Areas of Competence: Knowledge and Understanding; Use, application and generation of knowledge; Communication and cooperation; Scientific self-understanding / professionalism.
The course demands that students think critically about current business methods and how sustainability can be achieved/maintained within capitalistic markets. After successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
• Confidently discuss main literary advancements within the field and their meanings for the pursuit of sustainable agendas
• Understand the main intricacies of our environmental limitations and how human activity since the industrial revolution has placed strains on many environmental resources
• Identify the pressures faced by society and the planet, including the causes of climate change, water management, and other global problems, as well as their potential economic, social and environmental impacts
• Visualize a transition from Cradle-to-grave linear thinking to cradle-to-cradle circular economies
• Explain in detail the intricacies of the German recycling programs and wind-energy programs, with their inherent strengths and weaknesses
• Propose agendas for sustainable work environments with a focus on international social sustainability with migration patterns as well as domestic social sustainability with regard to improving organizational working milieus
• Reconcile a profit driven business incentive with sustainable agendas
• Understand the ways that the private sector is addressing sustainability related issues including CSR management and reporting, global frameworks for sustainability and different codes of conduct.
• Understand technology innovation and how to manage it properly to reduce risks in each stage of the process (from idea conception to mass implementation in a global society)
• Understand and assess the potential for key technologies in order to identify potential opportunities for investing in new innovations
• Identify the main features of different technologies in order to evaluate their economic and social value (this includes carbon mitigation and adaptation technologies)
After successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
• Motivate and conduct policy change within organizations allowing profit-seeking entities to pursue greater financial value through the implementation of sustainable agendas.
• Display competencies that focus on how management and business can interact positively with communities and the environment in ethically sound ways.
• Discuss how social and corporate needs become opportunities, how these opportunities become innovation drivers and how innovation creates economic and sustainable development.
• Identify and support the birth of new technologies that can aid in the pursuit of sustainable agendas
• Interact in a modern organization so as to act as a change agent for greater sustainable agendas using a specific assortment of assessment tools gauging sustainability readiness
• Make smart decision uniting profit motives with sustainable agendas
After successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
• Present and discuss complicated issues relating to sustainable agendas
• Represent a variety of viewpoints concerning the pursuit of sustainability for businesses and the controversy that is link to it.
• Propose thoughts about further developments and be able to engage in dialogue with actors that are likely to oppose your solutions
• Create an action plan for companies to engage in greater sustainable agendas with specific tasks and engagements that encourage greater involvement for company employees
• Express and overcome sustainability blunders that hinder progressivity within companies
• Present future agendas concerning sustainable actions with a plan for who needs to do what
After successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
• Independently propose thoughts about sustainable agendas that are profitable for companies to pursue
• Reflect upon the motivators behind the pursuit of sustainable agendas and the hindrances that traditionalists fear
• Envision a larger win/win scenario for regions, countries, continents and the world by uniting efforts and avoiding protectionist and minimalistic short term thinking
• Possess a holistic understanding of how business, the profit motive and sustainable actions can harmonize without detriment to peripheral actors