Advancing Racial Equity at Work

Courtney McCluney

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior

Why this course

• Workplaces have the potential to be real agents of social progress and racial equity. Many organizations fall far short of that aspiration and struggle with how to design organizational models and processes that put equity and inclusion at the center. Professor McCluney’s rigorous course gives the practical tools and frameworks needed to meaningfully incorporate equity into a company’s culture and DNA.

• Designed for both undergraduate and graduate students, the course provides a model of how to have productive and informed conversations on race and equity. The curriculum recognizes the importance of history, defining uncomfortable terms, trust-building, and self-reflection for applied learning on organizational management and human resources.

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Course Highlights

Learning Outcomes:

• Adopt a racial equity lens to understand organizational practices, norms, and processes.

• Deepen our understanding of race and relevant concepts in organizational behavior.

• Examine how historical practices and events generated systemic racism in workplaces.

• Assess barriers and solutions to advancing racial diversity, equity, and inclusion at work.

• Apply a racial equity framework to contemporary workplace practices and future of work issues.

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Biography

Dr. Courtney L. McCluney (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in the ILR School at Cornell University. Dr. McCluney examines how organizations perpetuate and maintain the marginalization of specific groups. Her work has been published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology; Gender, Work and Organization; Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal and numerous books including Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience. Dr. McCluney is a regular contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, and she was recently named a Thinklist Amplify Nominee by the University of Bath’s Centre for Business, Organizations, and Society. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and earned her PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan and BA in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Big Data, Big Responsibilities: The Law and Ethics of Business Analytics

Kevin Werbach

Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics

Why this course

• As Big Data has become near ubiquitous in corporate strategy and decision making, more business school students are entering data-related roles and the technology sector. With the growth of technology, managers need to better understand the complex and emerging ethical, legal and societal considerations that accompany the use of data and predictive analytics.

• Professor Werbach’s course fulfills this need beautifully with a sophisticated but fun and engaging pedagogy. His curriculum partners the ethical with the technical and practical. The course gives students the skills to use analytics in a responsible way, including the ability to identify flaws and limitations in algorithms, anticipate legal or ethical controversies, and evaluate mechanisms for algorithmic accountability.

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Course Highlights

Illustrative Course Slides:

Course Overview Video:

Mock Trial Video:

Black Mirror Assignment Video:

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Biography

Kevin Werbach is Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, and department chair, at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. A world-renowned expert on emerging technologies, he examines business and policy implications of developments such as AI, gamification, and blockchain. Werbach served on the Obama Administration’s Presidential Transition Team, helped develop the U.S. approach to internet policy during the Clinton Administration, and created one of the most successful massive open online courses, with over 500,000 enrollments. He currently leads the Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project. His books include For the Win (updated edition 2020), The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust (2018), and After the Digital Tornado (2020). Follow him on Twitter @kwerb.

Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Emily Cox Pahnke

Associate Professor of Management and Organization

Why this course

• Entrepreneurship continues to be a driver for business school attendance, but there is more to building a business than traditional entrepreneurial frameworks and skillsets. Professor Pahnke’s course asks students to adopt a broader mindset and look beyond the walls of the firm to analyze their assumptions, personal values and motives for entrepreneurship.  

• The energetic and experiential pedagogy encourages creativity and uses challenges that students see in their daily lives – including homelessness, water shortages, climate change and global health - to imbue students with a sense of agency to create the world they envision.

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Course Highlights

Course Objectives:

How are you going make the world better in the ways that you think are important? Grand Challenges for Entrepreneurs provides tools to better understand the big problems the world faces and to identify, design and implement effective solutions. In class you'll learn about a wide variety of grand challenges. Using the lens of entrepreneurship, you will also learn frameworks and tools including design thinking, business models and execution strategies to better understand these problems and potential solutions.

This class will be useful to students who want to start their own organizations as well as those who are making decisions about where to volunteer, which companies to work for and where to donate money to support causes they care about. Ultimately, this class will help you understand how to assess whether organizations are effectively addressing problems you care about. 

Biography

Emily Cox Pahnke is an associate professor of Management and Organization and the Lawrence P. Hughes Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Her research at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, and finance, focuses on how social networks- relationships between individuals and organizations- affect innovation and performance. Professor Pahnke’s research has been published in top management journals and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, a Schulze Distinguished Professorship, and the Kauffman Foundation. She was recognized as the Emerging Scholar by the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals.

Professor Pahnke holds a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and M.B.A. and B.S. degrees from Brigham Young University. Professor Pahnke has won numerous teaching awards including the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching award.

Relationships and Reconciliation in Business and Beyond

Lindsay Brant

Educational Developer, Indigenous Curriculum and Ways of Knowing

Kate Rowbotham

Assistant Professor (Adjunct) and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Organizational Behaviour

Why this course

• As our society wrestles with the deep and lasting consequences of systems like colonialism, this course helps students learn from and value nondominant cultures and worldviews while reflecting on how business can play a collaborative role in moving us forward. Professor Brant and Professor Rowbotham introduce traditional Indigenous concepts like economies of care and draw connections to contemporary concepts like stakeholder theory and sustainability. 

