Sustainable Business Strategies

BPS 6379.501, Spring 2011

Padmakumar Nair, Ph.D., Dr.Eng., MBA

Day and Time: Monday and Wednesdays 05.30 to 06.45 PM

Place: SOM 2.106

Instructor: Padmakumar Nair, SOM 2.422

Telephone: 972-883-6264

Email: padmakumar.nair@utdallas.edu

Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 4.30 to 5.30 PM

Books (required)
1. Michael J. Sandel, What's the Right Thing to Do? [Paperback] Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 15,
2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY
2. Michael V. Russo, Environmental Management, Sage Publications, Inc; 2nd edition (September 5, 2008),
ISBN-10: 1412958490 , ISBN-13: 978-1412958493

Web resources:

http://www.utdallas.edu/library/resources/journals.htm (for HBR readings...)

http://www.epa.gov/

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sections/view/9

http://environment.yale.edu/

COURSE OVERVIEW
This is a highly interdisciplinary course where we bring together strategy, environmental sciences, energy
engineering, ethics and organizational behavior in a single framework to think about sustainable ways of
doing business. One of the major challenges of sustainable strategy development is to get various
stakeholders to commit to the sustainability agenda. This commitment depends on how much one believes
in the need for developing sustainable strategies and its usefulness to the organization and the society.
Therefore we will start the class with a discussion on expectancy and then transition to ethics.

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There are six components to our sustainability framework as shown below:

Energy

Expectancy Ethics

Environment

Essentials Economics

About two weeks of class discussions are devoted to each of the six topics.

DRIVERS AND ENABLERS OF SUSTAINABILITY AGENDA

The long term driver of sustainability is sustainability itself! But for organizations, in the short term, profit,
scarcity, survivability and societal expectations are the most important drivers. Enablers of sustainability are
innovation, technology and new behavior (or change).

COURSE OBJECTIVES
The course has multiple objectives that include the following:
1. To develop a deep understanding of issues related to sustainability.
2. Understand the corner stones of sustainability; expectancy, ethics, essentials, energy, economics and
environment
3. To integrate the business skills you have already developed and knowledge you have obtained with the new
found understanding of issues related sustainable business practices.
4. To develop skills in using your knowledge to come-up with practical, innovative and ethical solutions to
actual problems related business and societal sustainability.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

1. Analyze the sustainability impact of your business

2. Analyze the external and internal environment of a firm from a sustainability point of view
3. Identify the stakeholders of the firm and design ethical strategic responses
4. Create and justify explicit solutions, to address sustainability issues in business, that are realistic
and could be implemented
5. Integrate skills acquired in FIN, AIM, MKT, and MIS courses to create sustainable strategies

Achieving the Objectives

You will be required to complete several activities in order to achieve the identified objectives:

1. Contribute to in-class discussions of chapters, cases and readings by exhibiting (a) an understanding and
articulate analysis of the information presented and (b) skills in the prerequisite course areas required for
registration.

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 2. Attendance is required at all class sessions to fully make use of and participate in all class discussions. That
being said, I recognize that, at times, professional and personal emergencies may arise which may prevent
one from attending class. Let’s all be intrinsically motivated to contribute and learn from each other!
Everyone should strive to be off to a ―fast start‖ by being enthusiastically and actively engaged.

Overview of the Assignments

In the first day of the class three (3) groups with 3 to 4 members in each will be formed for the group assignments.
Please ―self-select‖ into your groups.

Please do not rely too much on the Internet for your research. Spend some time in the library—there are greater
opportunities for serendipitous results.

Assignment 1 (group): Chapter Readings (CLASS PRESENTATIONS) and case discussions

Readings are pre-selected for the week. The whole class should be prepared for engaging in an active class
discussion. Chapter readings are in the assigned book and other readings can be downloaded from the library
website [go to eJournals: http://www.utdallas.edu/library/resources/journals.htm . Discussion of the readings should
include the following:

1. Key ideas presented in the paper / chapter

2. Why these ideas are important and how they can be used in real life business situations
3. Aspects of the paper which you disagree with
The purpose of this is to generate a good class discussion.

Assignment 2 (Group):
This assignment involves identifying an unsustainable product, service, business model or life style and developing
strategies to make it sustainable. Use the six E framework to understand the sustainability issues and traditional
strategic management techniques to develop sustainable strategic options. Also identify possible drivers (profit,
scarcity, survivability and societal expectations) of sustainability and show how we can leverage various enablers
(innovation, technology and new behavior). All groups should give a 15 minutes pre-presentation on March 21st to
get developmental feedback from the class and the instructor.

All groups should give a 20 min Power Point presentation on this topic on May 2nd 2011. Please remember to send
me the presentation one day before your actual presentation day.

