General Information
Promotional Video
Unavailable
Target Audience
Students with the following interests should take this course:
- Corporate social responsibility
- Social impact
- Strategic and general management
Format
In-Person
Course Mission
Businesses are increasingly called upon to help solve major global challenges like climate change, political polarization, social and income inequality, education, healthcare and global pandemics. How can businesses contribute to tackling these problems while also fulfilling their mission of creating and capturing value for shareholders? While there are no easy answers to this question, the goal of this course is to provide an opportunity to engage with it in a critical and creative way. To do this, the course will rely on the 360o Corporation framework, which provides a roadmap for how to begin thinking about this issue. We will then explore how a variety of firms have attempted to find this balance and why some succeeded, while others fail. We will discuss how profits are not always compatible with the interests of stakeholders and how firms can manage these resulting trade-offs. The objective of this course, therefore, is to use core concepts from strategy and management theory, along with insights from cutting edge strategy research, to explore how firms might have a more positive social impact, while also remaining profitable businesses.
Course Scope
This course will examine the role of the corporation in society. Students will learn about how to identify trade-offs in company’s business model and about creative processes for breaking trade-offs, innovating around them or thriving within them.
We will discuss the tensions that arise for the manager when attempting to manage across the different stakeholders, studying the impact of choices about labor management, globalization, location, sourcing and other issues on social welfare such as climate change and inequality. At the end of the course, we will take the perspective of the leaders of the corporation and seek to understand how they can make important strategic choices for their company in the face of the many challenges and obligations we uncover in the course.
The sessions will involve a combination of lectures, discussions of the readings, videos, role-playing and debates about important topics. Students will be expected to be actively engaged in debating the issues.
The final project will be team based and will be a case write up of a company.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Due Date | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Class Participation (Individual) | Ongoing | 30% |
| Midterm Test (Individual) | Before add/drop date | 20% |
| Reflections (Individual) | Ongoing | 10% |
| Company Case Study (Team) | End of course | 40% |
Required Resources
To be confirmed.