Alternative Economic Models

Sandrine Stervinou

Associate Professor and Pedagogical Head, Department of Business & Society

Why this course

The Economic Alternative Models course targets students with a general background in economics. It provides insights on new business models and alternatives to conventional economic theories. Through this course, we expect to make students aware that, in today’s world, things are rapidly changing. In this context, conventional economics does not provide the necessary models and solutions to the challenges we are facing (from poverty, inequality, financial crisis to climate change). The course presents new alternative economic models. Further, it opens the debate and conducts students to reflect on those developments. If these new economic models provide solutions, they also have negative effects. It might be too early to realize, but early enough to see the signs. Key to this course is developing critical thinking skills. Another key aspect is to present the range of possibilities and solutions and encourage students to be innovative and creative, as well as inclusive.

This course was developed with support from Elvire Bornand, Céline Louche, Laura Nirello, Cécile Renault, and Claire-Isabelle Roquebert.

Biography

Sandrine Stervinou is an associate professor and Pedagogical Head of the Department Business & Society at Audencia. Her research interests focus on companies and territories, principally on the anchorage side of companies. More specifically, she is interested in social economy and especially worker cooperatives. Currently, she teaches strategic management and social economy.

Highlights

A Transatlantic Perspective on Teaching the Future of Work

Business Ethics: Critical Thinking Through Film

Jadranka Skorin-Kapov

Professor and Head of Management Area; Director, Center for Integration of Business Education & Humanities

Why this course

This course combines critical thinking, discussion of moral values, and ethical considerations applied in a business setting. Discussions include real business cases, narrative film adaptations of some real cases, and films depicting fictional scenarios. A simulated situation as presented in a narrative film and supported by research from the humanities, adds to experiential learning, emphasized in contemporary business education. Students have to engage their capabilities in the following ways: (1) critically evaluate the product (film) in terms of its artistic creativity versus its business goal and ideological propagation; (2) discuss the ethical situation and actions depicted in a film by using different normative ethical positions; (3) evaluate one’s moral beliefs by imagining oneself in the fictional role presented in film. Since nowadays we live in an ever increasing virtual environment, prevalent with visual tools, using narrative film as a source for analyzing business decisions seems a worthwhile approach.

Latest Coverage

Biography

Dr. Skorin-Kapov has three PhDs: in Operations Research, in Philosophy, and in Art History and Criticism. She founded and directs the Center for the Integration of Business Education & Humanities (CIBEH). Skorin-Kapov has over seventy scholarly publications in Operations Research and is the recipient of a number of grants and awards, including five National Science Foundation grants, a Fulbright Award, and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. She authored the monograph entitled "Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope," a book on the phenomenology of surprise entitled "The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation," and a book on the aesthetics-ethics interactions entitled "The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity." Skorin-Kapov currently works on the book “Professional and Business Ethics through Film: The Allure of Cinematic Presentation and Critical Thinking” under a contract with Palgrave Macmillan.

Highlights

• Course Associated Cases

• What Films Can Teach Us About Business Ethics

Economic Growth, Technology and Structural Change

Peter Kriesler

Associate Professor

Why this course

The process of economic development is never smooth. It is associated with profound changes in the fundamental structures of economic society. The rate of growth and development varies substantially between different economies. The course seeks to explain the factors that determine how societies grow and develop, with special emphasis on the role of technology and finance.

Various approaches, including those that consider capabilities, cumulative causation, the role of the state and institutions as well as traditional and structuralist approaches will be examined. Special attention will be paid to problems associated with growth, including those relating to equity, human rights issues and environmental impact.

Biography

Peter Kriesler studied at the University of Sydney and at Cambridge University, and currently teaches in the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales. 

He has a strong interest in human rights, in the factors determining employment and in economic growth and sustainability.

Peter has been teaching and lecturing on economic growth, technology and structural change and on Political economy for over three decades.

