General Information
Promotional Video
Not Available
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
The impact of corporations’ strategies goes far beyond their own balance sheet, they impact people’s lives, local communities, and the natural environment. Corporations shape the economies and societies we live in. In light of this, corporations are increasingly called upon to help address 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, this course provides a space and framework for critically engaging with these issues. To do this, the course will rely on the 360o Corporation framework, which provides a roadmap for how to begin thinking about these issues. We will then explore how a variety of firms have attempted to find this balance and why some succeeded, while others failed. 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 whether corporations can 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 a corporation’s strategy and how that strategy impacts a variety of stakeholders. We will discuss how corporations’ strategies create trade-offs with stakeholders when their incentives and goals are not aligned. Then we will analyze creative processes for breaking trade-offs, innovating around them, and 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 an essay and it will be an individual assignment.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Due Date | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Class Participation (Individual) | Ongoing | 30% |
| Short Essay (Individual) | Before add/drop date | 20% |
| Final Essay (Individual) | End of course | 50% |
Required Resources
To be confirmed.