Course subject: Environment and Business (ENBUS)

This course reviews the history of global environmentalism; societal expectations and business responses; and the emergence of corporate social and environmental responsibility. It systematically presents environmental (climate change, air pollution, water quality and quantity, energy and resource consumption, etc.), and social (human rights, health, poverty, ethics, fair trade, etc.) issues, their science, status and priority; technological, regulatory and policy responses; and implications for business. This course introduces concepts for business sustainability, including systems thinking, complexity and resilience, corporate responsibility, materials and energy flows and transformations, economic and market mechanisms, and relates these to business operations, marketing and strategic management.

This course examines environmental and sustainability management tools for business operations; it addresses process and product considerations. These include environmental management system tools; cleaner production and pollution prevention tools (environmental risk management, environmental impact assessment, emissions quantification and verification, eco-efficiency, etc.); product stewardship and eco-design tools (design for environment, life cycle assessment/costing, greening supply chain, etc.); sustainability accounting tools (key performance indicators, ecological footpint, social balance, full cost accounting, etc.); and human resource tools (managing teams, motivating people for sustainability, diversity policies, etc.). The sustainability tools are explained in relation to health/safety programs, human resources management, and operations and quality management. The course draws on practices and illustrative examples of performance of organizations in different sectors, around different environmental issues (energy, waste, water, air emissions, etc.).

This course builds students' competencies in environmental life cycle assessment (ICA) and life cycle management of products. Course content covers product sustainability management, life cycle thinking, product stewardship approaches. It includes life-cycle assessment of raw materials and energy rescues, manufacturing and processing, use, end-of-life and recycling, supply-chain and logistics. The content follows international standards and related guidance for study scoping, functional unit, inventory, impact assessment and interpretation. Management applications include ecodesign, product benchmarking, ecolabelling and green marketing. The course also presents strengths, limitations and weaknesses of sustainability performance assessment of products. Students apply quantitative approaches including use of ICA software and databases.

This course builds students' competencies in sustainability indicators, reporting and corporate accountability approaches for multinational corporations and other types of organizations. The course examines global reporting standards for environmental, social and sustainability reporting that are relevant to all sectors of industry and society. It covers the identification and roles of stakeholders certification and auditing expectations and procedures. Content addresses materiality in sustainability reporting; regulatory context; legal implications; interrelations with financial accounting practices and standards.

This course builds competences in the development and deployment of strategies and processes (in for-and not-for-profit organizations) to engage both internal and external stakeholders in opportunities to accelerate sustainability. Content covers: the identification, characterization and valuation of primary and secondary stakeholders; drivers and challenges; engagement approaches, including traditional and social media forms of communication, consultation, conflict resolution, and cross-sector partnerships. Content also introduces: structures, including informal vs. formal interactions, face-to-face and distance meetings, industry associations, joint ventures, public-private partnerships, networks and business to not-for-profit collaborations; processes, such as partnership formation, decision-making, monitoring of progress; and strategic considerations, such as business value, risk management, control vs. influence, barriers and confluence points. Students working as a team will present their recommendations on a real time case study to stakeholders involved.

The capstone class synthesizes the learning in the program into a research project. Students show original application of the knowledge they have learned and reflect on the utility of the frameworks and tools using a case study approach. After learning relevant research methods, student teams develop a proposal on a research project which meets the needs of their live case study (i.e. the company or other organization which has committed to be the case in the research project). This proposal includes a review of the relevant literature, the methodology and project timeline. Where applicable, students obtain ethics approval for their research project. Each field study includes conducting a situation analysis, developing a sustainability strategic plan for the organization. A Faculty member assists each team. Students deliver field study project results as a report to both the organization and the course instructor. Individual students also complete a short reflection paper including a discussion of the case in relation to the application of sustainability frameworks and literature.