Environmental Management for Business MSc

• Professor Paul Burgess

Human population growth and increased resource use per capita requires improved management of our global ecosystem. Approaches such as the “Sustainable Development Goals”, “Natural Capital”, “Ecosystem Services”, and “Planetary Boundaries” provide frameworks for businesses and wider society to resolve the synergies and trade-offs between major economic, environmental and social challenges.  The “Circular Economy” approach refers to the development of “restorative” industrial systems that are grounded on the lessons of non-linear, feedback-rich ecosystems.  The third approach is to explore the nexus between renewable energy, food, and other ecosystem services using per capita energy and food consumption. This module introduces and critiques the above frameworks and examines their application to resolve real-world problems and create commercial opportunities.  

• Definitions of sustainability; the Sustainable Development Goals, moving from an “Empty World” to a “Full World”,
• Natural capital, ecosystem processes and succession; the role of energy; feedback systems; biodiversity and system restoration,
• Using an ecosystem services and “doughnut economics” approach: quantifying trade-offs and synergies; improving water and nutrient management, reducing greenhouse gases emissions, enhancing stability, resistance and resilience, and issues of equity,
• Introduction to the circular economy: opportunities for businesses,
• How design, manufacturing practice and management can contribute to a circular economy,
• Case study: trade-offs, synergies, and opportunities to enhance well-being and ecosystem service provision in terms of energy, food, feed and wood for a case study area.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Critique terms such as “sustainability”, “ecosystem services”, “biodiversity”, “human well-being”, “circular economy”, “per capita energy use”, “natural capital” and “doughnut economics”,
• Evaluate how natural capital and ecosystem service approaches can guide businesses and society to make decisions regarding the use of ecological resources, with a focus on biodiversity, greenhouse gases, and water use,
• Explain how we can enhance the stability, resistance and resilience of human and natural systems,
• Explain how the “circular economy” provides commercial opportunities,
• Use a per capita approach to explore the synergies between food, feed, wood, and renewable energy production to guide decision making and identify opportunities in the context of a case-study.

• Dr Annette Yunus-Pendrey

Global sustainability challenges are shaping the way business operates in the 21st century. Businesses are under increasing pressure from multiple stakeholders (for e.g. shareholders, customers, employees, society) to manage their positive and negative impacts with clear responsibility and strategic intent.  Leading firms are choosing to respond to these challenges by generating sustainable value propositions to ultimately drive competitive advantage. For many this has meant re-engaging at the level of purpose and re-addressing their role in wider society and for human well-being.

This module outlines the major sustainability challenges and explores the capabilities organisations require to respond positively to them. It will engage you in gaining a better understanding of how corporate action can be best configured to promote responsible and sustainable business strategies. In doing so, it will demand management students (as future business managers and leaders) to reflect on the long-standing debate about whether or not ‘the business of business, is still business?

This module is 10 credits.

Watch video: An introduction to the Leading Corporate Sustainability module

The content is organised around the sustainability management ‘compass’ below:

The course content is structured as follows:



Part 1: Setting the context

Context setting

• Managing corporate sustainability
• Social and environmental trends

The role of business

• The role of business
• Challenges and opportunities for business

Exploring possible futures

• Playing an interactive future sustainable scenario board game
  



Part 2: Developing the capabilities

• Setting a purpose
• Formulating and implementing strategy
• Working with stakeholders
• Innovating
• Collaborating
• Valuing
• Leading

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

1. Identify global environmental and social trends and assess how these present both challenges and opportunities to business and analyse the capabilities businesses need to manage these.
2. Classify the potential stakeholder groups businesses can work with to develop and implement their sustainability strategies and evaluate collaborative approaches.
3. Assess the role of personal leadership in an organisation’s values, strategic direction and ability to execute its sustainability strategy.
4. Critically assess the content and reporting of businesses’ sustainability strategies.
5. Design and recommend a sustainability-oriented innovation for a selected business.

• Dr Anil Graves

Environmental accounting is being used by institutions and businesses to guide decision making regarding competing projects and programmes. It involves financial appraisal, environmental valuation, and economic appraisal (or social cost-benefit analysis). This module explores the economic concepts and techniques that can be used for the valuation of non-market social and environmental services. You will also gain practical experience in extending a financial analysis to allow an economic appraisal.

• Environmental accounting at business, sector and national levels.
• Techniques for non-market valuation of social and environmental services: cost and income based approaches, demand estimation methods - expressed and revealed preference, choice modelling: examples of applications .
• Principles and practice of financial and economic appraisal.
• Case study application for an afforestation project in a spreadsheet environment.
• Cost effectiveness analysis.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Explain the purpose and methods of environmental accounting at business, sector and national levels.
• Explain the difference between financial and economic valuation and appraisal.
• Valuation: Critically assess strengths and weaknesses of different environmental valuation methods and techniques.
• Appraisal: Critically evaluate different financial and economic appraisal metrics such as benefit: cost ratio, net present value, equivalent annual value, internal rate of return, and the choice of discount rate.
• Undertake a financial and an economic appraisal in a spreadsheet environment.