Additionally, Peter has worked and published in the area of environmental issues, development economics, on the general question of privatization, as well as in theoretical economics, economic policy, history of economic thought and economics and philosophy. He is also on the editorial board of a number of journals including The Cambridge Journal of Economics, The Journal of Post Keynesian Economics and The Economic and Labour Relations Review, and editor of a book series for Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan.

Highlights

Learning Through Debating

Economic Inequality and Social Mobility

James R. Freeland

Sponsors Professor of Business Administration

R. Edward Freeman

University Professor and Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Academic Director, Institute for Business in Society; Academic Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics

Why this course

The U.S. and many other countries face a trio of inequalities: income, wealth, and opportunity. While income inequality is a well-accepted result of a capitalist economy, the degree of inequality has been steadily increasing since 1979. Many including Nobel Prize winning economists Robert Schiller and Joseph Stiglitz and successful business persons like Paul Tudor Jones and Elon Musk suggest that economic inequality is the defining challenge of our time. There is evidence that technological innovation will increase the level of economic inequality even more in the near future. Some believe this may threaten capitalism and democracy. This seminar explores economic inequality and social mobility from different points of view.

Biography

Sponsors Professor of Business Administration James R. Freeland teaches in the Technology and Operations area at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is involved in the required teaching programs in the MBA Full Time program and EMBA. He joined the Darden Faculty in 1979. From 1993-2012 he served in the Dean's Office as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research where he was chief strategist for faculty and research matters. Major accomplishments during his 19 years in the Dean's Office include hiring over 61 new faculty, increasing the diversity of the Darden faculty substantially, having Darden consistently rated as the best teaching faculty, significantly increasing the research productivity, and promoting evidence-based decision making to create a climate of equity and transparency for the faculty.

R. Edward Freeman is University Professor and Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. 

Freeman has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University and a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Duke University. He has been bestowed with honorary doctorate degrees (Doctor Honoris Causa) from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada in 2016, Hanken School of Economics in Finland in 2014, Radbord University in the Netherlands in 2013, and Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain in 2008 for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. He was also awarded the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany during the Sixth International Conference on Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR).

Mr. Freeman is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts, and the blues. He is a co-principal in Red Goat Records, LLC found at redgoatrecords.com. For more information, go to www.REdwardfreeman.com

Highlights

The 20 Most ‘Deeply Optimistic’ MBA Courses - Poets & Quants

Fault Lines and Foresight

Regina M. Abrami

Director, Global Program and Head, International Studies Faculty, The Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management and International Studies

Why this course

Risk managers have no shortage of quantitative tools to identify and hedge uncertainty. What they lack are tools to think about matters of high ambiguity. By introduction to the field of foresight strategy and its theoretical underpinnings in environmental and security studies, Fault Lines and Foresight addresses this knowledge gap. It does so in a way that is deeply experiential, interdisciplinary, and rooted in ideas of systems thinking, coevolution, and chaos theory, all centered empirically on a well-known global fault line: water stress.

By the end of this course, students will acquire content knowledge regarding water issues, demonstrate capacity using several leading foresight tools (e.g., scenario planning, back casting, feedback loops, red/blue teaming, matrix gaming, horizon scanning), and complete a team-based futures scenario on a topic of their choosing.

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Biography

Dr. Regina M. Abrami has a passion for, and expertise in, experiential education, with a focus on issues of political economy, intercultural group dynamics, strategic foresight, and qualitative field-based learning. Currently, she is the Director of the Lauder Institute’s Global Program and Head of its International Studies faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. She additionally holds appointments in the Departments of Political Science and Management. Prior to Wharton, Dr. Abrami served on the faculty of Harvard Business School for 11 years. She has authored dozens of HBS case studies, and continues work on the political economy of economic governance, national innovation, and the geopolitics of national economic security, with special focus on China. In 2014, her co-authored book, Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth was published by Harvard Business Review Press (published in Chinese in 2017).