• The unique design of this course centers students and takes a collaborative learning approach that breaks down traditional classroom hierarchal structures and develops a “community of care.” 

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Course Highlights

Classroom Agreement and Learning Commitment Activity:

Our pedagogy of peace, which draws on the values of the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace (peace, strength, and a good mind), encouraged us to put learners at the centre of all that we do, allowing student voices to shape the learning and teaching that occurred. Our learning commitment exercise allowed students to explore the four aspects of the medicine wheel (emotional, mental, physical, spiritual) from the first day of the course, using it to guide us in our learning throughout the term.

View the activity here.

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Biography

Lindsay Brant is from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Ontario, Canada. She has a Master of Education degree from Athabasca University, and an Honours degree in English Literature and Indigenous Studies from Trent University. She is currently pursuing her PhD part-time in the Cultural Studies department at Queen's University. Lindsay works as an Educational Developer, Indigenous Pedagogies and Ways of Knowing in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Queen's. The focus of her work is on decolonizing and Indigenizing education with the goal of liberating learning spaces to create a more inclusive learning environment for all. Lindsay is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Smith School of Business at Queen's University, co-teaching a course she co-developed called Relationships and Reconciliation in Business and Beyond.

Kate Rowbotham (she, her, hers) is an assistant professor (adjunct) and a Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Organizational Behaviour at Smith School of Business. Kate received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and her Master of Science in Management from Queen's University. She completed her PhD at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Kate's research focuses on experiences of inclusion and exclusion across different organizational and educational settings, and these themes are present in her teaching as well. Kate’s deep commitment to equity and justice plays a part in her other involvement across the Queen’s community and beyond. Kate is a co-founder of a teaching community at Smith School of Business that focuses on inclusive, learner-centred pedagogy, and she trains teaching assistants in this approach.

Sustainable and Responsible Investing

Kingsley Fong

Associate Professor, School of Banking and Finance

William Wu

Adjunct Lecturer

Why this course

• Finance and investing are often taught as silos, deeply isolated from the real impacts these concepts have on society. This course examines the functions and dysfunctions of the market economic system and frames non-financial considerations using the familiar language of risk and opportunity. 

• Professor Fong and Professor Wu’s creative finance pedagogy also invites personal reflections by students, and helps to integrate environmental and social impact perspectives into their world view. 

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Course Highlights

Weekly Blog Exercise:

Sustainable investing challenges conventional financial wisdom because there are many new terms and new perspectives, and the information may be qualitative or non-financial. A blog is a helpful learning tool in this context because it offers an opportunity to communicate and integrate these ideas with conventional finance logic. Weekly blogging also cultivates a lifetime learning habit. A blog is not a typical learning activity in finance education, and some instructions are essential to provide students with a structure to guide their reflection.

Learn more about the exercise.

Course Video:

Biography

Kingsley Y. L. Fong is an Associate Professor at the School of Banking and Finance, UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney.

Kingsley teaches responsible investing and wealth management. His classes emphasize that finance professionals with a positive mindset can transform society for the better at a personal, business, and macro level. He introduced curriculum innovations such as responsible investing, financial technology, the iLab, and accredited financial planning programs. He served as the deputy head of school and as an academic representative at the Financial Planning Association.

Kingsley’s research investigates liquidity, high-frequency trading, investor behavior, and responsible finance. He is best known for his research on the effects of technology on equity market trading. The European Financial Association awarded his co-authored article on the best liquidity proxy for global research the Spängler IQAM Prize, the best investment paper published in the Review of Finance in 2017.

William Wu is an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Banking and Finance at the University of New South Wales, where he is the co-author and lecturer of Sustainable and Responsible Investing. His expertise lies in portfolio management, equity research and sustainability. William has over a decade experience in the finance industry where he conducted sustainability analysis and managed sustainable portfolios on behalf of clients. He is also currently an Investment Analyst and Investment Stewardship within Schroders’ Australian Equities team. William served as a member of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales.

The History and Ethics of Capitalism

James Hoopes

Murata Professor of Ethics in Business

Why this course

• Historical development and context is crucial to understanding any complex system – and this is no less true with our current market-based economic system. While business curriculum has traditionally been short on history, this course leans into what we can learn from the development of capitalism and the competing philosophies and values that continue to shape it.

• Professor Hoopes includes non-Western examples of market rules, such as in Buddhist and Islamic cultures, to allow students to critically analyze different manifestations of capitalism, understand where it excels and where it falls short, the moral risks and opportunities of our system, and to recognize that it can look different than the version currently in practice.

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Course Highlights

The Case of Siam Hands - Class PowerPoint:

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Biography

James Hoopes is Murata Professor of Ethics in Business at Babson College. He is the author of a number of books on American history, business history, and business ethics including "False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management" and "Corporate Dreams: Big Business in American Democracy from the Great Depression to the Great Recession." Currently, he is working on a book titled "Leading for Virtue" which is based on many of the sources he developed for his course on "The History and the Ethics of Democracy."