Course Descriptions
Foundation Courses
ENBUS 601 – Business and the Case for Sustainability
This on-site intensive course introduces students to basic business concepts and integrates them with concerns for sustainability. The underlying emphasis is on the value and rationale, opportunities and risks for businesses to undertake and integrate environmental and social sustainability initiatives. Business topics to be covered include an introduction to concepts and terminology from finance, accounting, strategy, marketing, organization behaviour and operations. Guests from academia, industry, government, and non-profit organizations present topics and case studies. Students also learn about the MEB program, meet faculty members, meet each other, and are introduced to distance education tools.
ENBUS 602 - Introduction to Sustainability for Business
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.
Core Courses
ENBUS 620 - Business Operations and Sustainability
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 footprint, 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.).
ENBUS 630 - Enterprise Marketing and Social Accountability
Changing boundaries, and shifting social expectations create risks and opportunities for an enterprise. This course discusses the need to remain accountable to society and manage the firm’s reputation in the age of digital information and raised sustainability disclosure expectations. It also examines the implications for marketing and reporting. The course introduces core tools for corporate sustainability marketing and reporting, including stakeholder engagement approaches, social accountability and carbon disclosure guidelines, sustainability reporting frameworks, sustainability standards, codes, certifications and labels, and green marketing.
ENBUS 640 - Strategies for Sustainable Enterprises
This course looks at organizational strategy through the ‘lens’ of sustainability. It explores how corporations (and other types of organizations) are re-aligning and in some cases re-inventing their corporate strategies to move toward more sustainable business models. This includes initiatives undertaken within the firm, as well as initiatives pursued outside the firm (such as through partnerships). Several frameworks are offered for assessing the degree to which principles of sustainability are embraced within an organization’s strategies. In addition, tools for formulating and implementing a sustainability strategic plan are presented. Case studies draw from different sectors and also different organizational types.
ENBUS 650 - Environmental Finance
Financial and accounting “tools” have potential to create effective and far-reaching market-based solutions to address a range of environmental problems, including climate change, deforestation, water issues and biodiversity loss, while at the same time identifying and securing new business opportunities for companies and their customers. An increasing number of financial and accounting products and services have emerged to direct resources and lending power to mitigate ecological degradation and/or encourage sustainable practices and decision-making. The course considers environmental finance products, tools and services; carbon finance and economics, and other approaches to environmental assets; international capital projects, structured financing, risk and sustainability in financial modeling; full-cost accounting; relation of sustainability performance to capital market valuation and financial performance; socially responsible investing; sector governance, disclosures, regulations, principles and codes.
Electives
ENBUS 621 - Enterprise Carbon Management
This course exposes students to best practices in greenhouse gas management from the perspective of a business. This course goes into depth on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, quantification and management. It includes, organizational GHG inventories, with reference to international and regional standards, protocols, regulations and schemes; GHG information management systems; expectations and approaches to disclosure of carbon emissions and management activities; and strategic business positioning for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
ENBUS 622 - Product Life Cycle Management
This course builds students’ competencies in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) 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 resources, 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 LCA software and databases.
ENBUS 632 - Sustainability Reporting
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, and appropriateness of their information needs and expectations. This course includes certification and auditing expectations and procedures. Content addresses materiality in sustainability reporting; regulatory context; legal implications; interrelations with financial accounting practices and standards.
ENBUS 642 - Stakeholder Engagement, Collaboration and Partnerships
This course considers collaborative approaches between business and non-profits, government and other groups. These may formalize into industry associations, joint ventures, public-private partnerships, networks, business to non-profit collaborations, etc. Or they may involve informal interactions between organizations. The course discusses partnership formation, structure and processes. The course illuminates how multi-stakeholder decisions are made, and how policies and laws are created at the regional, national and international levels. In addition it considers collaborative strategic management, and structuring partnerships for implementation.
Capstone Course
ENBUS 690 - Enterprise Sustainability Project
This capstone class synthesizes the learning in the program into an action 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 assigned 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, the timeline, and a breakdown of task assignments. Next, students obtain ethics approval for their research project. Then student teams apply the business sustainability toolbox, and their management skills to the real-world problem of their live case. Each field study includes conducting a situation analysis, developing a sustainability strategic plan for the organization including a complete and coherent business case. A faculty member assists each team. Students are expected to demonstrate and build their interpersonal and team management skills. Teams deliver field study project results as a report to both the organization and the course instructor. Individual students also complete a reflection paper including a discussion on the case in relation to the application of the tools, frameworks, and literature.
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