Human Capital Sustainability

Patrick P. McHugh

Associate Professor of Management

Why this course

Sustainability has primarily focused on the impact organizations have on the physical environment. Organizations also have a profound influence on employees and the social environment. Management decisions often have a direct impact on employee well-being (e.g. stress, job/life satisfaction, physical and mental health). This course examines the managerial challenges associated with balancing economic efficiency with employee equity and voice – in other words, the sustainability of human capital. Human capital sustainability will be the criterion used to evaluate management decisions. Drawing on a variety of sectors (e.g., consulting, sports, retail, hospitality, “gig economy,” financial services, and entrepreneurial ventures) students will examine how markets, public policy, and collective bargaining influence management decisions. Topics will include the role of negotiations in resolving conflict, mechanisms for employee voice, managing to enhance human capital sustainability, the relationship that public policy, entrepreneurship, and globalization have on sustainable employment relationships.

Biography

Patrick P. McHugh (PhD in labor & industrial relations, Michigan State University) is an associate professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business. He received a BS in business administration at Bowling Green State University and an MA in economics from Washington State University. He has served as a consultant to private sector firms, government agencies, nonprofits, and several labor organizations, such as Ford Motor Company, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, UAW-Ford National Education and Development Training Center, American Pharmacists Association, and the American Federation of County and Municipal Employees Union.

He has received several awards for teaching and mentoring students. In addition to teaching undergraduate, graduate, and executive education classes at George Washington University, he has taught at Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris, France, as well as at Michigan State University, and Bowling Green State University.

His research has appeared in a wide selection of scholarly journals.

Impact Investing and Social Finance

C. Sara L. Minard

Executive Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Why this course

The focus of this course, impact investing and social finance, is on the rapidly emerging field that describes the practice of driving an investor’s decisions to invest through the lens of long-term social and environmental value creation. Impact investments can be made by anyone, anywhere in the world. Our focus is primarily on investments into funds or companies working in low-income communities in Boston and the U.S., using capital in ways that make these communities resilient against the combined effects of poverty, inequality and climate change. The course is designed to prompt students to be critical, practical, and inspired thinkers about everyday issues involving finance, values-driven business decisions, economic and social policy, and the complexities of financing social change. To foster this mindset, we will incorporate principles of ethics, ecology and human-centered design thinking as a set of methods to cultivate our moral imagination, empathy and engage in evidence-based research, emboldening students to become more conscious consumers, investors, public servants and practitioners/social entrepreneurs.

Biography

Sara Minard is a socio-economist, educator, and development practitioner with over twenty years of experience in private sector development, economic development policy, social innovation and social finance. At Northeastern University’s D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Dr. Minard developed and teaches courses on impact investing and social finance, social innovation and global social entrepreneurship, with a focus on design, gender and sustainable development. As a practitioner, Minard served as a policy analyst for the OECD in Paris where she managed projects in 18 countries in West Africa, and works as an international consultant for international financial institutions, NGOs and companies on designing and financing sustainable development solutions to poverty. She earned her PhD in economics from Sciences Po, Paris, where her research on informal entrepreneurship in Senegal and the power of social capital in achieving human capabilities in the context of weak states received highest honors from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.

Highlights

Teaching Impact as a Second Language in Business Schools - ImpactAlpha

Intrapreneurship: Leading Social Innovation in Organizations

Gerald F. Davis

Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration and Associate Dean for Business + Impact

Chris White

Managing Director, Center for Positive Organizations; Adjunct Faculty in Management & Organizations

Why this course

This class is about creating positive change without authority in organizations. It will provides students with a practical toolkit for driving social and environmental change from within established organizations, while advancing core business objectives. It draws on the first-hand experiences of intrapreneurs who have created business lines and organizational changes that are both financially viable and achieve outcomes beyond profits.

Latest News

Biography

Jerry Davis received his PhD from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and taught at Northwestern and Columbia before moving to the University of Michigan, where he is the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Sociology. He has published widely in management, sociology, and finance. Books include Social Movements and Organization Theory; Organizations and Organizing; Managed by the Markets; Changing your Company from the Inside Out: A Guide for Social Intrapreneurs (with Chris White); and The Vanishing American Corporation.

