Sustainable Management

This course aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of contemporary frameworks with a decisive influence over the design of sustainable corporate management. Special attention is given to the acknowledgement of long term decisions at a strategic level, their economic consequences and the role that different stakeholders play. The course aims to provide students with tools for critical analysis of corporate boundaries of sustainable management.

The course consists of four key areas:

Strategic Management
The objective of this part is to give the students an understanding of how different perspectives of strategy analysis can be used in interpreting sustainable strategies in different industries and lines of business. Value creation at industry as well as corporate,level is explored in order to gain insight into sustainable strategies.

Capital Budgeting and Performance Measurement
Acquisition and allocation of resources is of great importance when determining the long term direction of a corporation. Capital budgeting practices and corresponding performance measurements will have a great influence of what kind of decisions are seen as desirable. In this part we explore how this practice set delimitations for sustainable strategies.

Corporate Governance
Different stakeholders have direct or indirect influence over the governance of corporations. There are several ways of describing the nature of these stakeholders and their role for the long term governance of the corporation. The objective of this part is to give an understanding of different ways of approaching the governance issue and the consequences this might have for the design and implementation of sustainable strategies.

Managing Sustainability
This part of the course focuses on the management of sustainability issues in corporations and organizations. The rationale, purpose and characteristics of contemporary management tools will be described. Examples of tools include environmental management and reporting standards, codes of conduct and voluntary industrial agreements. The role of rating and evaluation agencies will be described.