Course details
Fundamental Concepts of Sustainable Business
This course provides an understanding of sustainable business landscapes by analysing sustainability challenges in the global business environment, including energy, water, biodiversity, climate change and social impacts, and by describing the evolution of community and business attitudes to sustainability in both the developed world and emerging economies such as India and China. By introducing concepts such as 'externalities' and 'corporate social responsibility', the course considers the implications of sustainability for existing theories of the firm. In addition, focusing on the principles and practices of sustainable business, the course explores the implications of sustainability for the various functional areas of a business, such as Production, Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance.
Foundations of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
In this course we introduce the concepts of environmental and natural resource economics, which provide the disciplinary foundation for sustainable business. This, in turn, involves coming to grips with the basic principles of welfare economics and their application to the environment; analysing the physical and economic impacts of a business on the environment; exploring the link between the economics of natural resource extraction and sustainability; and understanding the distinction between economic and social efficiency, and the determination of resource use limits. Practical outcomes include an understanding of cost-benefit analysis (and alternatives to it) and approaches to valuing the natural environment.
Risk and Uncertainty Analysis for Sustainable Business
This course provides a framework for understanding and dealing with emergent sustainability risks in businesses, such as those associated with changing physical environments and the emerging attitudes of an increasing range of influential stakeholders. Common concepts associated with risk and uncertainty analysis, such as risk neutrality, risk aversion, risk preference, certainty equivalence, expected value and utility, and the cost of risk bearing, are explained, and decision analysis tools, such as influence diagrams and decision trees, are presented, equipping managers to make decisions under uncertainty. In addition, concepts particularly relevant to analysing the decision implications of sustainability issues, such as thresholds, irreversibility, non-linear dynamics, safe minimum standards, and the precautionary principle, are introduced.
Climate Change and Corporate Management
This course outlines the challenges in the global business environment presented by climate change, including an overview of the current assessment of climate science (from the perspectives of both climate scientists and climate sceptics), the current status of attempts by the international community to meet the challenge of climate change, and the implications of climate change for the Australian regulatory environment. The course explores the changes to the external business environment caused by climate change, and the associated strategic reconfigurations for major industry sectors such as energy, water, transport, health, financial services and agriculture. In addition it describes a range of tools and techniques that can be used to support managers in developing strategic and operational responses to climate change in their organisations.