Management and Corporate Sustainability MSc

• Professor Catarina Figueira

To introduce the concepts and techniques associated with Managerial Economics, i.e., Microeconomics (e.g. market analysis, price theory, rationality) and Macroeconomics (e.g. inflation, exchange rates and interest rates).

• The initial few sessions are spent on discussion of the concept of equilibrium as it applies to the micro and macro structures of a broad range of financial markets.
• In the next four sessions, an understanding of choice theory and rational economic decision making as it applies to the levels and structure of prices of assets in a broad range of financial markets is developed.
• Finally, remaining sessions are devoted to discussion of the concepts and ideas in macroeconomics which have a direct relevance to financial markets. Particularly, discussion is centred around the understanding of monetary economics and the institutional context to which it applies. Discussion of structure of money and capital markets rounds up this module.

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

1. Employ economic reasoning when making choices in the use of resources.
2. Recognise the importance of marginal analysis and diminishing returns in the context of business and consumer decisions.
3. Appreciate the various objectives which different firms may pursue and the consequent impact on managerial decisions, including those relating to price and output levels.
4. Analyse both the external environment and the internal capabilities of a firm and understand the forces shaping the firm’s competitive environment.
5. Recognise the importance of developments in the macroeconomy for management and business performance. 

By the end of this course, students should exhibit:

1. An ability to use economic theory.
2. An ability to use relevant geometric and quantitative models to explain and analyse monetary and financial phenomena.
3. An ability to apply economic theory to real world problems, e.g., via case study analysis.

• 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 relate how these present both challenges and opportunities to business.
2. Explain why businesses need to respond to these challenges and opportunities and assess the capabilities they require to do so.
3. Classify the potential stakeholder groups businesses can work with to develop and implement their sustainability strategies and compare collaboration approaches.
4. Consider the role of personal leadership in an organization’s values, strategic direction and ability to execute its sustainability strategy.
5. Critically assess the content and reporting of businesses’ sustainability strategies.
6. Design and recommend a sustainability-oriented innovation for a selected business.

• Dr Abdelkader Aoufi

To provide the participant with an understanding of the Operations Management task and its contribution to organisational competitiveness.

An introduction to Managing Operations

The module covers:

• Strategic role of operations
• Process design and layout
• Managing the process experience
• Tools and techniques of process improvement
• Capacity management
• Inventory management, lean and agile operations
• Quality management and improvement
• People in operations

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

1. Examine the different types of operations employed by organisations and their distinctive characteristics.
2. Analyse the capabilities of different types of operation including the trade-offs involved.
3. Show how to select the priorities for operational performance improvement and how to implement them.

• Dr Chia-Yu Kou-Barrett

Organisations are run by and for people, and the success or failure of an organisation depends on the people in that organisation. 

It is rarely an absence of planning that causes organisational difficulties; rather it is the failure of management in understanding and managing complex personal and interpersonal systems that can lead to significant problems.

Similarly an acute and critical understanding of these dynamic relationships can lead to profound and enduring success and benefit for the individual, the team, the organisation and wider society.

In this module students will be introduced to various aspects of people and organisations.  This module combines models, theories and ideas from organisational behaviour, psychology, and sociology in order to provide students with a basic understanding in recognising, understanding and utilising what has been termed the "human factor" in organisations; including ways of conceptualising organisations and how people behave within them.  We shall consider the impact of the external environment; and address notions of organisational change.

This module is necessarily an introduction; further suggestions of reading and of consequent activities will be provided. 

It may also be that students will wish to undertake a project in this area; several of the faculty involved will be pleased to discuss this with you.

• Culture
• Development
• Diversity
• Emotional Intelligence
• Individual and Organisational Change
• Individual differences
• Introduction to People and Organisations
• Leadership
• Learning
• Motivation
• Negotiation, influence & persuasion
• Performance Management
• Personality
• Politics
• Self Awareness
• Stress, Resilience, Well-being
• The Individual and the Team
• Values

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

1. Understand and apply a number of different ways of conceptualising people in organisations, including culture, ethics, well-being, diversity, politics, management, performance and change
2. Assess the importance of relationships at work, group dynamics, effective teams and leadership in achieving effectiveness
3. Critically engage with various relevant models, theories and ideas in order to enhance personal capability, including identification of gaps in knowledge, skills, and competence, linking to insights regarding one’s personal and professional development agenda, based on sound data and experience

