Course content
The course content is theoretical knowledge, empirical cases and practical tools of social, sustainable and/or ethical entrepreneurship which are applied to the tourism and hospitality sectors. The course is structured according to three main phases of the entrepreneurship innovation process. The first phase focusses on entrepreneurship idea generation, team building and the selection of topics/problems. This first phase comprises lectures centered on theoretical knowledge and tools on sustainable and social entrepreneurship and innovation in the field of tourism and hospitality. It includes a studio-interactive based session on design methods and techniques applied to tourism innovation. The aim of this first phase is to enable students to establish their teams and begin the design of their entrepreneurial initiative while attaining in-depth knowledge on sustainability in tourism/hospitality. Sustainability perspectives address organizational/business, destinations and consumer aspects. A specific focus of this first phase will be to utilize cases or examples, which include the analysis of one or several digital tourism perspectives.
The second phase of the course provides theoretical perspectives on entrepreneurship business ethics in tourism and hospitality.
The three main business ethics perspectives – virtue ethics, deontology and utilitarianism - provide students with the necessary knowledge to apply ethical considerations to the development of their service innovation. The phase is structured as a series of theoretical lectures with debates and exercises based on exemplary cases of tourism/hospitality entrepreneurship and their ethical dimensions. These cases can examine specific ethical challenges such as discrimination, governance, environment, and profit-making aspects in the tourism sector. The module explores the extent to which ethical principles should or do vary by practice context. In this phase students focus on their service product development and make a business ethics analysis of the process and expected impacts of their service innovation.
The third phase of the course is centered on entrepreneurship for diversity and inclusion management. This phase theoretical and tool framework focusses on managerial and behavioral aspects of diversity and inclusion applied to tourism and hospitality in a variety of categories such as gender, ethnicity, race or disability. Special emphasis is given to the tourist and demand perspectives. It provides theoretical insights on social stereotyping, prejudice and bias, diversity and inclusion strategies and normativity theory. Students gain competences to analyse diversity and inclusion aspects of different tourism cases and of their tourism service product development. This final phase of the course includes a diversity and entrepreneurship lab with presentations by students on their pilot cases/projects.
See course description in course catalogue