Bright Green MBA

Sustainability Programs

Bright Green MBA Curriculum

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The Bright Green MBA program is an adaptation of the existing MBA program at the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management. The core MBA curriculum is woven into a sequence of courses and experiences that prepare students to be not simply effective leaders, but effective triple-bottom-line leaders for a changing world.

Students will attend the program in cohorts over a 24-month period (six terms). Course delivery is offered in a hybrid format. Cohorts of students will attend classes together over long weekends once a month, and via on-line delivery of classes in between the weekends. Two courses are offered in each term and students attend three terms per calendar year. Each term consists of three weekend sessions and approximately five one-hour on-line sessions. The exception to this is the Professional Practice course that will be offered throughout the six terms in small seminars.

Courses are arranged in five strands:

I Foundations of Sustainability

Three courses that introduce students to the basics of sustainable thinking, key management approaches for sustainable organizations and systems thinking

II Shifting Mindsets

Three courses that focus on changing the way we look at traditional business topics to succeed in a sustainable world. Courses focus on marketing and consumption, leadership and change, and the socially responsible business including ethical practices and responsibility for all corporate stakeholders.

III Making the Business Case

Two courses that focus on skills and theories that help leaders make the business case for sustainability, including key financial, accounting and statistical tools.

IV The Strategy of Sustainability

Four courses that frame various aspects of strategic thinking in a sustainable organization. The first, gives an overview of the strategic thinking, introducing tools that help leaders to focus on strategies that are sustainable. A second course focuses on entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship as strategic perspectives. The third looks at sustainable products, services and operations including sustainable design as a strategic advantage. Finally, the capstone course provides consulting opportunities for students to partner with local organizations to enhance sustainability and provide practical experience for students.

V Professional Practice

One course delivered over the entire program in small seminars focusing on career skills, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, team building and other personal and professional skills to enhance students employability and success.

Course Descriptions and Schedules

I. Foundations of Sustainability

Systems Thinking (4 units)

This course examines systems thinking which is an approach to problem solving that views “problems” as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to present outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of the undesired issue or problem. This course teaches students how to apply systems thinking to a variety of practical problems, including crisis management. Outcomes include learning how to ask the right questions, how to formulate problems from multiple perspectives, how to anticipate and to analyze stakeholders, how to be aware of and challenge critical assumptions and how to see problems and key issues systematically.

Sustainable Management for the Triple Bottom Line (4 units)

This course reviews the principles and practice of sustainable business management. Students will learn how the triple bottom line approach emphasizing people, prosperity and environment can improve profits, reduce risks, and improve stakeholder engagement. The economic underpinning of management is explained, and the use of true cost accounting provides insight into the implications of sustainable management throughout the value chain. This class provides new approaches for management that can help students manage people and resources better, resolve conflicts, and identify and take advantage of new business opportunities as an entre- or intra-preneur. It is designed to help prepare professional practice skills that will lead to student success in their careers, as workers, managers and leaders.

Drivers of Sustainability (4 units)

This course sets the foundation for identifying and evaluating issues for organizations emphasizing the environmental aspects of sustainability. The course surveys how organizations impact the environment through generation of wastes and pollutants, consumption of resources, and habitat destruction. Students will learn how an organization’s ability to prevent or mitigate these impacts is affected by scientific and technological principles, legal and regulatory constraints, economic and financial criteria, and consideration of societal impacts. This course also considers the potential for new business opportunities throughout the value chain that may arise from better managing environmental issues. The course describes common environmental management strategies and techniques to reduce costs, risk and regulatory burdens. It also reviews key U.S. legal and regulatory frameworks and compares them with those of other countries, voluntary international environmental management protocols such as ISO 14000 and the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme, and market based solutions to reduce or eliminate unwanted impacts.

II. Shifting Mindsets

Sustainable Marketing and Consumption (4 units)

This course provides a background of the sustainable marketing orientation as it evolved from the societal, consumer and environmental marketing perspectives. The goal of this course is to help students develop responsible marketing objectives and create effective marketing strategies that consider economic benefits, environmental concerns, and social equity. Students will gain knowledge and background about green market segmentation, integrated marketing management, stakeholder involvement, and issues such as “green-washing”, “sustainable advantage”, “long-term sustainability”, “green branding”, and “corporate social responsibility”. Students will examine the potential application of sustainable marketing in various regions of the world with different economic, cultural, and developmental background.

Leadership and Change (4 units)

This course addresses the need for organizations to create prosperous and sustainable organizations through inspired and well informed leadership coming from all levels of the organization and adapting to and generating change toward triple-bottom-line thinking. This course begins with an examination of key topics relating to people in organizations including, leadership, motivation, culture, and team dynamics. The course then moves on to examine how leadership can bring about change in terms of sustainability within the context of the social environment within the organization. We will focus on how leaders move organizational change forward by emphasizing all aspects of the triple bottom line, how leadership promotes collaborative sustainability efforts within and between organizations, and how organizations adopting sustainability can make themselves leaders in their fields. In addition, the course addresses how to respond to resistance to change both inside and outside the organization, through a combination of a unwavering focus on core values and a combination of practical short and long range planning and encouraging emergent thinking and behavior.