Assignment 3: Exam I (Multiple Choice and/or short answer) and Final Exam (Multiple
Choice and/or short answer)

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GRADING

The grades in the activities in which you will be participating will be combined to determine your final course grade.
Please note that items 1 and 2 below will be multiplied with a peer evaluation multiplier* to get your effective grade.
The relative weights are as follows:

1. Class Participation (includes readings and case discussions) 30%

2. Group’s Final Presentation 30%

3. Exam I 20%

3. Final Exam (comprehensive) 20%

Total 100%

* Peer Evaluations (to be completed at the end of the final class meeting)

All group members are expected to do their fair share of work on the assignments. Fortunately, about 90 percent of the groups this is not the case. Unfortunately,
that leaves (historically) approximately 10 percent of the groups in which inequities occur. Since I do not know which groups have such a problem, I will use peer
evaluations for all groups. For such a system to work, everyone must be honest and fair. First, if a group member(s) is making only a nominal contribution and/or
is overly difficult to work with, the other group member(s) may expel them/her/him from the group and this individual must complete the assignment individually
within two weeks after the due date. Second, all groups members should assign a certain points to themselves and to other group members based on the
following three dimensions:

1. Contribution (this includes data collection and time spend on constructive discussions)
2. Command over the subject matter
3. Team work

A final grade-multiplier will calculated based on the total points every individual gets from self and other group members.

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 Week/Day Course Content

Week 1 COURSE OVERVIEW / EXPECTATIONS / OBJECTIVES

Jan. 10th 2011

Week 1 Expectancy

Jan. 12th 2011 Chapter 2 – Russo (group 1)

Week 2

Jan. 17th 2011

No Class: Martin Luther King Day
Week 2 Expectancy

Jan. 19th 2011 Chapter 5 – Russo (group 2)

Week 3 Guest Lecture

Jan. 24th 2011

Week 3 Guest Lecture

Jan. 26th 2011

Week 4 Expectancy

Jan. 31st 2011 Chapter 17 – Russo (group 3)

Week 4 Ethics (Sandel, chapters 1&2)

Feb. 2nd 2011 Chapter 7 – Russo (group 1)

Week 5 Ethics (Sandel, chapter 3)

Feb. 7th 2011 Chapter 21 – Russo (group 2)

Week 5 Ethics (Sandel, chapter 4)

Feb. 9th 2011 Chapter 28 – Russo (group 3)

Week 6 Ethics (Sandel, chapter 5)

Feb. 14th 2011 Chapter 32 – Russo (group 1)

Week 5 Environment

Feb. 16th 2011 Chapter 3 – Russo (group 2)

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Week 6 Environment

Feb. 21st 2011 Chapter 6 – Russo (group 3)

Week 6 Environment

Feb. 23rd 2011 Chapter 8 – Russo (group 1)

Week 7 Environment

Feb. 28th 2011 Chapter 9 – Russo (group 2)

Week 7 Environment

March 2nd 2011 Chapter 10 – Russo (group 3)

Week 8 Environment

March 7th 2011 Chapter 41 – Russo (group 1)

Week 8

March 9th 2011

Exam I
Week 9

March 14th & 16th Spring Break

2011

Week 10 Assignment 2 Pre-presentations (10 minutes each)

March 21st 2011 Essentials

Chapter 11 – Russo (group 2)

Week 10 Essentials

March 23rd 2011 Chapter 4 – Russo (group 3)

Week 11 Essentials

March 28th 2011 Chapter 13 – Russo (group 1)

Week 11 Energy

March 30th 2011 ―Six Sources of Limitless Energy‖ by Gardiner Morse, HBR, Sept. 2009 (group 2)

Week 12 Energy

April 4th 2011 ―Moon Shots for Management‖ by Gary Hamel, HBR, Feb. 2009 (group 3)

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Week 12 Energy

April 6th 2011 ―Biomass -- The Other Energy Source‖, by Mary E. Walsh, HBR, April 2009 (group
1)

Week 13 Energy

April 11th 2011 ―How to Jump-Start the Clean-Tech Economy‖, by Mark W. Johnson, Josh
Suskewicz, HBR, Nov. 2009 (group 2)

Week 13 Energy

April 13th 2011 ―Climate Business/Business Climate‖, by M.E. Porter et al., HBR Forethought
Special Report, pages 1 to 16, Oct. 2007 (group 3)

Week 14 Economics

April 18th 2011 ―What Do We Mean by "Strategy for Sustainability"?--And Why is It Essential to the
Survival of Your Business?‖, by Adam Werbach, HBR, July 2009 (group 1)

Week 14 Economics

April 20th 2011 Chapter 11 – Russo (group 2)

Week 15 Economics

April 25th 2011 Chapter 13 – Russo (group 3)

Week 15

April 27th 2011 Exam II (comprehensive)

Week 16

May 2nd 2011 Assignment 2 Final Presentations