Sustainability – The intersection of economics, society and environment

“NUCB Undergraduate School’s mission is to educate innovative and ethical leaders who possess a ‘Frontier Spirit’ and to create knowledge that advances business and society. Our students will have the ability to bridge the gap between New Asia and the rest of the world.”

Leading Sustainable Businesses is a course designed to demonstrate that students have developed innovative and ethical leadership thinking that incorporates social equity and environmental sustainability as well as SDGs as a core parts of that, and also that they possess the foundations of "frontier spirit" in this critical era of sustainability.

Leading sustainable businesses –

In 1996, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter came out with his ground-breaking ideas about business enterprise sustainability in a Harvard Business review article entitled “What is Strategy”. He proclaimed that to be sustainable and thus economically viable in the long-term, companies had to build sustainable strategic positions that created valuable solutions with unique value propositions for customers, and they had to do this with sets of interconnected activities through business models that gave them sustainable competitive advantages over their real and potential rivals in the marketplace. Within a short time, leading global CEOs and business people everywhere were talking about “value propositions” and innovating their business models and how becoming customer centric was the key to economic survival and sustainability. Indeed, CEOs proudly proclaimed that only reason that publicly listed enterprises should exist was to create growing sustainable economic value. Business enterprises followed these sustainability tenets religiously to build new business models with resultant value for customers. But, based on traditional capital market values, corporate goals often emphasized value creation for customers and shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders.

Today – Over 20 years has passed since Professor Porter’s ground-breaking sustainability ideas on the economic viability of business enterprises – the world has greatly evolved and societies and our planet are facing unprecedented sustainability challenges. Capitalism is being reimagined and new forms are emerging that emphasize not just economic gains but that integrate social and environmental priorities as core components. Sustainable businesses today are redefining the corporate ecosystem and concept of sustainability by designing business models focusing on how to create value for all stakeholders, including society and the planet. Professor Porter himself pioneered the idea of “creating shared value”, arguing businesses can generate economic value by also addressing social and environmental issues that intersect with their businesses. While the basic ideas of strategic positioning remain in place, sustainable business strategy has evolved to integrate economic, environmental, and social aims into a firm's goals, activities, and planning, with the aim of creating long-term value for the firm, its stakeholders, and the wider society. The new sustainability mantra has become three integrated pillars – economic viability, environmental protection and social equity, and chief sustainability officers have become central to leadership and decision-making in business enterprises.

Leading Sustainable Businesses aims to give participants valuable knowledge and essential skills in leading businesses in the right direction to not only create economic viability based on traditional concepts of capitalism that put the shareholders at the front, but understanding the very reason for a company’s existence and sustainability is the society and environment itself, and these should be integrated into the foundation of building sustainable business models – not as an afterthought. Indeed, as a core part of the learning, we will discuss about the UN's seventeen 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how companies are balancing their business efforts to help focus on these various sustainability goals. Through case studies and sustainability concepts, you will learn how sustainability focused businesses can thrive and grow while also potentially solving some of the world’s biggest challenges. This will be very valuable learning as sustainability is more and more considered core business learning and will become centre stage globally.

By the end of this course, participants will have learned all the critical aspects about sustainability and new approaches to capitalism that consider all stakeholders in the value chain, including society and the planet, as well as how important the 2030 SDGs are helping to define this new capitalism - based on "People, Planet and Profitability (3Ps). Participants should also have a clear understanding about how to lead change towards sustainability goals and implement corporate policies that can be good for all stakeholders, not just shareholders - in other words, "how a company can do well by doing good!"

*本学の教育ミッションを具現化する形で設定されています。

Leading Sustainable Businesses -

Sustainable business strategy is the integration of economic, environmental, and social aims into a firm's goals, activities, and planning, with the aim of creating long-term value for the firm, its stakeholders, and the wider society. Sustainable business practices are those that at minimum do not harm people or the planet and at best create value for all stakeholders

What you will learn in this course is how to understand and analyze the business models that drive change towards sustainable practices and the competitive advantages that focusing on sustainability can bring to all three pillars of sustainability: (1) economic viability, (2) social equity and (3) environmental protection.

We will achieve this through a lively and interactive class discussion focused on relevant case discussions, group discussions in Days 1-5, and put this learning into play in Days 5 and 6 and 7 through a "group sustainability project" that will evaluate and compare the Sustainability Reports of two business enterprises (groups choose these) that have embraced sustainability as a core to everything they do. Day 7 will wrap it all up with a review of the group sustainability project outputs.

教育手法 Teaching Method		% of Course Time
インプット型 Traditional		0 %
参加者中心型 Participant-Centered Learning	ケースメソッド Case Method	70 %
	フィールドメソッド Field Method	30 %
合計 Total		100 %

How to proceed –
This Leadership of Sustainable Businesses course will be comprised of four parts
1. Interactive lecture: The lecturer will give you some basic examples
2. Class case discussions: This will be the main part of this course.
3. Group discussions: the class will be divided into groups to discuss topics designated by the lecturer
4. Sustainability group project in Days 6 and 7 - analyze/compare two real company "Sustainability Reports"

The learning topics will focus on two key areas
Days 1-2: Purpose driven systemic change within business enterprises
Days 3-5: Sustainable development goals and creating shared value (CSV)
Days 6-7: Final 2 days will be focused a group sustainability project

List of cases -
1. Tata: Leadership with trust
2. Governance and sustainability at Nike (A)
3. Sustainability at IKEA
4. Nestle’s creating shared value strategy
5. Unilever’s new global strategy: Competing through sustainability
6. Danone (A): Sustainable platform troubles in Morocco 2019

Article
Creating shared value: How to reinvent capitalism and unleash a wave of innovation and growth

Written output required –
1. Group sustainability project in Days 6 and 7, output due for discussion in the second part of Day 7
2. Post-course final written "course learning" report assignment due shortly after course finishes

*成績は下記該当項目を基に決定されます。
*クラス貢献度合計はコールドコールと授業内での挙手発言の合算値です。

講師用内規準拠 Method of Assessment	Weights
コールドコール Cold Call	0 %
授業内での挙手発言 Class Contribution	40 %
クラス貢献度合計 Class Contribution Total	40 %
予習レポート Preparation Report	0 %
小テスト Quizzes / Tests	0 %
シミュレーション成績 Simulation	30 %
ケース試験 Case Exam	0 %
最終レポート Final Report	30 %
期末試験 Final Exam	0 %
参加者による相互評価 Peer Assessment	0 %
合計 Total	100 %

評価の留意事項　Notes on Evaluation Criteria

• Michael Rosenberg「Strategy and Sustainability *Optional reading」Palgrave Macmillan（2015）
• Professor Tadao Onaka and Professor Nigel Denscombe「Corporate Sustainability Governance: Is the objective of governance ROE or sustainability?」Global Management Networks（2015）Amazon ASIN: BOOXHGHNVI

Reference Article (Optional): "What is Strategy?"
*Professor Michael Porter, Harvard Business Review, 1996

to be updated later

（実務経験 Work experience）