Davis’s research is broadly concerned with the effects of finance on society, changes in the corporate economy, and new forms of organization. Recent writings examine whether there exist viable organizational alternatives to shareholder-owned corporations in the United States, and how these might be brought into existence in a way that enhances democracy and human well-being.

Chris White leads the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan. The Center helps leaders build high-performing organizations that bring out the best in people through ground-breaking research, educational programs, and organizational partnerships.

At the Ross School of Business, White co-developed and teaches the MBA class on Social Intrapreneurship: creating positive change without authority. He also teaches in the Executive Education program on building positive organizations, and selling internally. White is co-author of a book on the topic through Harvard Business Review Press, entitled Changing Your Company From the Inside Out.

White has been leading and consulting to purpose-driven organizations for more than 15 years. His career has spanned the non-profit, corporate, and philanthropic sectors. His work has been featured by outlets including Fast Company, Inc., Forbes, CBS, The Huffington Post, and Talent Management Magazine. 

Highlights

Course Associated Cases

Issues in CSR

Talia Aharoni

Lecturer

Why this course

The MBA elective course examines the area of Corporate Responsibility as an organizing axis for managing business in a multivariate world: changing the global social agenda, legislation, global trade, social and environmental changes such as massive immigration, urbanization, climate change, water shortage etc. While discussing the major issues, theories and cases of the field of CR, the course focuses on the integration of the corporate responsibility approach as an integral part of business strategy and business management, presenting possible ways of implementing the decision-making system of the modern firm, overcoming the dilemmas that arise and analyzing practical scenarios.

The course presents and evokes discussion on CR as a business strategy approach. Presenting CR as a mediating concept between the short term business objectives of maximizing profits to the long term business innovation and development, the course discusses risk management, environmental and social sustainability, corporate learning and development, stakeholders relations and business leadership.

Biography

Talia Aharoni is the founder of Maala – Business for Social Responsibility in Israel. An adjunct professor for CSR at The Coller School of Business, Tel-Aviv University, at COLMAN – College of Management and an invited lecturer on CSR issues in a veriety of academic institutions and conferences, local and global. The analisys of the impact of Maala, has lead to her PHD thesis “Glocalization of CSR : The Development and Characterization of CSR in Israel."

Prior to Maala, Talia was the CEO of Gitam Porter Novelli PR and a member of the management of Gitam BBDO Advertising. With 35 years of experience in consulting businesses, Ms. Aharoni has become the leading advocate of the concept of corporate citizenship in Israel.

Aharoni's present and past public engagements include: Trustee Wolf Foundation; Board member ACRI; Midot Analysing NPO's ; The Prime Minister's Cross Partnership; GRI Stakeholders’ Council ; MENA Global Compact; Israeli committee ISO 26000.

Management of Services: Concepts, Design, and Delivery

Zeynep Ton

Adjunct Associate Professor, Operations Management

Why this course

Management of Services focuses on how to design and manage operations in a way that delivers value to customers, employees, and investors in service industries such as retail, hospitality, food service, health care, and call centers. Case studies on failure help students understand why excellence in business requires all three stakeholders—customers, employees, and investors—to be satisfied simultaneously. Throughout the course, students learn how to define and evaluate excellence through the lens of the three stakeholders and see that achieving excellence is possible everywhere—regardless of the industry, geography, and whether a company competes on low-cost or differentiation. The students also learn that achieving excellence requires a specific operating system design and strong commitment to values. Finally, through several case studies on transformation, students learn about how to transform a company from mediocrity to excellence.

Biography

Zeynep Ton is currently examining how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her earlier research focused on the critical role of store operations in retail supply chains. Ton identified operational problems at stores that reduce retail supply chain performance as well as store profits and traced these problems to the design of store processes and the management of store labor.

Peer to Peer Economies

Melissa L. Bradley

Adjunct Faculty

Why this course

Americans have witnessed a dramatic increase of interest, investment and participation in the “shared economy.” The significance of this economy is not purely driven by consumption patterns. Rather the movement is being fueled by the interest in the commons, an emerging type of civilization and economic system. The new economy relies upon the three major sectors of society – the state, market and civil society – but with different roles and in a revitalized equilibrium. It allows for the disintermediation of big business and empowers marginalized groups to be important constituents and stakeholders in the new economy. As this emerging concept transforms financial transactions, community trust and government regulation, the class will explore the key aspects of peer-to-peer economies.

