Introductory description

Corporate sustainability is the management of the organisation to achieve positive social, environmental and economic outcomes over time. A stream of global challenges, from climate change to Covid-19, has highlighted the need for businesses to be agile in the face of natural and social change. Increasingly, organisations aspiring to be sustainable define their very purpose around meeting societal and environmental goals and identifying business opportunities accordingly.

However, sustainability is a journey not a destination. Many firms and nonprofits now have a chief sustainability officer, head of sustainability or head of corporate responsibility who looks to drive this change. This module provides a toolset for leading such a sustainability function. Equally, becoming a more sustainable organisation is everyone’s job, so the module aims to equip all managers to participate in forming and delivering sustainability strategy.

The module is highly practical. As well as looking at a range of case study organisations, each lesson culminates in an exercise applied to the student’s own organisation, whether for-profit or not (or, if preferred, to another organisation). The assignment pulls these together into a report proposing a ‘triple-bottom-line’ (social, environmental and economic) scorecard for the organisation, and describing an innovation that contributes to at least two of these three elements.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

In this fast-changing subject, the syllabus is likely to evolve. Below is an indicative syllabus:

The business case for sustainability. Dimensions of the business case: risk; stakeholder demands and licence to operate; market opportunity; differentiation; employer brand; resilience. Challenges to the concept of the business case from sociology, politics, economics and environmental sciences, and rival perspectives on the role of the firm.

Sustainability governance. External governance: board responsibilities; novel legal forms such as b-corps; activist shareholders; sustainability/responsibility advisory boards; reporting; standards bodies. Internal governance: CSOs and variants; models of coordination across the enterprise; the role of structure, metrics and culture.

Sustainability strategy and innovation. Organisational purpose & values; SDG alignment; materiality matrices; triple-bottom-line scorecard. Innovation and system change: sustainability transitions; circular economy strategies; product-service systems; innovation typologies; stakeholder engagement.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• demonstrate an understanding of the mechanisms by which corporate sustainability strategies may impact business performance over time
• demonstrate an understanding of the internal and external governance mechanisms for an organisation's social, environmental and economic impacts
• demonstrate an understanding of key tools in sustainability strategy
• develop systems thinking skills designed to understand complexities behind sustainability issues
• develop analytical and critical thinking skills as well as judgment to support students' opinions, decision-making and leadership potential
• Critically analyse an organisation's sustainability maturity
• Critically analyse an organisation's sustainability governance mechanisms

Indicative reading list

Core curriculum:

Elkington, John (2020) Green swans: The coming boom in regenerative capitalism. New York: Fast Company Press.

Grayson, David, Chris Coulter & Mark Lee (2018) All in: The future of business leadership. New York: Routledge.

Hargadon, A. (2015) Sustainable Innovation: Build your company's capacity to change the world. Stanford University Press.

Henderson, Rebecca (2020) Reimagining capitalism: How business can save the world. New York: Hachette.

Williams, E. Freya (2015) Green giants: How smart companies turn sustainability into billion-dollar businesses. New York: AMA.

Apte, Suhas & Jagdish Sheth (2016) The sustainability edge: How to drive top-line growth with triple-bottom-line thinking. University of Toronto Press.

Winston, A.S. (2014) The Big Pivot: Radically practical strategies for a hotter, scarcer, and more open world. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Wider debates on business, society and the environment:

Klein, N. (2014) This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Larkin, Amy (2013) Environmental debt: The hidden costs of a changing global economy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wallace-Wells, David (2019) The uninhabitable earch: A story of the future. London: Allen Lane.

Research element

Desk research into organizations’ sustainability strategies and social and environmental issues

Interdisciplinary

Sustainability is an inherently interdisciplinary subject. The CSO is the ultimate bridging role, bridging within functional disciplines from supply chain, operations and finance to marketing, sales and strategy. The module focuses less on how sustainability impacts each of these disciplines (which is handled in discipline-specific modules) and more on the integrative role of the CSO or equivalent in aligning triple-bottom-line objectives with the corporate strategy. More broadly, the module bridges between economics, politics, environmental science and management, while retaining a overarching managerial perspective.

International

Sustainability is an inherently international topic. The environmental issues tackled by a sustainability strategy, from carbon to ocean health, are no respecters of international boundaries. Neither are their social equivalents; many of the positive and negative social impacts of business activity occur in other states. The means by which sustainability strategies occur are also inherently multinational, from supply chains to policy coordination through international organisations.

Subject specific skills

Develop a business case for a sustainability strategy or a component of it such as a sustainability-oriented innovation

Transferable skills

• demonstrate confidence in developing opinion and judgement to lead organisations in a changing environment

• written communication