This course enables students to explore the use of systemic thinking theories and methods to make sense of complex situations and engage a group of divergent people to design and test ideas for improvement. The conceptual underpinnings of the course are rooted in the notion that simplifying complexity leads to unintended and unknown consequences that can threaten the sustainability of organizations.

Through experiential exercises, readings and lectures, students study the theory of complexity and the value of a systems perspective as leaders in business and society. Essential techniques such as Conversation Mapping, WindTunneling® and Conceptual Modeling allow students to confidently help organizations take a systemic approach to complexity management. The power of story to enhance working with complexity is also woven throughout the course material.

 

This course provides an overview and comparative analysis of the major initiatives at the intersection of business development and environmental and social responsibility. Students explore and apply methodologies designed to help enterprises and conduct integrated sustainability audits of existing companies that are pursuing green business certification. These hands-on consulting projects allow students to become conversant in a broad array of eco-commerce models and green business strategies.

 

Human perception shapes communication. If we intend to transform the business world, we must first transform the ways we perceive, such as the accuracy and emotional intelligence with which we observe, listen and speak to each other. This course explores how our “frameworks of perception” are shaped by multiple factors, including leading-edge insights from neurological research, so that we make more effective, conscious choices in the ways we communicate.

Within the team setting, students have opportunities to practice specific methods to enhance a broad range of communication skills, including listening, observing, seeking feedback, providing feedback, addressing conflicts constructively and ethically, collaborating toward a common goal, and team evaluation based on shared standards. The instructor provides extensive feedback to individual students and teams regarding their ability to analyze, synthesize and convey complex ideas in writing. This course is taken concurrently with Organizational Behavior for Business Transformation.

 

This course investigates how and why complexities increase as individuals form groups or teams, and as various groups form organizational systems. Students learn how to bridge leadership-management roles, how to distinguish between required systems and emergent systems, and how to assess ego-motivation, eco-motivation, and employee ownership in designing effective teams and workplaces. Patterns, principles and factors that support or inhibit conscious, socially responsible organizations, including economic factors, are explored from many angles so students recognize alternative choices for organizational structures and cultures within corporate and non-corporate settings. This course is taken concurrently with Communication Skills for Business Transformation.

 

For any human activity to be sustainable, it must first be economically viable. Managerial and Environmental Accounting provides students with an understanding of the types and behavior of business and environmental costs; how these costs are collected and measured; and how they are incorporated into decision models for business purposes.

Students learn the fundamentals of managerial (cost) accounting and how to use quantitative tools to measure organizational performance in order to achieve economic and environmental objectives. The course teaches students how companies, institutions and regulators can incorporate the concept of triple-bottom-line reporting. Students gain experience researching the financial, environmental, and social performance of various organizations.

 

This course will introduce students to the basic principles and vocabulary of marketing management and to the strategic implications of marketing decision making in the domestic and global marketplace. Instruction will focus on the marketing environment, the competitive challenges of the changing market structures, business ethics, and the tools that today’s marketing manager needs to manage and mitigate risk in both for-profit and non-profit companies. Examining the components of strategic marketing planning, we will study how the marketing mix is adapted to various business functions including market segmentation, consumer behavior, product development, marketing infrastructure, quality and marketing research. Current events, global trends, sustainable enterprises and social and green marketing will be highlighted throughout the course. Students will be involved in a range of individual and group activities including case analyses, in-class discussions and the creation of a strategic marketing plan.

 

Finance is the study of how to allocate scarce resources over time under conditions of uncertainty. As leaders of businesses and organizations, students need to be comfortable with financial concepts to manage viable organizations. This course covers the development and interpretation of financial statements, with a particular focus on building financial statements and a case for outside funding for new enterprises. Students create financial models for their own enterprise or for a major initiative at an established organization.

 

Enterprises are forces in society that can create great benefits, convenience and progress, as well as much tragedy for others and the planet. In our interdependent world, which social impacts of enterprises are beneficial to people, which detrimental, and which are both simultaneously? How do various communities around the globe plus employees, employers, customers and shareholders perceive these impacts? This course examines these complex questions within historical and current economic patterns at the macro and micro levels to provide students with a broad perspective on globalization, its institutions such as the WTO, IMF and World Bank, and potential alternatives as these systems are resisted by national governments and groups.

Students conduct their own direct investigations in project teams via qualitative research with stakeholders on questions of import to them. Experiential learning provides students with opportunities to investigate their own assumptions, make more informed choices, gain insights on how various stakeholders perceive the social impacts of enterprises, and develop crucial skills for positive intervention, education and change in organizations, industries and society.

 

This course includes elements of managerial economics and socially responsible investment that are especially relevant to sustainability entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. Topics include understanding capital markets and how they affect internal capital budgeting decisions using payback period, NPV, IRR, and MIRR. This course is taken concurrently with Economics for Managers.

 

This course includes microeconomic concepts and analytical tools commonly used in business decision-making. After reviewing fundamental economic theories, students engage in topics including supply and demand analysis, price elasticity, and production cost analysis. This course is taken concurrently with Intrapreneurial Finance.

 

This course looks at how marketing research can support business decision-making and sustainability. Students are taught qualitative and quantitative market research methods through developing a primary research plan using either on-line marketing research instruments or in-depth interviews with local experts. Many of these studies explore topics related to the “green” marketplace, the eco consumer, or the current social/political environment. The actual research is then fielded, analyzed and presented.

 

Operations Management is the systematic design, direction and control of the processes (“value streams”) that create value by transforming inputs into finished goods or services. Operations also play a critical strategic role by helping organizations learn, innovate and continually increase the value offered to customers while reducing waste.

This course is focused on the concepts and analytic methods that are useful in the design and management of a firm’s operations. The aim is to familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting operations managers, and to provide language, concepts, insights and tools to deal with these issues in order to gain competitive advantage through operations. Because the course deals with the management of “processes”, it applies to both for-profit and non-profit organizations, to both service and manufacturing organizations, and to virtually any functional area or industry.

 

Sustainable business practices are often poorly understood, are rarely implemented systematically, and frequently are merely a disguised set of traditional business practices masquerading as innovation. Focusing on intrapreneurship (i.e., driving change within existing organizations) this course will explore the issues of sustainable business practices in order to provide tools and methods to help students understand, respond to, and master:

• Means and methods of creating legitimate, verifiable sustainability performance

• How to inspire and drive human and social capital development within the enterprise and among enterprise stakeholders

• Methods of measuring sustainability performance, and establishing baselines for and driving continuous improvement in performance

• How auditing and reporting on sustainability performance aids capacity building, propagates sustainability in other enterprises and organizations, and supports clear communications about the authenticity and focus of sustainability performance.

 

In this course students explore how people, acting through the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, can effect change in their communities using a “triple-bottom-line” approach–sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation. Many organizations – private firms, non-profit organizations and government agencies – are in the process of designing and testing models of commerce in the hope of finding ways to protect the earth and its inhabitants while still generating profits. The course focuses on a number of these models, including Natural Capitalism, The Natural Step, Cradle-to-Cradle Design, the Sky Trust and the Global Reporting Initiative, and applies the models to students’ strategic enterprise plans.

 

This is a “capstone” business incubator course. Students develop either entrepreneurial business plans or strategic plans for major new initiatives for existing businesses, integrating learning from the entire GreenMBA program curriculum. Students build on their understanding of financial projection and capital planning by learning about funding options (from self-funding to venture capital), and how to develop flexible and adaptive organizations through the business planning process. The course emphasizes the advancement of environmental and social initiatives that are financially viable.