• Dr Ahmed Shaalan

A crucial competence for general managers is an understanding of marketing strategy: in simple terms, analysing how a marketplace of customers can be divided into segments, which of these segments are key targets for the firm, determining the firm’s optimal value proposition for each segment is, and what financial results can be expected over a planning period of typically 1-3 years. This module teaches Cranfield’s world-leading step-by-step process for developing such a marketing strategy and documenting it in a marketing plan. This process has been developed with hundreds of blue-chip companies worldwide over the last 30 years, informed by several Cranfield PhDs on the topic which have studied what works in practice. This planning process  is documented in the world’s leading textbook on the topic, McDonald & Wilson’s Marketing Plans, which has sold over half a million copies. This book is used as the course text and students are strongly advised to acquire a copy from the library or through purchase to help bridge from the course to planning for real in their subsequent management roles.

• Strategic marketing in context
• 10 steps of the strategic marketing planning process
• Mission statements and organisational objectives
• The marketing audit and analytical tools
• Market maps and market segmentation
• SWOT analysis
• The Directional Policy Matrix
• Marketing objectives and strategies
• Product and pricing strategy.

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

1. Understand the evolution and role of marketing and be able to describe the characteristics of a customer-centric organization.
2. Appreciate a series of marketing strategy tools and techniques and their application in practice.
3. Recognise a successful marketing planning process including the importance of including managers from across functional areas of the business in the marketing planning process.
4. Understand how to structure and prepare a comprehensive written strategic marketing plan for a senior management audience.
5. Evaluate the quality of marketing analyses and strategies prepared by others.

• Dr Valentina Battista

The module is primarily designed to provide students with an understanding of what is required to conduct research in business contexts considering that todays’ managers

• are paid to make decisions
• are expected to make ‘informed’ decisions (i.e. based on evidence)
• are evaluated on the basis of the outcomes from their decisions. 

Therefore, understanding the process of producing evidence will ensure students to have the core skills to inform management decisions.

Introduction to evidence-based management

• The elements of evidence-based management



Conducting research in management

• Defining management problems
• Reviewing the literature



Using qualitative research methods

• Interviews and focus groups in qualitative research
• Qualitative data analysis: using NVivo



Using quantitative research methods

• Designing questionnaires and conducting surveys
• Quantitative data analysis: using IBM SPSS statistics



Presenting research evidence

• Translating data into information to support management decisions

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

1. Critically evaluate evidence in order to inform management decisions.
2. Assess and select appropriate methods of qualitative and/or quantitative data collection.
3. Choose and apply appropriate methods of qualitative and/or quantitative data analysis.
4. Interpret data to provide evidence for management decision making.
5. Utilise quantitative and qualitative analysis software.

• Dr Mikko Arevuo

Strategic Management is concerned with the direction and scope of the organisation.  This involves determining the purpose of the organisation, establishing objectives and formulating strategies to achieve the objectives. It predominantly explores how an organisation positions itself with regard to its changing environment, and in particular its competitors, in order to gain and sustain competitive advantage. This means that strategic management considers how an organisation’s internal resources and capabilities can be developed to meet the changing demands of customers, in such a way as to achieve the expectations and objectives of its stakeholders. 

An introduction to the Strategic Management module

The module begins by focusing on strategy at the strategic business unit level. It is orientated around five key questions

1) where to compete?

2) how to gain competitive advantage?

3) what capabilities are required?

4) what capabilities do we have?

5) how do we change?

The module then explores corporate level strategy and the issue of strategy implementation and change. Throughout the module a range of tools and techniques for strategic analysis and choice will be introduced.

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

• Describe the key questions and associated challenges to be addressed in formulating an organisation’s competitive and corporate-level strategies.
• Appreciate that to sustain competitive advantage an organisation must harness its internal resources and capabilities and react appropriately to changes in its external environment.
• Appraise and differentiate between corporate, competitive (business unit) and functional strategies.
• Critically apply a range of tools and techniques to illuminate the key questions of competitive strategy and corporate strategy

• Dr Matthias Nnadi

The aim of the Accounting and Finance module is to introduce a number of traditional and contemporary accounting approaches that will increase the visibility of financial information and support management decision making.

• Interpretation of financial statements;
• Exploring the relationship between accounting information, management decision making, financial strategies, and financial performance;
• Applying traditional and contemporary accounting tools and techniques, which can be applied to support business management decisions;
• Exploring the many cost trade-offs between business processes (Make v Buy).