The course will engage students in understanding the core principles of the shared economy including, but not limited to, business models, regulations, investment, and sustainability along with customer acquisition and retention. The P2P models will include US and international based organizations and review the financial and social impact the entities are having in their respective communities.

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Biography

Melissa L. Bradley is a tri-sector leader with more than 20 years of entrepreneurship, investment and leadership experience. Melissa Bradley is Managing Director of Project 500 – accelerating new majority entrepreneurs from high potential to high growth. She is also an adjunct professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University where she teaches impact investing, social entrepreneurship, P2P economies and innovation.

She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and Co-Chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) appointed by Secretary Penny Pritzker from the Department of Commerce.

Melissa currently serves as a Board Member for The Reinvestment Fund and AEO, as well as an advisor to Wallet AI, and the Center for the Advancement of Social Enterprise (CASE) at Duke University. She is a Founding Advisor to the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs as well as a Senator with the Board of Governors at Georgetown University. She is also Founder and Former Chair of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Alliance; Founding Member, The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership; and Founding Advisor to LGBTQ Center at Georgetown University.

Prospering Over the Long-Term

Tima Bansal

Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability

Why this course

This course discusses the long-term and societal implications of core business topics in the MBA program through an innovative co-teaching design. Dr. Tima Bansal co-teaches a single class in each of the eight core MBA courses. These classes are anchored by a solo class, to introduce the core concepts and to conclude by summarizing the ideas. For example, in teaching net present value (NPV), the finance instructor and Tima Bansal teach a case study that requires students to evaluate the economic considerations of building a mine. The finance colleague helps the students through the NPV analysis, which yields a positive NPV for building the mine. Tima encourages students to consider the costs of remediation, potential carbon prices, aboriginal peoples' concerns, and social movements against coal. The positive NPV becomes negative and the mine is confronting enormous social and environmental risks. By teaching sustainability in all core classes, sustainability is seen as embedded in all business decisions.

Biography

Dr. Tima Bansal is the Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability at the Ivey Business School at Western University (Ontario). She directs Ivey's research centre for Building Sustainable Value, and founded and continues to direct the Network for Business Sustainability (nbs.net).

Dr. Bansal’s research interests focus on the sustainability paradigm vis-à-vis business strategy. She has published over 42 peer-reviewed academic journals and two books on Business and the Natural Environment. She serves as a Deputy Editor for the Academy of Management Journal (2016-2019) handling all qualitative research. Her research has also been cited in the popular press, and, she was invited to speak at the TEDx Western event in 2013. She received her doctorate in 1996 at the University of Oxford. She teaches at all levels of the business program, including undergraduates, MBAs, PhDs, and executives and has received numerous awards.

Reimagining Capitalism: Business and the Big Problems

Rebecca Henderson

John and Natty McArthur University Professor

George Serafeim

Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration

Why this course

“Reimagining Capitalism” is designed for those students who want to explore the idea that at least some of the “big problems” of our time – particularly environmental degradation and accelerating inequality - can be effectively addressed by high performing private firms. Historically these kinds of problems have often been assumed to be the responsibility of the state. The course explores why private firms might be able to play a major role in solving them in today’s world, and the ways in which accomplishing this may require changes in how firms and leaders consider their obligations and engage with the issues, as well as make changes in the “rules of the game” by which capitalism is structured. The course is primarily case based.

Latest Coverage

Biography

Rebecca Henderson is the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, where she has a joint appointment at the Harvard Business School in the General Management and Strategy units. Professor Henderson is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her work explores how organizations respond to large-scale technological shifts, most recently in regard to energy and the environment. She teaches Reimagining Capitalism in the MBA Program.

