Bachelor
2021/2022
Business Ethics, CSR and ESG Business Strategies
Type:
Compulsory course (Business Administration)
Area of studies:
Management
Delivered by:
Department of Strategic and International Management
Where:
Graduate School of Business
When:
4 year, 1, 2 module
Mode of studies:
offline
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
4
Contact hours:
40
Course Syllabus
Abstract
In response to global environmental, social and governance (ESG) challenges that humanity faces, professional managers around the world are urged to make ethics, responsibility and sustainability a new normal way of doing business. The simplistic idea of corporations as wealth creating organizations with no obligations to their key stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society and the environment) is no longer acceptable in the public eye. The reformed capitalism and professional managers with mission to serve society and make a meaningful impact are becoming a response to an outdated shareholder-driven view of business. Today businesses with purpose are expected to act as agents of world benefit and make an active contribution to meeting the 17 United Nations Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs). This course provides key concepts and frameworks for integrating ethics, responsibility and ESG strategies into business practice. The course is designed in a very innovative way to enable students to develop a sustainability mindset by engaging them in reflective practices on their own lifestyle to enable changing habits, connecting to transformational life stories of guest-speakers, discussing cases of transition to circular business models, applying cinemalogy and participating in group learning projects on ESG-driven strategies to address business contribution on climate crisis (SDG13), inequality (SDG10), biodiversity below water (SDG14) and on land (SDG15), human rights (SDG8) and responsible consumption and production (SDG12) issues in the Russian context.
Learning Objectives
- The course has one overarching goal and four main learning objectives: Develop a global citizenship mindset for ethics, responsibility and sustainability: a lens through which to analyze information in the contemporary world and make business decisions on the ESG-strategies for the sake of a flourishing planet.
- Knowing dimension: develop awareness and understanding of the contemporary challenges of the UN’s 17 SDGs and major theoretical frameworks on business ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability for the ESG-driven businesses;
- Thinking dimension: develop systems and innovative thinking based on creativity, on both-and logic, long term thinking, applying principles of cyclical flow and interconnectedness;
- Being dimension: learn about self and others by reflecting about values anchoring our identity, unexplored assumptions, habits of mind and creating/identifying your personal mission;
- Interacting dimension: learn to engage with peers on the group projects through effective interpersonal communication, time management, delegation, trust and mutual support;
- Acting dimension: inspire to change habits and shape a new lifestyle for themselves;
- Becoming dimension: to make a difference by taking a pledge of future responsible and sustainable business leader.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Having successfully completed this course, the students will be able to answer the following questions: What does it take to become an ethics-driven, responsibility-minded and sustainability-literate business leader? How does the current state of the planet look? How did we get here? What are the shortcomings? What must we urgently address and focus on?
- • Student will understand the tension that exists between moral expectations and moral convictions when developing an ESG-strategy and the critical role played by authority in an ethical decision-making framework.
- • Students will be able to apply their knowledge gain during the course to developing an ESG-strategy for a real organization in a local community.
- • Students will be able to articulate and defend your own position on the social responsibility of business and your own social responsibility.
- • Students will be able to clearly reason why a particular course of action is the right thing to do.
- • Students will be able to differentiate between objective moral expectations and subjective moral convictions before making practical decisions .
- • Students will be able to freely use ethical concepts in discussion and debate.
- • Students will be able to identify the underlying mental models and maps shaping events and their personal decision and interactions.
- • Students will be introduced to the major concepts on business ethics, CSR and sustainability for the ESG-driven businesses.
- • Students will develop a keen sense of moral certainty when making practical decisions.
- • Students will explore social, economic and environmental issues at the local, regional and global levels.
- • Students will internalize the importance of business with purpose capable of meeting expectations of company‘s stakeholders.
- • Students will investigate how to develop and continuously improve a responsible product according to the principles of circular economy.
- • Students will learn to identify in the current events and data the underlying cognitive frames, and develop systems thinking perspective.
- • Students will learn to identify, analyze and understand the risks and opportunities that business faces with introduction of environmentally friendly packaging in the context of emerging markets.
- • Students will learn to use the framework of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in their local context.
