Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Concentration

This course is designed to broaden and deepen your conceptual and technical understanding of strategic management control systems (SMCS) and the challenges of strategy development given ever changing business environments. SMCS are considered broadly to include everything that managers do to ensure strong performance or, more specifically, to ensure that the company’s strategies are implemented effectively. The focus of most of the course will be on the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies of organizations.  ESG strategies are a new and evolving challenge for companies. The regulatory environment and stakeholder expectations are changing.  Traditional performance metrics are not sufficient to support decision making and disclosure. Nevertheless, the five stages of SMCS: strategy development; translating strategy into objectives, goals, and initiatives; planning and budgeting; monitoring success; and changing strategy to address evolving expectations and past failures still apply. We will discuss ESG strategies within this framework.

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This course introduces stakeholder vs shareholder theory, the elements of useful disclosures, and quality non-financial metrics. We will cover domestic and international reporting requirements, carbon accounting, renewable energy credits, carbon offsets, and the current state of domestic and international privacy and data security regulations. The course will cover human capital development metrics and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.  Finally, we will discuss the history and  challenges of environmental equity and forced labor in supply chains.

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Financial market turbulence and evolving societal trends create both challenges and opportunities for investors. Investment concepts, core theories and leading investment techniques. Develop the ability to integrate a wide range of skills and interdisciplinary knowledge for investment excellence.

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In the past, firms primarily focused on maximizing shareholder returns. However, today, firms are increasingly called upon to address the myriad interests of additional stakeholders including employees, suppliers, customers, and local communities, as well as the government, special interest groups, consumer advocacy groups, competitors, complementors, ecosystem members, and industry or technology groups. In doing so, managers are increasingly asked to balance firm the firm’s pursuit of growth and profitability with addressing society’s wicked problems, complex societal issues that are extremely difficult or even impossible to solve due to competing interests. As a result, managers today must understand how to manage the interests of these various stakeholders.

This course prepares executive MBA students to map these various stakeholders and correctly identify their interests. It also teaches them to pinpoint what is driving these interests and to recognize how they converge or conflict across stakeholders (formulating the problems correctly). Students will also weigh these tradeoffs between stakeholders, finding win-win solutions in some cases, and making difficult decisions in others. In doing so, they will also explore the question of whether a stakeholder approach to business increases or hinders profitability. As such, they will learn through practice, how to address wicked problems at the intersection of business and society, such as sustainability (Forever Chocolate case), social welfare (Phillip Morris case), inclusiveness (Aparigrahi Yoga case) and food insecurity (FoodXervices and Food Bank case). Thus, this course provides executive MBA students with tools to support the growth of their businesses while simultaneously tackling global societal challenges.

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Fundamentals of effective negotiations through readings, simulations, videos, and discussions. Planning for negotiation, integrative and distributive negotiation strategies, power and influence, ethics and interpersonal communication. Experience in negotiating through simulations and follow-up discussions

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Managing complex negotiations, such as mediated conflicts, coalitions, multiparty negotiations, cross-cultural negotiations, and dispute resolution system design. Unique challenges in complex negotiations and strategies to meet bargainers’ interests in these negotiations.

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Strategic and decision-making aspects of marketing functions. Analysis, coordination, execution of marketing programs. Development of strategies and tactics. Segmentation, marketing mix, market response modeling, and ethics in a global context.

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Sustainability, company impact on society, public-private partnerships. Development of new products ideas for service firms and physical good manufacturers using voice of the customer approaches, leveraging ideas from channel partners, and from frontline employees. Fuzzy front end of the innovation process.

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International research from various elements of the marketing research process. Globalization, the research planning process (business problem and research objectives identification), research design. International qualitative/quantitative approaches, analysis, reporting/storytelling, and assessment of various global regions.

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Procurement and supply management. Insourcing and outsourcing decisions. Global sourcing. Supply chain risk management. Cost analysis and management tools. Purchase negotiation, contract management, and purchasing ethics. Supplier relationship management and supplier development.

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