George Serafeim is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has taught courses in the MBA, executive education and doctoral programs, and is currently teaching the elective course “Reimagining Capitalism: Business and Big Problems” in the MBA curriculum. He has presented his research in over 60 countries around the world and is one of the most popular business authors, according to rankings of the Social Science Research Network.

Highlights

Reimagining Capitalism

Sustainability & Environmental Accounting

Dror Etzion

Associate Professor, Strategy & Organization

Rojin Mansouri

PhD Candidate

Why this course

Sustainability & Environmental Accounting covers the emerging field of sustainability accounting, which provides a framework for developing measures of corporate environmental and social performance, assessing their reliability, reporting to external stakeholders, and assisting managers in strategic and operational decisions that affect environmental costs and risks. By incorporating the existing multidisciplinary knowledge in corporate sustainability accounting, the course responds to the growing need among organizations to develop and implement management systems for social responsibility – a need that stems in part from increased regulatory requirements and demand from various stakeholders.

Through a combination of lectures and experiential learning, students are encouraged to think critically about corporate cases that pertain to sustainability, and have an opportunity to analyze and interpret data, such as McGill University’s Greenhouse Gas emissions.

This course was developed with support from Rojin Mansouri, PhD student at Desautels Faculty of Management.

Biography

Dror Etzion is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Organization at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, an Associate Member of the McGill School of Environment, and the Director of the Centre for Strategy Studies in Organizations.

Throughout his career, Dror’s research has examined the use of metrics and information in organizational settings, primarily metrics for sustainability. His current research emphasizes the importance of local initiatives to promote sustainability, as opposed to an over-reliance on hierarchical approaches. Through his research, he argues that local, open, emergent initiatives to promote sustainability increase the recruitment of diverse stakeholders, foster creativity, and yield impactful outcomes.

Dror’s research has been recognized through distinctions such as the 2017 Roland Calori Prize for the best article published in Organization Studies and the 2013 Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) Division Emerging Scholar Award, presented by the Academy of Management. As a PhD student, in 2007, Dror received the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program Dissertation Proposal Award.

He holds a Ph.D. from IESE Business School and an M.Sc. in Geophysics and Planetary Sciences from Tel-Aviv University.

Rozhin Yousefvand Mansouri (Rojin Mansouri) is a PhD candidate (ABD) in accounting at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. Expecting to graduate soon, she is joining the University of Southern Maine as an assistant professor of Accounting in Fall 2018. She has an M.A. degree in Economics from Concordia University (2012).

In her thesis, Rojin studies the relation between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), corporate financial performance and executive compensation. She focuses on employee health and safety aspect of CSR in extractive industries and explores the circumstances in which the board of directors decide to link the executive compensation to safety performance. Her main research interests include executive compensation, corporate social responsibility and corporate governance.

Sustainability Tools & Processes for New Initiatives

Robert Sroufe

Murrin Chair
of Global Competitiveness

Why this course

This core required course, provides transformational learning opportunities for MBAs. Students hear from business leaders, integrate sessions with faculty across disciplines, analyze and evaluate case studies, while also being on-site with businesses to review projects. In teams, they develop a LCA sustainability plan, and compete in an Energy Management System design competition. By doing this, they understand the attributes of sustainable business practices, measure performance, apply a Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), model uncertainty, and explore the business case for sustainability focused initiatives. Students develop:

1. The ability to identify sustainable business opportunities, utilize LCA data and make recommendations as to how to implement new product initiatives.

2. Familiarity with the drivers and measures companies use to implement sustainable initiatives, develop a sustainability plan, and the costs/benefits of these activities.

3. An understanding of the financial models and business case for initiatives including energy management systems, building retrofits, clean energy, and estimates of uncertainties associated with these initiatives.

Latest News

Biography

Robert Sroufe is the Murrin Chair of Global Competitiveness, and Professor of Sustainability & Supply Chain Management at Duquesne University’s Palumbo Donahue School of Business. He is involved in developing and delivering action learning pedagogy within the #1 ranked MBA Sustainable Business Practices program, producing future change agents. Winner of numerous teaching and research awards, he has published papers and multiple books on sustainability topics. Current research projects include understanding what drives sustainability performance, how firms can develop effective management systems, the measurement and management of Integrated Bottom Line (IBL) performance, sustainability across disciplines, high performance buildings, strategic sustainable development, integration and organizational change towards sustainability.

