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Course Coordinator
Christian Erik Kampmann

The need to address global climate change, environmental degradation, and social and cultural upheaval as a result of globalization, has become a major theme for business in our time. Customers, investors, NGOs, governments, and the press increasingly expect companies to manage their social and environmental impacts on society – a trend that has continued undiminished in spite of the current financial crisis. Social, economic and environmental sustainability is a systemic phenomenon that transcends functional and organizational boundaries. The scope for change goes far beyond minimizing resource use and environmental and social damage: To fully address the challenges ahead will require entirely new ways of conducting business – a redefinition of the corporation and the traditional corporate management functions.
Front-runners in this effort often experience substantial gains, yet many companies are tentative and uncertain about how to incorporate these concerns into daily business practice and translate them into changes in procedures, priorities and the development of viable business models. In part, this is because traditional management approaches are not particularly well suited for addressing the complexity, uncertainty, and systematic character of the issues. The purpose of the Minor in Sustainable Business is to fill this gap by introducing you to the latest management research in sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the practice of front-running companies who have adopted these principles as a core element in their business, and critical perspectives on the rhetoric and practice of CSR/Sustainability to distinguish a real commitment from PR and “greenwashing”.

The development towards sustainable business calls for a redefinition of the corporation and the traditional corporate management functions. The purpose of this minor is to provide the students with understand the barriers and opportunities for sustainable business development and innovation. More specifically, the minor will introduce the students to a number of new issues related to CSR/sustainable business. Some of the fields covered by the Minor includes: Student requirements

To get the Minor in Sustainable Business, students must take three of the courses from the minor programme outlined below. The Minor as well as the individual courses are open to students enrolled in all CBS’s master programmes, provided that the courses are pre-approved by your study board.

Taking a minor as a supplement to a major gives the student an additional strength in their job profile. CBS seeks to increasingly profile itself within the field of corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. Thus, students taking the Danish Sustainable Business minor will be able to refer to this unique CBS profile in future job situations.

Student requirements

To get the Minor in Sustainable Business, students must take three of the courses from the minor programme outlined below.

The Minor as well as the individual courses are open to students enrolled in all CBS’s master programmes, provided that the courses are pre-approved by your study board.

CM Ø64 ‘Corporate Social responsibility in global supply chains’.

An increasing number of companies in the Western world outsource parts of their production to low-wage countries with poor social and environmental standards. Such long-distance outsourcing makes it difficult for companies to ensure that their products are being produced under socially and environmentally sound conditions. The course attempts to make the students capable of understanding and managing the opportunities and barriers facing companies, which wish to exercise social and environmental responsibility in their supply chains.

CM B112 ‘Organizing Markets for Business Development and Innovation’

The course evolves around the questions of new sustainability related business opportunities. To this end the course focuses on the question of where markets come from and how are they sustained. Instead of taking ‘the market’ as a taken for granted institution, this course develops analytical tools for understanding how markets are created and sustained through a network of relations between corporations, regulators, consumers etc. The course aims at improving students’ skills for participating effectively in the co-construction of future markets for sustainable products and for using this construction process as an important vehicle for business development and innovation.

CM V83 Business strategies for sustainable innovation

The urgent need for new technologies, products and processes that are environmentally sustainable (“greentech”) will fundamentally alter competitive positions in existing industries and at the same time create new commercial opportunities and entirely new markets and industries. When considering appropriate strategies for innovation and the theoretical frameworks one might apply to develop them, the question naturally arises: What is special about greentech innovations? How do they differ from other types of innovations? What theoretical frameworks can point to appropriate innovation strategies? This course is about developing corporate and business innovation strategies, i.e., the successful development and commercialization, of greentech technologies at the strategic level.

CM K72 Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Social Change Using the Power of Entrepreneurship

The domain of social change is no longer reserved to students of political sciences and development studies. Increasingly business students are recognized as possessing important skills that can drive social change. This new discipline is often referred to as Social Entrepreneurship (S-ENT). S-ENT describes the discovery and sustainable exploitation of opportunities to create public goods. This is usually done through the generation of disequilibria in market and non-market envi­ronments. The S-ENT process can in some cases lead to the creation of social enterprises. These social ventures are hybrid organizations exhi­biting characteristics of both the for-profit and not-for profit sector. People engaging in S-ENT are usually referred to as social entrepreneurs, a term that describes resourceful individuals working to create social innovation. They do not only have to identify (or create) opportunities for social change (that so far have been unexploited), they must also muster the resources necessary to turn these opportunities into reality.

CM V82 Instant Innovation Camp: Creating sustainable tools and business models

This course has been developed and is offered as cooperation between Copenhagen Business School, Lund University, Øresund Entrepreneurship Academy and Marketing Consulting Services. It is inspired by current important topics like the democratization of innovation, microfinance, improving the living standard of the bottom of the pyramid, the development of new energy sources and developing business ideas out of online and/or distributed communities. This course teaches students how to find, evaluate and develop innovative ideas for the benefit of individuals, companies and the society (resulting in sustainable innovations).

CMF-F2E8* Corporate Social Responsibility – Ethical, Political and Strategic Perspectives

The aim of the course is to provide students with an in-depth knowledge of developments in the broad field of CSR (corporate social responsibility). Developments, not only in terms of corporate activities and trends, but also in terms of the thinking about business and its role in society that the concept of CSR involves. Thus, while the course strongly emphasizes the practical and strategic dimension of CSR it also engages students in discussions of the ethical and political aspects and ramifications of CSR.