HBA Corporations and Society
I introduced this 20-session course in 2007 and taught it for the first two years. It continues to be required (i.e. core) by every Honors Business Administration (HBA) student. The course is designed so that the first 10 sessions are the same across all instructors, and the second 10 sessions are unique to the instructors’ disciplinary area, such as strategy, operations, and public policy.
MSc Sustainability
This 12-session elective was offered only once in 2010, but designed so that students co-created the content with me. Each 3-hour session was motivated by a question central to sustainability that students would debate, based on their independent research. They submitted a short paper for each class that outlined and defended their position and reflected the insights they gleaned during class.
MSc Systems workshop
This 2-day workshop introduced systems thinking to MSc students in 2019. In the first day, they learn about the principles of systems thinking. On the second day, they applied these principles in MIT’s Fishbanks simulation and in describing the systems disruptions confronting various businesses.
MBA Long-term Prosperity
I introduced this course in 2015 and last taught it in 2023. I co-teach almost all of the 10 sessions with another faculty member in the core MBA program (e.g. strategy, operations, marketing, finance). In this way, students see sustainability not simply as a topic, but a lens through which they see all of business. I anchor the course in a 2x2 framework, with business and society on one axis and short term and long term on the other. My starting premise is that most course content focuses on the short term and business. By shifting the focus to the long term and society, businesses can assure long-term prosperity for all.
PhD Business Sustainability
The PhD course in sustainability seeks to challenge some of the assumptions that ground the dominant business paradigm, thereby opening up new theoretical perspectives. It focuses attention, not on extending existing theories, but making explicit the questions being asked and answered by existing theories. The course asks of its students to extend current theorizing to accommodate the specific challenges posed by sustainable development, by more deeply understanding the dimensions of time, space and scale. The course is intended to be span disciplinary boundaries and methods.
PhD Qualitative Research Methods
This PhD course aims to train students in qualitative methods. I begin by discussing the philosophy of science, as qualitative methods can cover a range of paradigms – from positivist to critical to constructivist. The course then travels through the processes of building theory, collecting data, analyzing data, and then writing and publishing.
PhD Organizing for Climate Transitions
This virtual course is offered by a multi-faculty team comprising some of the most significant scholars in sustainability around the world. It was launched in January 2023.