Highlights

Teaching Business Students in a Warming World

Sustainable Business In Iceland

Andrew J. Hoffman

Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise

Why this course

Global Practicum Sustainable Business in Iceland offers an overview of the topic of business sustainability and then narrows its focus to Iceland and climate change. Students will meet with companies that are thinking strategically about these issues, and consider ways in which to transform perceived external threats or “externalities” into strategic opportunities. Specifically, this course will address:

• The strategic threats and opportunities created by sustainability.

• Examples of business models for tapping the strategic potential created by sustainability.

• A specific focus on the energy issues that sustainability presents, particularly around the issue of climate change and the markets for renewable energy and alternative fuel vehicles.

Given its location at the fault line between two tectonic plates, Iceland provides a unique context for exploring these issues. A key question is how Iceland can harness its unparalleled access to geo-thermal energy in a way that feeds its economy and helps it reduce its carbon footprint.

Latest Coverage

Biography

Andrew Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan; a position that holds joint appointments in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School of Environment and Sustainability. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise. He has published over 100 articles/book chapters, as well as 14 books, which have been translated into five languages. In this work, he focuses on the processes by which environmental issues both emerge and evolve as social, political and managerial issues. His work has been covered in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, Scientific American, Time, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Atlantic and National Public Radio. He has served on numerous research committees for the National Academies of Science, the Johnson Foundation, and the Environmental Defense Fund. He received his joint PhD in management and civil/environmental engineering at MIT.

Technological Change at Work

Adam Seth Litwin

Associate Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations

Why this course

Computers and digital technologies including robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), internet-enabled platforms, and other “high-tech” drivers of automation have revolutionized the nature and organization of work in the U.S., with material implications for workers and their families, among others. This upper-level seminar begins with a rhetorical inquiry into whether and when the technological change engendered by digitization and the so-called “Information Technology (IT) Revolution” benefits workers. We then consider the broader impact of recent technological advances on manufacturing and fabrication, low- and semi-skilled service work, i.e., restaurant servers and bus drivers, and even on expert and professional work like that to which most of you presumably aspire. Among the central themes is the notion that technology does not unilaterally act upon workers, their employers, or society-at-large. Rather, workers, managers, customers, institutions, and policymakers shape which advances take hold and which do not, the ways that these technologies are deployed in the workplace, and the ways that society can actively mitigate the costs to technological advancement while harnessing its benefits.

Biography

Adam Seth Litwin is Associate Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell’s ILR School. Litwin’s research, anchored in industrial relations, examines the determinants and impact of labor relations structures and technological change. He has published a mix of empirical and conceptual studies intersecting the areas of labor relations and technological change, in both industrial relations and medical journals, including the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Applied Clinical Informatics, and the International Review of Psychiatry. At Cornell, he teaches undergraduate and graduate core courses in labor relations as well as electives focused on the evolution and impact of technological change on workers, organizations, and society-at-large. Litwin joined Cornell’s ILR faculty in the fall of 2014 after serving as a standing faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, where he held appointments in the Carey Business School and the School of Medicine.

Highlights

Teaching the Future of Work Through Multimedia

The End of Globalization?

David Bach

Deputy Dean & Professor in the Practice of Management

Why this course

The End of Globalization? was an online Global Network Course hosted by the Yale School of Management that explored the rise of populism, economic nationalism, and anti-globalization, and their impact on business and society. Taught in spring 2017, the course tackled issues emerging in real time by connecting students, lecturers, and instructors in multiple countries. Students took on the role of principal investigators, gathering public opinion and sentiments toward political parties in their own cities; speaking with locals about globalization and business; and assessing the potential risks for businesses in their regions from anti-globalization rhetoric and actions. They worked in virtual teams to sort through the data and to formulate hypotheses. The course culminated with a series of student hackathons on Global Network campuses and presentations by selected teams at a discussion including Prof. David Bach, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and Albright Stonebridge Group Managing Director Michael Warren.

