Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability

Marjolein Lips-Wiersma

Professor of Ethics and Sustainability Leadership

Peter McGhee

Senior Lecturer; Deputy Head of Department of Management

Amber Nicholson

Lecturer

Peter Skilling

Senior Lecturer

Why this course

• This cutting-edge course advances inclusive business perspectives and practices by incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the management curriculum

• New Zealand-based, the curriculum weaves Māori traditions and cultural worldview alongside western business frameworks to challenge assumptions around corporate responsibility, ethical decision-making, corporate transparency and environmentally sustainable business practices

• The course gives students the skills to explore their own values and culture, learn from and appreciate the culture of others, and purposely integrate what they discover into how they manage and build business organizations

Course Trailer

Course Highlights

Learning Objectives:

• Use appropriate tools to analyse and evaluate business situations where environmental, social and economic concerns arise

• Debate and defend rationales for responsible business practice

• Determine the drivers, and identify business opportunities, for socially and environmentally sustainable practice.

• Through studying business practice examples, derive and defend business strategies and management practices to advance responsible business practice.

Q+A between Amber Nicholson (Ngāruahine) and Peter Skilling on indigenous perspectives and business:

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Biography

Marjolein Lips-Wiersma is Professor of Ethics and Sustainability Leadership at AUT Business School, where her research focuses on how sustainability practices enhance meaning and well-being in the workplace. She also researches the roles and responsibilities of sustainability officers, the processes people use to assess the value of their work, and what (new) organisational approaches are required to speed up the sustainability agenda. Marjolein has a strong interest in engaging and empowering young people in sustainability issues. World renowned for her expertise, Marjolein is co-director of Map of Meaning International, a trust that aims to help organisations create and maintain meaningful work. She is also a member of the University Sustainability Taskforce and heads the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) international initiative.

Peter McGhee (Te Aupōuri) is a Senior Lecturer in and Deputy Head of the Department of Management at AUT Business School. Prior to joining AUT in 2000, Peter worked for nearly a decade as a risk analyst and operations manager for two different multinationals in the financial services industry. His expertise and research interests lie in business ethics, workplace spirituality, sustainability, and critical management studies; his recent work focuses on ethical leadership, human quality treatment at work, and educating for sustainability. Peter is widely published in a range of esteemed business, ethics and sustainability journals. He is a board member of The Leprosy Mission New Zealand (TLMNZ), a global development agency working with people affected by leprosy.

Amber Nicholson (Ngāruahine) is a Lecturer in the Department of Management at AUT Business School. Informed by a decade of Māori-led research experience, Amber teaches ethics and sustainability, and leadership. Amber is a PhD candidate whose thesis, Whenua tūpuna, whenua hauora: Ancestral and relational landscapes, explores ways to enhance wellbeing through recognising and honouring the ancestral landscapes in which businesses operate. She argues that an Indigenous Māori worldview involves spiritual and genealogical ties to the Earth and thus deepens the notion of what is referred to in modern business practice as sustainability. She is a member of the international Indigenous collective K.I.N.

Peter Skilling is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at AUT Business School, where he has been teaching in the area of business ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability for over 10 years. He is interested in the ways society responds to pressing social problems, such as in-work poverty and climate change, and much of his work focuses on the interactions between business, governments and society. He was significant in developing the suite of courses that comprise the Sustainable Enterprise minor. Peter has a broader interest in the ways in which people and groups of people (workers, for example, or local communities) can participate in the decisions that affect their lives. From 2013-2016, Peter led a research project exploring New Zealanders’ attitudes towards economic inequality, and he continues to produce work on this topic.

Resource Allocation in Organizations

Elizabeth Castillo

Assistant Professor, Leadership and Integrative Studies

Why this course

• Employing an asynchronous, online format, this course takes a holistic approach to the notion of capital, questioning the assumption that financial capital is the primary engine of value creation

• Professor Castillo’s students examine fundamental assumptions of capitalism while learning humanistic management practices and ways to evaluate intangible assets like trust, justice, and knowledge

• The curriculum equips students to question what it means to lead a “pro-social” organization and encourages decision-making that leans on a fuller understanding of risk, return and tradeoffs
  

Course Trailer

Course Highlights

Through readings, case studies, and assignment, students learn about:

• The process of value creation

• The relationship between resources and an organization’s business model

• How resource allocation decisions entail values choices (what a company believes is worth investing in)

• The effects these choices have on society and shaping the world we live in

• How various forms of capital can be measured and reported

• What leaders can do to intentionally develop multiple forms of capital to create both financial returns and long-term sustainability for the organization

Professor Castillo’s Key Takeaways:

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Biography

How can we create a sustainable economy that works for everyone? Dr. Castillo develops solutions to this problem using social accounting, integrative thinking, and multiple capitals (e.g., social, cultural, spiritual). Her interdisciplinary research studies prosocial resource exchange using bioinspired principles such as mutualism, energetics, and relational biology. Her research is inspired by two decades of management experience at the San Diego Natural History Museum and Balboa Park Cultural Partnership. Castillo earned her B.A. in philosophy and history (summa cum laude), M.A. in Nonprofit Leadership, and PhD in Leadership Studies (2016), all from the University of San Diego. Her scholarship appears in publications like The Leadership Quarterly and Nonprofit Quarterly. She is an avid hiker and nature photographer. Her mission is to repair the world through scholarship that promotes thriving organizations, fulfilled people, connected communities, and a world we can be proud to pass on to our children.

Seminar in Business and Society

Oscar Jerome Stewart

Assistant Professor of Management

Why this course

• This management course uniquely seeks to dismantle oppressive and exploitative structures and institutions by introducing concepts such as “liberatory consciousness”, and by equipping students to have difficult conversations and make decisions that build equitable and socially just organizations.

• In this course, Professor Stewart rejects historical norms of business education to help students redefine business "success" while examining the outsized role that business plays in how equal, just and sustainable our economy can be.

Course Highlights

Learning outcomes are focused on student development of a liberatory consciousness, awakening within our students a greater sense of their place in our world and an ability to make values-based decisions. Students will:

• Articulate the purpose of business within the context of its ability to deliver inclusive prosperity

• Demonstrate an ability to think critically, develop morally, and articulate reasoned, informed (i.e. backed up by data) positions on complex and ethical business and legal issues

• Learn how to debate issues in ways that maintain civility and bring greater clarity and understanding to the various perspectives on an issue

• Present arguments in a professional and convincing way to hone their written communication skills

• Present case material in a professional and critical manner to hone their oral communication skills

• Develop individual, organizational, & systemic strategies toward a more cooperative, responsible business

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Biography

Oscar Jerome Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Management in the Lam Family College of Business and a member of the Sustainable Business group. Jerome teaches the seminar undergraduate course on Business and Society, the MBA Business Ethics course, and Diversity in Organizations. Jerome’s research focuses on interrogating power at the intersection of organizational theory, strategy, and business ethics. This work includes such projects as an account of corporate strategic irresponsibility as well as an exploration of the determinants and outcomes of corporate misconduct in the pharmaceutical industry. Additionally, this research agenda includes critical scholarship on organizational diversity and discrimination. Oscar earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s Interdisciplinary Organizational Science Program.