- • Students will practice tapping into their creative and intuitive resources to invent new solutions.
- • Students will understand how and why the formal and informal ‘rules of the game’ constrain our efforts to maximise utility and value.
- • Students will understand how the complementarity of consequentialism and deontology shapes the virtue of integrity, and the rational-irrational dualism in doing the right thing.
- • Students will understand the key ethical concepts that frame the moral philosophy of business.
- • Students will understand the key events that shaped responsible management, how to balance and create stakeholder value and conduct stakeholder assessment and engagement.
- • Students will understand the need to engage in communicative action and develop the ‘unforced force’ of your ethical arguments in discussion and debate.
- • Students will understand what are sustainable business models, what are essential tools of sustainability management and how to manage the triple bottom line.
- • Students will understand what purpose driven business means for the world.
- • Students will use the framework of the 12 Sustainability Mindset Principles and the 17 SDGs.
Course Contents
- Session 1. Launching the journey. Entering the strange world and looking into the mirror
- Session 2. The moral philosophy of business
- Session 3. Me - others - the world
- Session 4. Exploring self and anchors of own identity
- Session 5. Me and nature, connecting the dots and ending the beginning
- Session 6. The UN Global Agenda 2030 and 17 SDGs
- Session 7. Facing an Ethical dilemma – The trolley problem
- Session 8. Framing Corporate Social Responsibility
- Session 9. Case-study “BioFoodLab”
- Session 10. Developing an ESG-Strategy for a Local Business
Assessment Elements
- ESG-strategy for a local business: final group project assignment and in-class presentationDistance learning students submit all assignments required for the course on the current and final evaluation during the consultations with the instructor E.A. Ivanova and teaching assistant E.A. Musich.
- Case-study “BioFoodLab”: group assignment and in-class discussionDistance learning students submit all assignments required for the course on the current and final evaluation during the consultations with the instructor E.A. Ivanova and teaching assistant E.A. Musich.
- Reflections on guest-speakers talks (5%), assigned videos (5%), podcast (5%), coffee house (5%)Distance learning students submit all assignments required for the course on the current and final evaluation during the consultations with the instructor E.A. Ivanova and teaching assistant E.A. Musich.
- Video-recording “Meeting Myself: A Reflection on My Path to Becoming a Responsible Business LeaderDistance learning students submit all assignments required for the course on the current and final evaluation during the consultations with the instructor E.A. Ivanova and teaching assistant E.A. Musich.
- My Sustainable Habit Diary: an individual assignmentDistance learning students submit all assignments required for the course on the current and final evaluation during the consultations with the instructor E.A. Ivanova and teaching assistant E.A. Musich.
Interim Assessment
- 2021/2022 2nd module0.1 * My Sustainable Habit Diary: an individual assignment + 0.2 * Case-study “BioFoodLab”: group assignment and in-class discussion + 0.2 * Video-recording “Meeting Myself: A Reflection on My Path to Becoming a Responsible Business Leader + 0.2 * Reflections on guest-speakers talks (5%), assigned videos (5%), podcast (5%), coffee house (5%) + 0.3 * ESG-strategy for a local business: final group project assignment and in-class presentation
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- Business ethics : a European perspective: managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization, Crane, A., 2004
- Business ethics. Vol.1: Ethical theory, distribute justice, and corporate social responsibility, , 2006
- Corporate social responsibility : a research handbook, , 2013
- Corporate social responsibility : readings and cases in a global context, , 2008
- Corporate social responsibility : the role of business in sustainable development, Williams, O. F., 2014
- Corporate social responsibility across Europe, , 2005
- Key concepts in corporate social responsibility, Benn, S., 2011
- Primal leadership : realizing the power of emotional intelligence, Goleman, D., 2013
- SAGE brief guide to business ethics, , 2012
- Stakeholder theory and organizational ethics, Phillips, R., 2003
- The fifth discipline : the art and practice of the learning organization, Senge, P.M., 2006
- Экологический вызов и устойчивое развитие, Данилов-Данильян, В. И., 2000
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Устойчивое развитие: методология и методики измерения : учеб. пособие, Бобылев, С. Н., 2011