Biography

David Bach is Deputy Dean & Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. An expert in political economy, his research and teaching focus on business-government relations, nonmarket strategy, and global market regulation. At Yale SOM, he teaches a core MBA course on State & Society as well as an elective course on Nonmarket Strategy.

As a member of Yale SOM’s senior leadership team, Dean Bach directs the school’s Executive MBA and a portfolio of newly established management master’s degrees; spearheads engagement with the 32-school strong Global Network for Advanced Management; catalyzes curricular innovation in the area of global business; guides online education initiatives; and oversees Yale Center Beijing..

Highlights

• Future of Globalization Hackathon Highlights

• Future of Globalization Hackathon

• Additional Course Articles & Interviews

Urban and Regional Economics

Jaime Luque

Assistant Professor, Real Estate & Urban Land Economics

Why this course

Urban and Regional Economics is a three-credit required course for all Real Estate majors and is largely comprised of second and third-year BBA students. In this course, students study cities, the economic activities therein, and the determinants of those activities. Students look at these through the lens of economists, real estate practitioners, and business men and women. The main topics of the course include the macroeconomics of regional and international real estate markets, applied urban economics (forecasting at the local level), walkability, homelessness and affordable housing, public financing and banks’ portfolio--geographical diversification of real estate exposures.

Biography

Jaime Luque joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison as assistant professor in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at the Wisconsin School of Business (WSB) in September 2012. Prior to joining WSB, he was a visiting professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid.

Jaime’s main academic research applies general equilibrium theory to financial and real estate markets. He has conducted research on the consequence of repo and rehypothecation on security pricing and market pressures. This line of research evolved towards the understanding of leverage dynamics, security bubbles and anomalies in currency markets.

Highlights

• Putting Affordable Housing at the Center of Real Estate Education : Aspen Institute Blog

• WSB Class Helps Address Affordable Housing Gap at Second Annual 'Big Event'

• Community as Classroom: WSB Students Impact Real Estate Development Through UniverCity Alliance

• Applied Learning Tradition Strong for Real Estate and Graaskamp Programs

• Connecting Communities: Innovation Fund enables students to tackle tough issues

Why Business?

Matthew T. Phillips

John Hendley Fellow and Associate Teaching Professor of Law & Ethics

James R. Otteson

Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics and Professor of Economics

Adam S. Hyde

Former Research Assistant Professor, BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism

Why this course

What is the proper role of business in a humane and just society? Many people believe that business is an inherently suspicious activity. That suspicion is evident in the common belief that businesspeople need to “give back” to society. Is business an activity for which people must atone? Why exactly are people suspicious of it? Are they right to be suspicious?

In this course we will explore the nature of business, as well as the nature of the market economy of which it forms an integral part. We will investigate how business and the market economy function, both in theory and in practice, and what the purposes are that they are supposed to serve. We will also look at the moral implications of some specific issues and cases that arise in a market economy, in an effort to understand what limits, if any, there should be on business and markets.

Biography

Matthew Phillips teaches business law and ethics at Wake Forest University School of Business. He is the director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism, which helps students explore the profession of business and its role in a humane and just society. Matthew received undergraduate and law degrees from Wake Forest and a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University. Prior to teaching, Matthew practiced law in Winston-Salem.

Jim Otteson is the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics at Wake Forest University School of Business and a professor of economics. He is the executive director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest and a senior fellow in the BB&T Center at the Business School. He received his BA from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. Jim’s work includes books on ethics, political economy, and Adam Smith.

Adam Hyde is the assistant director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest. He is an economist with specialties in public policy, industrial organization, and labor markets - particularly applied to health and health care. He earned his AB in economics from Franklin and Marshall College and his PhD in economics from the University of Virginia. He has served as a research assistant professor in the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism and an assistant professor at the Wake Forest University School of Business, where he won multiple awards for teaching economics to graduate students.