Corporate Stakeholders and Social Responsibility (4 units)

This course addresses the key and fundamental questions that arise when organizations recognize they are imbedded in a complex world with many stakeholders. The responsibility organizations have toward those stakeholders is examined from many levels including inside the organization, in the local community and in the global community. Topics will include, social justice, environmental justice, prejudice, diversity and conflict resolution. It also pays attention to how business can influence the process of globalization, and specifically key global social issues such as poverty and inequality. This course will focus on actions that organizations can take to address these issues including social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, and social businesses among others.

III. Making the Business Case

Managerial Finance and Accounting (4 units)

This course reviews accounting and finance as managerial tools including how they can be used to manage organizations more sustainability. Topics include the accounting process, financial statements, evaluation of financial performance, budgeting and forecasting, cost-volume-profit analysis, time-value of money, project evaluation, financial markets and instruments, internal controls, working capital management, capital structure, currency transactions, and ethics in accounting and finance. The use of accounting and financial tools for promoting sustainable development will also be discussed, including accounting for externalities and societal costs.

Sustainability Research, Accounting and Reporting (4 units)

This course reviews the foundations and principles of sustainability research, true cost accounting, evaluation of the sustainability of products and services and reporting sustainability issues to a range of stakeholders in an international environment. This requires careful and thoughtful use of a wide range of research tools and methods including model building, resource-constrained optimization (linear, integer and other programming models) and modeling for decision theoretic situations. In addition, sustainability metrics, customer and market analysis, measurements of company performance, auditing, and developing product, service and company specific metrics and reports as well as effective use of data mining are covered.

The goal of this course is to help students develop a working understanding of the approaches that are being used to understand and measure sustainability, to analyze markets and opportunities for sustainable products and services, and to communicate clearly with a wide range of stakeholders. Students will work on both market research in the international environment and sustainability reporting using the Global Reporting Institute format. Emphasis is placed on improving information skills to create better understanding and accounting for all costs to add value throughout the value chain.

IV. The Strategy of Sustainability

Strategy and sustainable development (4 units)

This course discusses the important role that strategic management plays in sustainable development. We will examine issues of environmental economics and how they inform sustainable business strategies. Topics include the strategic planning process, industry and competitive analysis, management capability and organizational structure, business and corporate strategies. Specific topics include the increasingly complex world of planning and sustainable development, product and process life cycle analysis, and impacts of organizations on society and the environment. The tools for design with nature and ecosystem analysis are introduced and used in case studies and problem solving exercises.

Entrepreneurship/Intrapreneurship and Innovation (4 units)

This course examines how to move from the idea to successful launch of new ventures, both starting a new enterprise or following a passion within an established business. The course looks at new models of leadership that emphasize passion, authenticity and integrity as a necessary starting point to become a successful entrepreneur, or intrapreneur within an existing organization. The emphasis will be on starting with desired outcomes in areas such as alternative energies, clean tech and social entrepreneurship. Student will learn how to develop strategies that manage risk through establishing unique metrics and disciplined implementation. Student will engage in a personal assessment of their entrepreneurial skills that include perseverance, creativity, coping skills for high pressure. We work from a model of a more holistic, fully functioning entrepreneur and Gladwell’s idea of meaningful work through passion not genius. We will review all aspects of a successful business plans to ensure attaining green entrepreneurship. Guest speakers will share their experience in launching successful green ventures.

Sustainable Products, Services and Operations (4 units)

This course reviews product design and production activities, service operations, and facility management and their impacts on the local and global environment. Students will learn design principles and practices, review common production technologies and processes, practice process mapping (flow diagramming), develop material balances, and review pollution prevention practices. Emphasis is placed on resource conservation, consumer satisfaction and health, integrated systems of material use and reuse in industrial ecology, and sustainability principles involved in facilities management, production and services. The course also reviews ergonomics and safety, improved productivity and health, and the opportunities and implications of substituting services for ownership. This course includes case studies, design projects, labs, and experiments. It is also designed to help students rediscover their creativity and ability to find new solutions to complex problems.

Sustainability in Action (Capstone) (4 units)

The purpose of the integrative capstone course is to provide opportunities for students to apply the lessons learned in their Bright Green MBA Program to a real organization. Students will analyze and provide discrete services to organizations related to sustainability management including but not exclusive to, sustainability assessments, true cost accounting analysis, corporate social responsibility plans, stakeholder risk analysis, and green marketing plan. Course instruction will center around a series of integrated modules that will focus on the practical implementation of all aspects of the curriculum. Students will explore interconnections between the strategic foundation of their client project and the cultural, sustainable and core purpose and goals of their client’s organization within a global business context.

V. Professional Practice

The Professional Practice Course (2 units) is an ongoing series of seminars held throughout the 2 years of the Bright Green MBA Program. The course provides practical, hands-on application in how to navigate organizational life and be an effective professional. All the instruction is designed in response to the most important and urgent needs of employees, managers and executives in all forms of organizations. Particular emphasis is placed on developing emotional intelligence, the ability to understand oneself and others, and practical intelligence, the ability to get things done.

We also provide ongoing career coaching to help our students greatly increase the probability of securing their first green job.