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

1. To judge the effect of decisions, transactions and events on financial performance;
2. To create simple sets of accounts from basic information.
3. To understand the main variables affecting working capital management;
4. To interpret financial statements to support decision making, planning and control;
5. To apply an appropriate costing approaches to solve a range of business issues;
6. To apply a number of financial tools and techniques to appraise alternative capital investment opportunities;
7. To use financial information to make informed management decisions

• Professor David Grayson, CBE

Organisations are coming under increasing pressure from various stakeholders to manage their positive and negative impacts with clear responsibility and strategic intent.  Responsible and sustainable organisations are re-engaging at the level of purpose and re-thinking their role in wider society and for human betterment.

This module reminds you of the major sustainability challenges facing organisations and explores how the most progressive ones are responding in-terms of leadership and strategy, mind-set, structure, supply chain collaborations, environmental and social impact and managing change.  It will engage you in gaining a better understanding of how organisational action can be best configured to promote a responsible and sustainable mission. In doing so, it will demand you to reflect on the long-standing debates concerning the political economy and ethical management practices.

This module has five elements as follows:

Purpose, Governance, Strategy and Leadership for Sustainability

This element explores the business case and different governance regimes and practices associated with organising for corporate sustainability.  It also engages you in different notions about designing strategy and planning its implementation.  All this calls for ethical and authentic leadership from senior executives, which will be a feature of this teaching element.  More specifically, the future skills and knowledge sets for leadership for sustainability will be investigated.

Key topics include: 

• Defining organisational Purpose, Purpose of Purpose, tackling the dangers of Purpose-Wash
• Leading board level corporate governance practices.
• Sustainability as business strategy.
• Responsible leadership skills and knowledge for sustainable business.
• The business case for sustainability.
• Disclosure of good practice.



Structure and Process

This element explores the different structural arrangements organisations put into place for managing sustainability.  The various roles and responsibilities constituted to mobilise these structures will be discussed.  In addition, the integrative capacity of the structures will also be considered. To embed the new structures key business processes and their adaptation for the successful pursuit of corporate responsibility and sustainability will also be considered (e.g. procurement, marketing, H&S processes).

Key topics include: 

• The role of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability departments.
• The integration of R&D, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and other key departments.
• The role and responsibility of Chief Sustainability Officer.
• Key business processes for embedding sustainability.



Sustainable Supply Chain

This element explores the different structural arrangements organisations put into place for managing sustainability.  The various roles and responsibilities constituted to mobilise these structures will be discussed.  In addition, the integrative capacity of the structures will also be considered. To embed the new structures key business processes and their adaptation for the successful pursuit of corporate responsibility and sustainability will also be considered (e.g. procurement, marketing, H&S processes).

Key topics include: 

• The role of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability departments.
• The integration of R&D, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources and other key departments.
• The role and responsibility of Chief Sustainability Officer.
• Key business processes for embedding sustainability.



Collaboration: Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement

This element explores the important role of collaborative approaches to addressing corporate responsibility and sustainability challenges.  Collectivism for pursuing positive change will form the focus of this teaching element.  The power of pooling resources and capacity for supporting change, and the challenges of cooperate strategies will be investigated.

Key topics include: 

• The importance of partnering, collaboration and collectivism.
• Stakeholder theory and employee engagement.
• The purpose of partnering with business led coalitions.
• Engaging with unusual partners (e.g. NGO’s).
• Lobbying, Advocacy and links to government. 



Culture for Sustainability

This element explores how to initiative the magnitude of change necessary to create sustainable organisations and endeavour a ‘new normal’ set of conditions.  This amounts to a cultural change process that generates a momentum for positive organisational level change to embed sustainability.  Successful organisational level cultural change creates further momentum for adaptations within the supply chain and wider industrial (ecology) system.

Key topics include: 

• Cultural shift for organisational and systemic industrial change.
• Capturing hearts and minds.
• Engaging employees.
• Social intrapreneurs as agents of change.
• Initiating a culture change process.

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

1. Critically discuss the role of governance, strategy and leadership in organisational transformations for sustainability.
2. Evaluate key theories and dominant practices associated with organisation structures and (management) processes for corporate sustainability.
3. Appraise the needs for supply chain engagement for closed loop business operations.
4. Contrast the range of collaborative opportunities available to pursue corporate sustainability.
5. Propose the central features of a cultural change process for embedding sustainability.