• Dr Georgios Pexas

Environmental impact assessment and life cycle analysis are important tools for evaluating the sustainability of complex renewable energy technologies and industrial processes or products. The tools and concepts taught in this module will enable you to assess the sustainability of a case study from an environmental standpoint. Analysis of relevant case studies to demonstrate the assessment process, including how to account for uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.

This module is 10 credits.

• Environmental Impact Assessment,
• Indicator selection and analysis,
• Life cycle analysis and carbon footprinting,
• Social impact assessment,
• The use of appropriate software for lifecycle analysis.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Critically assess the emissions and waste production throughout the lifecycle of a technology or process,
• Design a framework to ensure compliance of a process, product or service to support the transition to Net Zero that is  compliant with regulatory and voluntary requirements,
• Critically evaluate different environmental and social appraisal metrics,
• Design and implement a strategy to assess the environmental sustainability of a process or technology, and evaluate the associated uncertainties.

• Dr Simon Jude

A critical application of environmental risk management is in the development and appraisal of policy in central government and business. Policies are developed to manage environmental risks and selection of policy options must be informed by risk based tools and techniques. Doing so demands a comprehension of the technical, organisational and human elements of governing environmental risks and developing environmental policy. This module draws these themes together by introducing core concepts and then illustrating these concepts with case studies spanning business and government, and finally application via a group exercise. Core lectures are supported by multiple case studies, a workshop and module assignment.

• Risk governance.
• Problem definition.
• Environmental risk analysis and management.
• Environmental policy development and appraisal.
• Policy instruments.
• Policy co-design.
• Evidence-based conservation.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Critically assess the technical, organisational and human features of effective environmental risk governance.
• Critically evaluate the environmental policy cycle of implementation and the basics of policy development and appraisal.
• Critically analyse different types of policy instruments, including regulation, economic, voluntary and other measures, and identify the appropriate policy instruments to use in different contexts.
• Compare and contrast environmental risk management techniques, selecting tools appropriate to the character of the risk in question.
• Rigorously interrogate the challenges and constraints of environmental policy co-design and evidence-based policy-making. Understand the challenges and constraints of environmental policy co-design.

• Dr Alice Johnston

The module introduces the context of environmental decision making, providing both a conceptual overview and practical tools for addressing environmental management problems. It aims to promote an understanding of weight-of-evidence approaches used to inform real-world problems by research, industry, and government. Central to this is an understanding of the strengths and limitations of different approaches and aspects of decision science, the social, economic, and environmental trade-offs made during decision-making, and how real-world complexity and future uncertainty is accounted for. Students will learn how to apply systems thinking to evaluate different courses of action in response to environmental challenges related to land, water, and/or energy. 

• Key environmental challenges and the need for decision support tools.
• Different stakeholders in environmental decisions.
• Weighing the evidence for different courses of action.
• Big data; data analytical approaches; mathematical modelling; statistical inference; machine learning; information systems; spatial data science approaches. 
• Environmental, economic, and social trade-offs in decisions. 
• Accounting for real-world complexity and future uncertainty in decisions.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of decision science approaches for practical environmental management problems.
• Conceptualise complex environmental issues using systems thinking to weigh-up different courses of action.
• Critically appraise the need for stakeholders to trade-off environmental, economic and social concerns, and the limitations of decision science approaches in accounting for real-world complexity and future uncertainty.

• Dr Kenisha Garnett

Strategic foresight research refers to a range of methods that can be used to identify, analyse and communicate insights about the future. Standard methods include horizon scanning, trend research, and scenario planning. Outputs include emerging issues, trends, visions, scenarios, and wild cards. The methods employed and insights produced are used by both private and public sector organisations to inform a wide range of policy, risk, strategy and innovation processes. Foresight research is a truly inter-disciplinary ‘science’, covering and combining developments in society, technology, economy, ecology, politics, legislation and values.

Crucially, foresight research is as much about analysing the past and present, as it is about looking to the future. Once we understand how a system has developed and works today, we can explore how it may evolve and what it may look like in the future. Strategic foresight techniques consider a wide range of possible, plausible futures so that planning can be put in place to adapt to and mitigate against various conditions. It is designed to add resilience, adaptability and flexibility to organisations in an increasingly complex and fast changing world.

This module will explore how:

• Horizon scanning can act as a method of gathering new insights that may point us towards affirming or discrediting existing trends and developments, as well as identifying new and emerging trends and developments that are on the margins of our current thinking, but will impact on the future.

Other foresight methodologies (e.g. scenario planning, visioning, back-casting) can be used to help us to use the trends identified from horizon scanning to identify how the future might develop.

In this module, you will adopt a bespoke three-step foresight process to interpret change in the external organisational environment and use the insights generated to anticipate plausible futures and stress-test strategies that support building organisational resilience.

The foresight process will support you in building:

Robust organisational intelligence through systematic horizon scanning and insight generation.

Resilience through comprehensive exploration and interpretation of the future to maintain flexibility (ability to adapt) against impending risks and to cease opportunities.

