At a time of indisputable societal and environmental change, Stern MBA students specializing in Sustainable Business and Innovation will examine the unique role of the private sector and gain a broad understanding of how embedding sustainability into core business strategy benefits financial performance and management practices. To learn more about the Specialization and its course requirements, click here.

To assist MBA students as they design their schedules, CSB has assembled the following list of Sustainable Business and Innovation courses offered in the upcoming Fall 2021 semester. *New courses offered are marked with asterisks below.
 

Foundational Course (Required for Specialization)

BSPA-GB.2305: Sustainability for Competitive Advantage 
Professor Rifkin | Tu 6:00-9:00pm ET | In-Person 
This course is designed to assist students in developing the knowledge, skills, and perspective they need to understand and address environmental and social challenges in business, so that as leaders they reduce risk, create competitive advantage, and develop innovative services, products, and processes, all while building value for society and protecting the planet.

Discipline

ECON-GB 2346: Growth in the Developing World and the Global Economy
Professor Henry | Tu 6:00-9:00pm | In-Person 
The course deals with the recent (post war) sustained high growth in the developing world and its likely evolution and impact in the future. How are these kinds of growth rates possible? What are the structural economic political and policy underpinnings? What accounts for the absence of growth in a substantial part of the developing world? Attention will be given to the evolving global landscape surrounding this growth. What is the impact of this widening pattern of growth? Are there natural brakes that may slow the process down or make it difficult for the non-G20 developing countries and their 1/3 of the world population to start or sustain high growth? The class will attempt to identify and assess the impact of important global trends and challenges. Included in the latter will be governance issues. We will spend a little time on the impact of the 2008-2009 crisis the transmission channels and lessons learned from the vantage point of developing countries.

MGMT-GB 2100: Inclusive Leadership 
Professors Weisberg and Basch | M 6:00-9:00pm | In-Person
This course will provide students with the skills and strategies to leverage their talents, including female talent, and in so doing to become more inclusive – and better - leaders. It will also identify new approaches that can bolster inclusive leadership. Women and men who take this course will be able to utilize the skills and knowledge taught when making their own career decisions, as well as when managing, being managed by, or collaborating with others of diverse backgrounds 

FINC-GB 2347: Economic & Financial Approach to Climate Change*
Professor Stroebel | We 6:00-9:00pm ET | In-Person 
Climate change presents one of the central challenges of our generation, with a wide range of possible effects on financial markets and the broader economy. This class: (i) Thinks about the effect of climate change on the overall economy; (ii) Studies the risks and opportunities that climate change holds for firms and financial institutions (distinguishing between a variety of types of risk, including transition risk and regulatory risk); (iii) Discusses how financial markets can help transfer and hedge climate risk; (iv) Explores the economic and financial foundations of potential climate regulation; (v) Analyzes how climate risk interacts with other risks, such as the risk of future pandemics.

FINC-GB 2375 - Managing Climate, Cyber, Geopolitical, and Financial Risk
Professor Berner | MW 11:00-12:15pm ET | In-Person
Businesses and governments now face a growing and immediate array of nonfinancial risks, including climate-related, cyber and operational, and geopolitical risks. Precisely because these critical risks are hard to measure and analyze, firms are putting new resources – people and money– to work to anticipate, manage and mitigate them. We will examine case studies of climate, cyber and geopolitical risks, including from current events. Finally, we will study whether and how the information in financial markets can both inform the assessment of these risks and potentially provide tools to transfer, insure against or hedge them.

MKTG-GB 2323 Marketing and Sustainability
Professor Bollinger | MW 3.00 PM - 4.20 PM ET | In-Person 
This course aims to provide a broad range of tools and frameworks for understanding how businesses can interact with issues related to sustainability, taking a marketing perspective. In particular, we examine how traditional marketing strategies can be incorporated into and/or modified in domains in which sustainability is critical. This course will draw upon cases, guest speakers, academic and industry research, and recent articles and events. In addition, we will have two “live cases” presented by industry representatives. The final course deliverable will be a marketing plan focused on a firm strategy that can increase the sustainability of the firm’s actions while also creating stakeholder value
* There is a second session of this course that will be taught W 6.00 -9.00 PM 

Issue Areas

BSPA-GB 2306 - Sustainable Food Business
Professor Taparia | Th 9:00-10:40am ET | In-Person
This course sees the free market as an opportunity to drive change in the food supply chain leading to better public health outcomes and even to serve as a catalyst for policy. This course will make the case that the market for food is still highly inefficient often monopolistic at times and that choice is still limited and hard to fulfill all this against a backdrop where consumer demand for healthier food options is growing dramatically. Through a mix of passion persistence vision innovation and marketing savvy social entrepreneurs can develop and market desirable products and services that capitalize on this need-gap. 

Global Markets, Human Rights, & the Press
Professor Posner | Th 6:00-9:00pm ET | In-Person
This course will explore some of the choices global businesses face in addressing human rights challenges in their core business operations. The course will include a series of case studies from different industries where accelerating globalization and advancing technology have made these challenges more acute in recent years. The course will focus on the evolving public face of these issues driven in part by rapid developments in the global media and advances in information technology.  

BSPA-GB 3110 - Work, Wisdom, and Happiness
Professors Dewji | M 6:00-9:00pm | In-Person
For centuries, work was regarded as nothing but toil – a requirement for earning one's daily bread. But in recent decades, expectations about work have been transformed as has its very nature. While it still provides one’s daily bread, it is also regarded as a major opportunity for people to find purpose, meaning, and happiness in their lives. In this course, students study the latest research on what makes people happy at work, on how happiness at work improves the quality of work, on how people and organizations develop wisdom, and on what makes a career not just successful but meaningful. We will also discuss some of the impediments – both individual and organizational to doing meaningful and satisfying work. Students will develop their own visions of their ideal career, and of the ideal company they’d like to lead or work for.