• Professor Philip Longhurst

Environmental sustainability is a main board issue.  General managers need to be able to navigate this agenda broadly, and their internal specialist officers, whether in regulatory affairs, sustainability, CSR, risk governance, procurement or finance may need to become intelligent customers for professional advice on environmental matters or experts in their own right.  This module is a postgraduate ‘primer’ for the aspiring general manager.  It seeks to equip you with:

• The business case for reducing environmental impacts – termed sustainability, as viewed through various lenses including resource security, risk management, regulatory compliance, supply chain management.
• Case studies and critical reflections that contextualise good environmental governance from various business sectors.
• An overview of environmental analytics and decision tools (e.g. life cycle analysis, environmental risk assessment, environmental impact assessment, carbon and water foot-printing etc.) that are used increasingly to evidence good environmental performance.
• A summary of key technologies for the treatment of water, wastewater, waste, soil and air emissions, their general performance characteristics and principles of operation.
• An update of current sustainability paradigms, including design for sustainability, the ‘circular economy’, smarter environmental regulation, sustainable manufacturing and their implications for business.

This module has four elements as follows:

The Business Imperative for Environmental Sustainability

We begin with a discussion on the business case for environmental sustainability.  What has been the history of engagement with the environmental sustainability agenda and why the recent acceleration of emphasis?  Connections to the circular economy, tomorrow’s company and the globalisation agenda will be made in considering the following topics:

• Trade-off between the bottom line and reputation risk.
• Proactive environmental management versus the cost and risk associated with passive regulatory compliance.
• Evolving expectations of shareholders and stakeholders.
• Optimising long-term impacts of energy, carbon, and waste on business.



Case Studies

Next we examine key issues from a resource perspective, i.e. energy, water, GHG emissions, land & soil needs, plus resource loss through waste. Industry sectors and specific businesses with major impacts are introduced and these benefits in managing impacts for strategic competitive advantage explained. Examples include the developments that specific sectors have followed are included. Pinch points and key ‘shifts’ that prompted the change are also discussed.




Tools and Techniques for Environmental Decision-making

Corporate commitments to the environment without defensible metrics are no longer credible.  Here we examine some of the principal tools used to secure regulatory approvals, examine whole-life impacts, measure carbon and water footprints, and quantify risk.  Practical in approach, we explore what works in real life, the decision power such tools can offer and the current state of the art.




Technology Selection and Appraisal

Pollution prevention and control requires choices over a bewildering array of environmental technologies to minimise wastes, recover materials and energy and treat toxic residuals.  We will walk though some of the established and emerging technologies for pollution prevention, critique and appraise them and discuss the operational requirements.  The aim is to make you as future intelligent customers aware of the right questions to ask when faced with appraising technology recommendations.  A visit to a local materials recovery plant will reinforce the complex and heterogeneous nature of waste and resource management. In particular attention will be given to:

• The context, causes, definition and approaches to waste management.
• Technology types and principles.
• Selection methods and decision-making levels; strategic to operational.
• Principles of energy recover and carbon cycling.
• Innovation, trade-offs and sources of information.



Sustainable Design and Manufacturing

How do these principles and practices work through in a manufacturing and production environment?  The concepts of design for sustainability and sustainable manufacturing will be considered through worked examples. For example:

• Discussing the impact and subsequent importance of considered design for the environment.
• Introduction to the historical context of design for sustainability.
• Examples of best practice in sustainable design approaches including dematerialisation, design for reuse and repair, design for disassembly and longevity.
• Facilitating the move from a linear to a circular and regenerative approach to design: whole system design, regenerative models for business and production.



Sustainable Operations

Understanding what practices are used in manufacturing operations to reduce resource use and how these can be translated into tactics for eco-efficiency and beyond.  References will be made to improvement methodologies that capture process improvement sequence as well as supporting tools for analysis.

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

1. Explain and give examples of relationships between technology, governance and decision analytics as they relate to the environmental sustainability agenda.
2. Evaluate and use tools and techniques for technology and strategy appraisal, explaining their advantages, disadvantages and data requirements.
3. Explain the key challenges presented by the use of the term sustainability as a concept in business.
4. Demonstrate awareness of some of the current thinking on environmental technology trends, business analytics that relate to the environment, and the strategic environmental agenda on resource security within a written proposal.
5. Participate in critically reviewing environmental advice that can support business decisions.

• Dr Rosina Watson

This module engages you in a ‘live’ sustainability issue within a client organisation. This organisation will be invited to meet you and given the opportunity to present a management issue focused on a corporate responsibility and sustainability matter at the start of the module.  This client’s challenge will inspire discussion and become the foundation for the problem solving activity you will engage.

