In these rapidly changing times, the growing awareness of environmental, social and financial crises have highlighted the need for a more integrative way to understand management’s tasks, responsibilities and practices.  In response, businesses and organizations of all kinds are coming to realize the need to develop sustainable strategies for responsibly managing their human, social, financial and natural resources (capital).  In addition, organizations are responding to growing market demand for sustainable products and services.

Therefore, beyond pursuing material and energy efficiencies, emerging leaders are finding that the global challenges of the 21st century call for potentially radical innovation that puts sustainability as a fundamental, integrative strategy. This kind of innovation requires leaders to re-examine and test virtually every phase of their organization: from processes, practices and partnerships to basic models, mission, vision, purpose and values.

 

Learning Goals

The Concentration in Sustainable Management will prepare students to successfully respond to today’s challenges by developing new skills and approaches. Students will have the opportunity to do the following: 

• Employ an orienting method for assessing, challenging and re-framing the traditional practices of management through the lens of sustainability, to better understand the impact organizations have on the social and ecological environment. Students will learn how to challenge their own assumptions and see their thinking as an arc of inquiry leading to the ability to articulate the business case for sustainable strategies.
• Demonstrate the capacity for systems-thinking as a perspective for interdisciplinary analysis and decision-making to develop organizational strategies. Students will learn how to take multiple stakeholder perspectives when addressing complex systems and complex problems.   
• Demonstrate the capacity to analyze the way societies and organizations use and value the natural, financial, social and human resources (capital) required to deliver needed goods and services.  Students will learn how to analyze the values and assumptions at work in any business enterprise.
• Develop the technical competence to account for, connect, and measure the economic, social and environmental impacts of organizational decisions. 
• Realize the role of communication in shaping environmental attitudes, values, and practices; and be able to persuasively communicate the benefits of sustainable goods and services by learning how to use various rhetorical principles and techniques in communication strategies. 

The Sustainable Management Concentration and DePaul’s Mission and Values 

By focusing on the greater impact organizations have on the environment and on society, the Concentration in Sustainable Management builds on DePaul’s Catholic, Vincentian and Urban tradition of bringing together pragmatic and ethical perspectives. In short, students will learn a strategic, values-driven decision-making framework for developing economically viable and socially just business ventures that exist within a finite ecology.

  

CURRICULUM

The program includes a broad array of experiences that focus on the essential contributions of economics, environmental management, communications, finance along with management toward building a more strategic decision making framework within future and current organization leaders.  Students must take three courses as described below to complete the concentration.

REQUIRED

• SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT (MGT 798)

ELECTIVE COURSES (select any two of the following ffive courses)

• SUSTAINABLE VALUE CREATION (FIN 798)
• EARTH RESOURCES AND HUMAN SOCIETY (ENV 506)
• ENVIRONMENTAL RHETORIC AND POLITICS (CMNS 529)
• SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (MGT 595)
• CAPSTONE PROJECT IN SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT (ECO 798)

The 2011-2013 class schedule is as follows: 

798 Course Descriptions:

FIN 798: Sustainable Value Creation

This course is designed to introduce the concept of sustainability to the process of value creation. The role of financial management has traditionally been defined as one of value maximization. A complex set of questions arises, however, as to whether such maximization is to be undertaken “unconstrained” and from the perspective of the shareholders alone. For example, should the interests of others, including those of the customers, employees, society at large, the government, the environment, be regarded as constraints to such an endeavor? Some of the recent contributions to the field suggest that most assumptions of the traditionalists (those arguing that the only purpose of the firm is to serve the shareholders and to maximize their wealth) do not hold in “the real world.” Therefore, they conclude that it is necessary that all relevant interests be recognized and taken into account. However, the unanswered question is: “how does one do this?” This course is designed to pave the way toward the answers to this question. Our goal, therefore, is to develop the theoretical relationship that exists between finance and sustainability, and to explore the practical issues associated with its implementation. In plain language, we will learn how to make a business case for making investments in sustainable and socially responsible projects. More ambitiously, our objective will be to develop a framework for the evaluation of all long-term benefits and costs associated with a project.

 

MGT 798: Sustainable Management  

This course discusses and analyzes the concept of sustainability within a business and management setting.  It will analyze the complex relationship between business and the environment and it will explore the nature of business in today’s global context where addressing environmental and social issues is becoming increasingly important.  Furthermore, it aims to discuss how the talents of business might be used to solve world’s environmental and social problems.  Rather than focusing on a ‘doom and gloom’ approach, the course aims to emphasize the solutions towards a sustainable economy. 

ECO/MGT 798: Developing Sustainable Strategies - Practicum 

This course is designed to integrate the concept of strategy development into the larger ecological economic context of serving market/society needs in a finite world.  The goal of strategy in organizations has traditionally been defined as one of value maximization, from the shareholder perspective exclusively. But the role of strategy is to guide organizations in competitively defining and meeting market/society’s needs. Sustainable strategies take into account multiple perspectives by engaging in practices – principally systems thinking – to pursue opportunities in meeting market/society’s needs that are economically viable, socially just, and operate responsibility within the constraints of a finite ecology.  Students will demonstrate the literacies required to develop sustainable strategies that take into account all facets of the business venture (marketing, finance, management, design, production and distribution/life cycle analysis.)

One key question will shape the trajectory of the course:  “How does one develop a competitive sustainable strategy to serve some market/society need?”   Therefore, the focus of this course is for the student to select a need, determine the sustainable economic system to develop and deliver the product/service, and write and present the “business case.”  The student will also articulate the values and vision –personal and organizational - driving the strategy.

See campusconnect.depaul.edu for course descriptions and prerequisite information for graduate courses