differences between MNC and SME approaches to sustainability and responsibility.
3.2. Encourage you, that is, our future leaders, to critically assess how to promote sustainable development in different ways, whether engaging with an MNC or an SME.
3.3. Distinguish different types of organising for corporate sustainability that range between purely for-profit firms and non profit organisations.
3.4. Discuss foundation-owned businesses as well as different types of cooperatives as organisational forms that combine commercial and social value creation.
3.5. Reflect on B Corps as a legal form and certification mechanism for social businesses.
3.6. Reflect on possible future pathways for sustainability professionals.
3.7. Zoom in on the motivations, values, tasks and practices of sustainability professionals.
3.8. Distinguish between different approaches that investors use to incorporate.
3.9. Discuss the integration of sustainability into equities and other asset classes.
3.10. Understand different perspectives on government and corporate sustainability.
3.11. Understand how and why boundaries are changing between public (government) and private (business and civil society) regulation of corporate sustainability through interactions in ‘governance spheres’.
3.12. Distinguish the characteristics of different types of activist NGOs, their tactics and (aspired) outcomes.
3.13. Understand which businesses are likely to be targeted by NGO activism and how businesses respond to such activism.
3.14. Understand the behaviours of consumers in response to corporate sustainability actions.
3.15. Assess the successes and struggles of corporate sustainability efforts in reaching consumers and converting them to loyal customers.
4.1. Understand how boards can be designed so that they better consider ESG issues within their discussions.
4.2. Review how corporate governance issues that are relevant to sustainability are regulated through mandatory and voluntary frameworks.
4.3. Critically reflect on symbolic (‘talking’) versus substantive (‘walking’) approaches to CS and show how this may create both opportunities and threats for companies.
4.4. Raise critical awareness of rationales advanced to explain the phenomenon of corporate sustainability reporting (CSRep).
4.5. Develop knowledge of guidelines and regulatory frameworks that govern CSRep and enable students to critically evaluate their effectiveness in enhancing transparency and accountability.
4.6. Discuss the key challenges involved and look at the potential dark side of sustainability partnerships.
4.7. Explore which individual skills will help successfully engage in sustainability partnerships.
4.8. Explain how business models and business model innovation support corporate sustainability.
4.9. Give an overview of patterns and tools that support business model innovation for sustainability.
4.10. Understand what different types of sustainability standards exist.
4.11. Reflect on the (lack of) impact created by sustainability standards.
4.12. Distinguish different types of critique raised against sustainability standards.
5.1. Introduce the normative framework of human rights and explain its relevance for social expectations and regulatory developments on business and human rights (BHR).
5.2. Discuss the implications for socially responsible business and wider sustainability governance.
5.3. Describe cases of labour rights violations that commonly occur in global supply chains.
5.4. Identify institutional responses at different levels to improve working conditions in global supply chains.
5.5. Situate the challenge of climate change within the broader shift of the Anthropocene.
5.6. Reflect on careers in management as a calling or vocation to rethink the vast power that business has to solve our climate challenges and the role of the executive in managing these.
5.7. Familiarise with how companies approach anti-corruption, how this approach is evolving in the light of new research insights and what shortcomings and criticisms are raised.
5.8. Discuss the role of business in development work.
5.9. Reflect on the impact of business activities on development outcomes.
6.1. Reflect on our individual roles within corporate sustainability.
6.2. Benefit from knowledge transfer with guest-speakers on corporate sustainability management in a globalised world.
6.3. Cultivate the sustainability mindset: as an integrated way of thinking (knowledge), doing (competency), and being (values) in ecological worldview, systems thinking, emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.
6.4. Grow in personal awareness, creativity and independent critical thinking with relevance to wicked problems in nature, society and business.
6.5. Acquire the capacity to listen and communicate to professionals and laymen in English with precision and clarity both orally and in writing.
6.6. Contribute successfully to a peer work group, while delegating and coordinating tasks in culturally diverse teams.
2.6. Review key environmental challenges and trends.
2.5. Review key environmental challenges and trends.

Course Contents

Corporate Sustainability – What It Is and Why It Matters
Corporate Sustainability: Approaches
Corporate Sustainability: Actors
Corporate Sustainability: Processes
Corporate Sustainability: Issues
Corporate Sustainability: Future Trends and Opportunities

Assessment Elements

Book world café and cinemalogia (individual)
Case studies on corporate sustainability management (team)
ESG-dashboard: digital sustainability management (team)
Reflections on the experiential learning (individual)
E-Portfolio: using contemplative photography to develop a sustainability mindset (individual)

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 4th module
0.1 * Book world café and cinemalogia (individual) + 0.1 * Case studies on corporate sustainability management (team) + 0.1 * Case studies on corporate sustainability management (team) + 0.3 * E-Portfolio: using contemplative photography to develop a sustainability mindset (individual) + 0.3 * ESG-dashboard: digital sustainability management (team) + 0.05 * Reflections on the experiential learning (individual) + 0.05 * Reflections on the experiential learning (individual)

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Green swans : the coming boom in regenerative capitalism, Elkington, J., 2021
Principles of management : practicing ethics, responsibility, sustainability, Laasch, O., 2021
The power of and : responsible business without trade-offs, Freeman, R. E., 2020

Recommended Additional Bibliography

9781000204766 - Isabel Rimanoczy - The Sustainability Mindset Principles : А Guide to Developing а Mindset for а Better World - 2020 - Routledge - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2574742 - nlebk - 2574742
9781000533927 - Ekaterina Ivanova - Revolutionizing Sustainability Education - 2022 - Routledge - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=3002024 - nlebk - 3002024

Authors

IVANOVA EKATERINA ALEKSANDROVNA

Course Syllabus