UW Sustainability Courses - Systems Thinking & Sustainable Businesses

SYSTEMS THINKING & SUSTAINABLE BUSINESSES : Welcome

Systems Thinking and Sustainable Businesses grew out of the success of my fall semester class "Environmental Strategy and Sustainability". It was developed in response to student requests to create a course that talked about how to operationalize the ideas of corporate social and environmental responsibility. Systems Thinking and Sustainable Businesses is offered in the spring semester, and, though it flows from the fall semester class, Environmental Strategy and Sustainability is not a prerequisite.

One of the course objectives is to "To foster awareness, sensitivity and literacy regarding global environmental and social change, including challenges such as population growth, persistent poverty, social disintegration, wealth distribution inequalities, environmental pollution, loss of species, political instability, etc., focusing especially on the roles of industry in relation to these challenges".

Clearly, this isn't your traditional business school course. However, slowly but surely, it is the type of course that is showing up in graduate business education programs around the world. This class brings together Business School students with students from the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (and other schools and programs on campus) to dialogue on the relevance of sustainability in a focused and constructive way. It has been organized to provide better insights into how sustainable development can be a part of most decisions that are made, whether at the individual lifestyle level or at the organizational level. The class will consist of lectures supplemented with student discussions based on readings and case studies, and information gathering and writing about ways that we can change things right now so that as a society we are able to live in a more sustainable manner.

Spring 2008

Spring 2007

Spring 2006