You will work in learning teams over a 5 day period to generate a viable response (or potential solution) for the client organisation.  In this consulting like operation you will investigate the organisational context and sustainability challenge in depth and discuss potential avenues (and their implementation implications) for its resolution.  Your teams will subsequently produce a design specification for their proposed solution and present it to the client organisation at the end of the week long module.  The in-company assignment is a competitive exercise and a ‘winning’ team, proposing the best solution, will be chosen by the client organisation.

You will be free to explore the aspects of corporate responsibility and sustainability they feel are most appropriate for the organisation to succeed in its endeavours. 

This module will allow you to gain a broader and better understanding of how organisational action can be best configured to promote responsible and sustainable business behaviours and strategies.

This module has three elements as follows:

Problem Solving for Management Consulting

This element complements the Management Consulting module and introduces a problem solving process that you will apply to the sustainability challenge presented by the invited company. It will allow you to engage with the intricacies of the problem presented in context and breakdown the task into manageable components.  The outcomes of this process will lead to the design and formulation of potential solution/options for the organisation. Each option will discuss the implications for implementation and include clear deliberations regarding the development of leadership and management skills. 

Key topics include: 

• Problem Solving Process.
• Design of potential organisational solution options.
• Implementation issues.
• Leadership and management skills for sustainability.



Managing Change

This element complements the session titled ‘championing change’ in the Creating Sustainable Organisation module. More specifically it explores how the client organisation can begin to engage managers and employees to create momentum for positive organisational level change.

Key topics include: 

• Managing change process.
• Sustainability organisational maturity.
• Making a business case and assessing materiality. 
• Engaging employees.
• Social entrepreneurs and champions as agents of change.



Presentation and Communication Skills

This element explores effective presentation skills/knowledge and technologies for communicating organisational change plans.

Key topics include: 

• Effective use of visualisation technologies.
• Strategies for communicating key messages.
• Personal impression management

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

1. Appraise the importance of the organisational context and range of stakeholders involved in addressing sustainability challenges.
2. Working in teams, design, review and critically discuss different options available to organisations in response to sustainability issues.
3. Apply relevant approaches, such as translation activities, to imagine, design and implement future sustainable change project activities
4. Discuss the key tenants of a design solution or response to address a specified sustainability challenge in live and real context.
5. Propose how to engage potential change agents and sustainability champions.

• Dr Richard Adams

The aim of this module is to familiarise students with the concepts of social enterprise and intrapreneurism, and enable them to compare and contrast these phenomena with “non-traditional” entrepreneurship. Both business models overlap extensively with what is regarded as traditional entrepreneurship, but have distinctively different features: while being profit-or surplus-making, their aims typically embrace social outcomes and purposes, and their distribution or sharing of value created is frequently closely linked to these declared values.

Students will be introduced to the history and evolution of non-mainstream modes of entrepreneurship and will develop their understanding of how social entrepreneurs/social intrapreneurs and intrapreneurs create and operate enterprises/intrapreneurial activities in different environments. They will see how such enterprises fit within the spectrum of profit and not for profit entities, and how these are regarded by policy-makers and other stakeholders.

Students will emerge with a clearer idea of whether they would like to make a career in this business environment or, indeed, aspire to found their own social enterprise or pursue a corporate intrapreneurial initiative.

• What social enterprise is: the history and evolution of social enterprise/entrepreneurship.
• How social entrepreneurs compare with “mainstream” entrepreneurs.
• Legal, commercial and financial structures of social enterprises.
• Enabling environment for social intrapreneurism.
• Compare and contrast: social vs non-social intrapreneurism.
• Measuring the impact of social enterprise and intrapraneurism of all types.
• Social enterprise and social intrapreneurism: how they are viewed by policy-makers and other key stakeholders.
• Social enterprise, sustainable business and sustainable value creation.

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

1. Describe, analyse and categorise the drivers and motives of social entrepreneurs/social intrapreneurs and intrapeneurs.
2. Differentiate and delineate the salient features which distinguish these modes of entrepreneurial behaviour from other “mainstream” forms.
3. Define the factors, both environmental and intrinsic, which promote or hinder the development of both a free-standing social enterprise and social intrapreneurism within the corporation,
4. Apply the measures of impact used to define the effectiveness of social enterprises.
5. Explain and appraise the agenda of policy-makers regarding the role, purpose and economic value of social entrepreneurship