This is not a “normal” sustainability course.  It is experiential in nature, and explores the complexity associated with sustainability. By understanding the interconnectedness associated with issues, impacts and stakeholders, the risks and opportunities facing the firm can be assessed. For business, the challenge is how to prioritize issues facing the firm, and how to engage, and collaborate with, the stakeholders necessary for more sustainable outcomes. This course provides a set of toolkits and frameworks to assess complexity and interconnections associated with sustainability, to prioritize and cluster issues, and design innovative solutions involving stakeholders. This course is run in partnership with P&G, who provide real sustainability issues and challenges facing the company for you to work on and provide ideas for strategic solutions.

Sustainability has become a defining feature of the global business environment, with increasing pressures for organizations to engage with the sustainability agenda. The question arises how can organizations assess and prioritize the key sustainability issues to manage sustainability risks emerging along the value chain and to develop  activities that reinforce, protect and develop new forms of value along the value chain both for the organization and for the stakeholders and societies within which it operates. This course enables both the assessment of an organization’s current activities within the value chain and the development of new ways of creating value.

The aim of this course is to enable participants to gain an understanding of how sustainability issues can arise from value chain activities but also how sustainability issues can impact upon the ability of an organization to create value and competitive advantage.

This involves developing knowledge and skills that enable participants to:

a) assess key sustainability issues arising within the value chain of an organization

b) prioritize sustainability issues for the organization based upon both value creation and sustainability impact

c) develop an understanding of the interconnectedness between both sustainability issues and stages within the value chain

d) make recommendations to both protect and build value creation within the value chain based upon sustainability.

The course will also develop skills that will assist participants in assessing the sustainability impacts of the organization on society and the environment and will draw upon sustainability megatrends and scenario planning to understand the longer-term implications of the organization’s sustainability impacts.

Adopting a case study approach, participants will apply a range of different methods, theories and tools to understand how sustainability can create both risks and opportunities for organizations within the value chain, both in the short and long term. The participants will develop a consultancy briefing for the top management team of their case company, identifying the key sustainability issues that the organization should engage with and the rationale behind the recommendation.

Key Elements:

Sustainability

Value chain analysis

Externalities and Sustainability Impact

Stakeholder Analysis

Future proofing and megatrends

Minimum attendance is 80% of course hours, the first and the last session is mandatory. Attendance is a firm requirement of this course as many of the learning experiences take place during class and through interactions with peers. The attendance requirement is met if students are present for at least 80% of the scheduled sessions. Students who fail to meet the attendance requirement will be de-registered from the course. Missing sessions will affect peer evaluation and may also affect other graded components realized during class. In the exceptional case that you cannot attend a session due important reasons ( e.g., sick leave, quarantine), you should provide proof of this. 

Adopting a live case study approach, participants will apply a range of different methods, theories and tools to understand how sustainability can create both risks and opportunities for organizations within the value chain, both in the short and long term. The participants will develop a consultancy briefing for P & G, who will set a real case challenge. This should identify the key sustainability issues that the organization should engage with and recommendations for how they should do it. This will take the form of a group presentation, a group report and an individual reflection on the recommendations made. Throughout the course, groups will be working on the coursework as part of the group activities in class. This will enable formative feedback to be provided within class sessions.

The course grade is based on the following components:

» Group presentation - 30%

» Group report - 30%

» Individual reflection - 30%

» Group peer assessment – 10%

Students will be assessed on:

1. Knowledge on the relevant theories.

2. The ability to apply relevant theories.

3. The ability to understand the strategic issues in the cases they present, to use the appropriate analytical techniques, and to marshal the relevant data.

4. The quality of the presentations, the written report, and the discussion; quality in this context means the clarity and persuasiveness of each bit of work. This implies an ability to work both in teams and individually.

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I expect that some of you will use AI (ChatGPT and similar tools) in the your studies and potentially also for assignments. There is, per se, nothing bad about that. You will need to learn how to use AI, that is, AI usage is an emerging skill. We will not focus on how to use AI in this class but I would like to highlight a couple of key points:

Be aware of the limits of AI!

• Your prompts and their quality will drive the quality of the output. You will need to refine your prompts in order to get good outcomes.
• Don’t trust anything that the tool is writing. If it gives you some numbers or facts, you should assume that it is wrong unless you can either fact check with other sources, or unless you can be sure that you know that the information is correct. Ultimately, you will be responsible for errors or any other types of limitations that the tool produces.
• AI is a tool and you need to acknowledge the use of it. Please include a paragraph at the end of any assignment that explains if and how you have used AI and what prompts you have used. Failure to do so is violates your pledge of academic honesty and can have serious consequences.
• Note that the use of AI tools can be detected by WU plagiarism software, which I may activate for every assignment. In case that there is indication for undue AI usage, first, an audit interview with the student will be scheduled. Follow-up consequences will be determined afterwards.
• In this context, please note also the official WU guidelines on plagiarism: https://www.wu.ac.at/en/students/my-program/masters-student-guide/course-and-exam-information/plagiarism/"