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 Namita Shete

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?

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 organization’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 Adrian Williams

The need to quantify sustainability is great, especially in a world in which scarce resources are in increasing demand and the effects of climate change become more apparent. Climate change will change our capacity to meet our demands for water.

Almost all economic activity causes some negative impacts of the environment, either directly or through goods and services that are bought in. Mitigation methods for reducing unwanted emissions can themselves create other negative environmental impacts as side effects.

Accounting for all these effects requires a holistic approach, such as Environmental Life Cycle Assessment. This powerful method quantifies upstream and direct impacts on the environment in the production of specified goods or delivery of services. It includes the better known subset of the Product Carbon Footprint and the Water Footprint.

• Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) including carbon footprint and water footprint.
• Outline of social life cycle assessment.
• Examples of case studies from staff and/or PhD students.
 

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

• Apply the principles of Environmental Life Cycle Assessment quantitatively, including carbon and water footprints.
• Critically interpret sustainability claims of products, services and policies on the basis of the environmental assessment methods used.
• Appraise key features of Social Life Cycle Assessment.

• 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.
• Delivering organisational change, including implementation challenges and opportunities.
• Environmental policy development and appraisal.
• Policy instruments.

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

• Define the technical, organisational and human features of effective environmental risk governance.
• Explain 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.
• Identify the requirements of risk management maturity and the pre-requisites of good corporate risk governance, including the importance of demonstrating value and aligning risk governance with other organisational functions.

• Professor Jim Harris

While technological change is seen as the root cause of many environmental problems, it is simultaneously viewed as the means of solving such problems. This module explores technological change as part of positive sum strategies put forward by ecological modernisers. Theories of technological change are reviewed such as evolutionary, path dependent and long wave, and used to formulate technology policy to achieve environmental net gain or transition to a low carbon economy. These are then set in practical contexts such as innovation in manufacturing, ecological restoration or low-carbon living.

• Ecological Modernisation, definition, key aspects, objectives and methodolog.
• Development of associated policy frameworks, market failure, the role of governments, policies and mechanisms to address this.
• Innovation: Technology Development, transfer, adoption and diffusion.
• Innovation and sustainability, utility which process offers in this context, drivers and barriers.
• Integrated Sustainable Technology Assessment in context.
• Clusters, technology road-maps and the development of sustainable technologies.

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

• Explain the limitations of selected theories of technological change, e.g. linear, induced, path-dependent, and evolutionary.
• Critically summarise the key trade-offs that occur in achieving technological change and economic development alongside environmental protection.
• Discuss and present a summary of examples of technological change developed to achieve transition, e.g., to a low carbon economy.
• Explain technology options and policy initiatives to stimulate transitions, e.g. to a low carbon economy using examples.
• Concisely justify a proposal for an environmentally beneficial initiative.

• 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 exploring strategic foresight research in relation to its utility by environmental organisations, this module will combine formal lectures with interactive practical exercises that will cover:

• An overview of the reasons why organisations engage in foresight research.
• An overview of the aims and objectives of foresight research.
• An overview of the different types of foresight research methods including, but not confined to horizon scanning, trend research, scenario building, visioning and back-casting.
• An overview of where different types of foresight research methods are best applied depending on the issue to be explored, the time available for research and the output required.
• A practical training session in horizon scanning (what is does; why it’s used and how it’s done).
• A practical training session on different scenario building methods (what are scenarios, what can they be used for and how are they developed).
• A group activity to stress-test the resilience of organisational policy or strategy, using windtunnelling approaches [why is it important to stress-test the organisation’s policy / long-term strategy, what approaches are used, what are the likely gains (i.e. in the future)].
• A group activity to develop a vision [i.e. describing a preferred future (the vision)], and using back-casting to assess the implications of the vision [i.e. setting out the steps to make it happen), and evaluating enablers and barriers to achieving desired outcomes.

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

• Explain why organisations engage in 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 business and environmental context.
• Identify and apply the tools of foresight research in a broad business and environmental context.
• Apply 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.

• Dr Simon Jude

The aim of this module to develop an appreciation of the importance of individual and group attitudes towards the perception of risk and how this may influence views, conduct and actions in the face of a range of risks including the development of communication methods to disseminate information about risk(s) to a range of audiences and how to determine its effectiveness.

• What is meant by the perception of risk and how it varies with context
• Attitudes towards risk based on psychological, cultural and other dimensions.
• The role of various societal groups (the media, NGOs, etc) in risk issues.
• Models of the amplification and attenuation of risk.
• Understanding the “fright factors” in risk perception and the development of trust.
• Horizon scanning and scenario building tools for communicating future risk to individuals and organisations.
• Communicating risk messages to individuals, groups and society at large and errors in communication.

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

• Describe the “non-science” influences in risk assessment and management using sociological and psychological theories relating to risk perception, attitudes and communication.
• Identify and describe drivers that may influence individual or group perceptions and attitudes towards risk in specific scenarios.
• Participate in the discourse on the roles in society of different stakeholders (e.g. the media, NGOs, academics, government) with respect to risk assessment issues and to be able to describe to others why they have the beliefs they hold.
• Demonstrate skills in listening to concerns from different individuals/groups towards risks and the ability to enter into dialogue with such groups.
• Develop effective means of communication to suit specific or general situations and how to demonstrate its effectiveness, and critique methods based on theories and evidence