Step 1: Build organisational intelligence.

A 360o horizon scan of the external environment, both operational (e.g. market and consumer trends, competition) and contextual (e.g. regulatory constraints and opportunities, technological and social change), to systemically analyse those trends and patterns within the industry/sector and beyond that point to persistent trends, discontinuities or sharp disruptions that may challenge the future direction and ambition of your organisation.

Step 2: Develop a set of alternative plausible future scenarios.

Build a set of plausible scenarios that explore alternative development pathways for your organisation in the future. The scenarios will reflect both positive and negative factors influencing the development of the organisation over the short to long-term, considering the contrasting role that various external driver of change (e.g. socio-demographic, technological, economic and policy change) will play. The scenarios should also consider discontinuities or sharp disruptive events (e.g. fuel crisis, political conflict or war) that may challenge the organisation’s continuity and its resilience, requiring an analysis of risks, opportunities and trade-offs over the long-term.

Step 3: Create a vision and strategic roadmap for achieving a desirable future (scenario).

Develop a vision and strategic roadmap for achieving the utopian scenario (i.e. most desirable future), defining the pathway and options for achieving the ambitions of your organisation. Apply the scenarios to stress-test the organisation’s future vision / strategy against potential disruption and to better prepare for other impending risks (e.g. financial and regulatory constraints) but also ceasing the opportunities that may arise.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Assess why organisations engage in strategic foresight research and what foresight research aims to achieve - and what it cannot do,
• Evaluate the utility and application of different foresight research methodologies,
• Examine the role of foresight research evidence in a broad organisational and environmental context,
• Identify and apply the tools of strategic foresight research in a broad organisational and environmental context.
• Apply strategic foresight research methods to support a convincing case for action within the organisation and use foresight research evidence to effectively plan for the long-term resilience of the organisation.

In this world of downsizing, restructuring and technological change, notions of traditional careers and ways of creating value have all been challenged. People are depending more upon their own initiative to realise success. Never, it seems, have more people been starting their own companies than now, particularly to exploit the World Wide Web. There’s no single Government (in either the developed or the developing world), which is not paying at least lip service to enterprise development. The aim of this module is to provide you with knowledge and skills relevant for starting and managing new ventures across the entrepreneurial life cycle. Moreover, it will prepare you on how to prepare a business pitch to an investor.

• Entrepreneurial risk, performance and environment,
• Business planning techniques and their application in entrepreneurial ventures,
• Venture strategy in dynamic markets,
• Start-up and resources to exploit a profit opportunity,
• The evolution of the venture and managing growth,
• Protecting and securing intellectual capital: IPR and antitrust law,
• Financial management for new ventures: financing a start-up,
• The entrepreneurial financing process: buying and selling a venture.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Assess the impact of the business environment on entrepreneurial opportunity identification and exploitation.
• Critically apply the theoretical underpinning of entrepreneurship to the process of managing risk in new ventures and supporting their development.
• Compare and contrast how managerial challenges vary across the life cycle of an entrepreneurial venture.
• Assess the likely financial needs of a new venture and pitch for finance.
• Develop and write a credible business plan for a new venture.

• Dr Peter King

The module aims to provide you with a deep understanding of the truly multidisciplinary nature of a real industrial project. Using a relevant case study, the scientific and technical concepts learned during the previous modules will be brought together and used to execute the analysis of the case study.

Design of an appropriate analysis toolkit specific to the case study.

Development of a management or maintenance framework for the case study.

Multi-criteria decision analysis [MCDA] applied to energy technologies to identify the most preferred technology.

Energy technologies and systems: understanding the development and scaling/design of the technologies by applying an understanding of the available resources in the assigned location.

Public engagement strategies and the planning process involved in developing energy technologies.

On successful completion of this module a student should be able to:

• Critically evaluate available technological options, and select the most appropriate method for determining the most preferred technology for the specific case study;
• Demonstrate the ability to work as part of a group to achieve the stated requirements of the module brief;
• Organise the single-discipline activities in a logical workflow, and to define the interfaces between them, designing an overall multidisciplinary approach for the specific case study. 

• Dr Adriana Encinas-Oropesa

The purpose of this module is to provide you with experience of planning a project that will involve scoping and designing a product.  The module provides sessions on project and planning, including sustainable design principles, project risk management and resource allocation. A key part of this module is the consideration of systems thinking approach for creating innovative solutions, ethics, professional conduct, and the role of an engineer within the wider industry context as well as considerations for equality, diversity and inclusion.

Project Management,
Ethics, EDI and the role of the engineering (ethics case study),
Product development,
Circular Economy,
Systems thinking,
Innovation.

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

• Apply design thinking methods and techniques to generate a product design concept that can be scaled up to a commercially viable solution.
• Design and plan the product project including processes, resources required (human and material), product end-of-life and risk management.
• Integrate systems thinking and circular economy approaches to develop sustainable and innovative products.
• Evaluate ethical dilemmas, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and the role of the engineer within the context of their chosen industry.