Sustainable Business

This course employs a systems approach to understanding the intersection of business and nongovernmental organizations and the Earth system. The geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, and how they are interrelated, are explored with a focus on climate change. Systems thinking emphasizes relationships and interdependencies — students learn to identify the connections between the planet and an organization by considering whole systems, rather than component parts, and discern systems within systems. Students apply systems thinking and their knowledge of the Earth system to analyze organizations and address sustainability challenges, including resource use, waste management, and climate change.

Sustainable business strategies leverage the integration of economic, environmental, and social aims into a firm’s goals, activities, and planning, with the aim of creating long-term value for the firm, its stakeholders, and the wider society. Decision makers have to balance these goals, but often have difficulties seeing how their decisions contribute to sustainable development at the system level. This class will give leaders the tools to formulate and execute strategies to meet the current needs of the firm and its stakeholders while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing all resources that will be needed in the future.

Law and public policy shape the relationships between business firms and the environment, including the climate. The primary goal of this course is to learn to think critically about: (1) the relationship between business and the natural environment, including the climate; (2) the existing legal and policy framework of environmental and climate protection, particularly in the US and its effects on what business managers are charged to do; and (3) the potential of business professionals to affect change in that legal and policy environment. The course will provide a grounding in the foundational concepts of sustainability and how those concepts have, and have not been incorporated into business strategy, environmental law, and business policy. As we address different topics in environmental law and sustainability policy, we will examine a series of case studies in which law, policy, and business intersect.