Climate Change and the Business Response (CF45818)

General information

Type:	OP	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
	Rafael Sardá Borroy	Operaciones, Innovación y Data Sciences	ENG

No prerequisites are needed.

Climate Change is one of the greatest challenges over times. Studying climate change as other environmental issues applied to companies' perspective, constitute a good way to develop business analytic skills in a historical momentum in which those issues are becoming more and more important for human societies. A basic knowledge on introduction to business should be required.

Lectures and work in class, 24 hours
Autonomous and group work 24 hours

The course contributed to the student's education by:
a) introducing the students to one of the greatest challenges over times, climate change.
b) introducing the students into the Corporate Sustainability concept of the 21st Century to address the major eissue of climate change
c) framing the development of a new language in business linked to the environmental variable and the used business tools
d) framing business strategies. the students will learn about strategic frameworks for assessing the impact of climate change on markets and customer demand. This knowledge is essential for developing corporate strategies that avoid the negative consequences of climate change and take advantage of business opportunities evolving from a changing market environment.
c) developing sustainable and responsible social-ecological values in your career formation,
e) promoting team work.

Climate change is one of today's most pressing issues, receiving international attention from political leaders, corporations, the media, advocacy groups, and the general public. In the future, it is likely to become even more pressing as the effects of climate change intensify resource competition, natural disasters, disease vectors, water and food scarcity, and refugee migration. Businesses influence climate change, and are influenced by climate change. As emitter of greenhouse gases, the corporate sector bears some responsibility for the problem, and will be asked to find solutions. And as users of natural resources, corporations will face new uncertainties and scarcities as climate change occurs. Given these interconnections, many businesses are seeking to shape public policy and public opinion on climate change.

According to Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, the impact of climate change is likely to change the international business environment dramatically "Climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen?. However, the business relevance of climate change is insufficiently understood by future decision makers in international management and society. In order to deal with the climate issue, this course introduces and applies the idea of a new Corporate Sustainability concept for the 21st Century where firms can create Sustainable Value using different Sustainable Strategic options companies may have these days. We will illustrate how companies engage in Corporate Sustainability and how they can create sustainable added value. The objective is to build the theoretical foundations introducing an innovative conceptual frameworks that provide guidance for managing what is needed in this new Century in relation to the climate issue.

Transferring new concepts and jargon into the above perspective, the course evolves on two conceptual frameworks. The course redefines a set of corporate sustainable strategies that companies can develop to manage environmental issues in practice and create sustainable added value. On the other side, the course acknowledges the notion of corporate extended responsibilities and the transformation of organizational and operational boundaries framing four basic approaches that can guide managers in rethinking the corporate value change: increasing the eco-efficiency of productive units; making supply chains more sustainable; designing new sustainable product and services and; moving into sustainable business models and collaborative schemes.

We believe that tomorrow's business leaders should be educated on the key elements of climate change - the science, the evolving policy, and role of business. They can become an essential part of the solution, but only if equipped with a sound understanding of the challenges at hand and the processes by which new policies are constructed.

1. THE CLIMATE ISSUE: FROM GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES TO CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY 1.1.- Globlal Change 1.2.- The Social-ecological Paradigm 1.3.- Natural Capital and the Ecological Footprint 1.4.- Corporate Sustainability: the evolution of the concept 1.5.- The Business IN Nature concept

2. POLICY TRANSFORMATION: ADAPTATION AND MITIGATION STRATEGIES 2.1.- Policy Transformation. From Kyoto to Paris 2.2.- Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies 2.3.- The Business Case for Sustainability and the carbon footprint 2.4.- Corporate Sustainability Strategies: a conceptual framework 2.5.- Rethinking the Corporate Value Chain: a conceptual framework. 2.6.- Sustainability planning. Exercises.

3. CLIMATE CHANGE: DEALING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS 3.1.- The Safe Strategy 3.2.- The Risk Analysis framework for Business 3.3.- Environmental and Risk Management Systems 3.4.- Costs of poor environmental risk managerial performance Case Studies: TOTAL Carbon Capture and Storage

4. DRIVING PRODUCTION SYSTEMS SUSTAINABLE 4.1.- The Efficient Strategy 4.2.- Clean Production and the regulatory aspect 4.3.- From effciency to effectiveness: Clean Tech Innovation 4.4.- Corporate Reporting Case study. L¿OREAL

5. MANAGING SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAINS 5.1.- The Credible Strategy 5.2.- Green Supply Chain in Sustainable Operation Management 5.3.- Interdependences with Ecosystem Services 5.4.- Green Clubs and cooperative platforms Case studies: BARILLA

6. MAKING SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES 6.1.- The Innovative Strategy 6.2.- Life Cycle Thinking (LCA) and the Carbon footprint 6.3.- Designing Sustainable Products and Services 6.4.- Sustainability as the key driver of Innovation 6.5.- Green products and its associated tools: the role of Eco-labelling Case study: IKEA

7. INNOVATING BUSINESS MODELS 7.1.- The Transformational Strategy. 7.2.- Business Models for Sustainability and the role of decarbonizatin 7.3.- The Circular economy and its circular business models 7.4.- Radical Innovation and the transformational approach Case study: ENEL

8. GROUP PRESENTATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 8.1.- Group presentations 8.2.- Concluding remarks

The Climate Change and the Business Response course is comprised of eight teaching sessions that prepare participants to address one of the most critical issues in the relationship between business and the environment, the climate issue. If we want to solve the climate challenge as it has been designed by the newest Paris agreement, businesses must change many of its present strategies. These sessions will drive through the competitive aspects of the corporate response to deal with this issue. The course follows a Routledge textbook actually in press ("Corporate Sustainability in the 21st Century: increasing the resilience of social and ecological sytems", Sardá R. & S. Pogutz) and uses this conceptual framework to deal with the consequences of this present reality.

The course consists of a combination of interactive lectures, case discussions and other materials. You are asked to read the material prepared for every class before attending (reading material and case studies); reflect on these readings and proactively look for additional material. During each session, the case studies and lectures will serve as the basis for the discussion of the main topics outlined in the files handout each week. In addition, for some of the case studies, students will be asked to develop a small (less than a page) essays that will respond assigned questions. A final individual essay will be asked at the end of the course for its conclusion.

Different lectures as well as five case studies from five different European companies will be introduced during the course. This course will apply a new Corporate Sustainability perspective (Business In Natute) to deal with the climate issue- This new Corporate Sustainability perspective has been introduced in the book "Corporate Sustainability in the 21st Century: increasing the resilience of social-ecological systems" (Sardá & Poguz, in press-2018). This concept should guide business towards an extended rethinking of the corporate value chain with the ultimate goals to enhance prosperity and to increase the resilience of social-ecological systems and of organizations; We will use this framework to deal with the climate challege to decarbonize the economy and to reduce the carbon footprint of companies.

Group	Teacher	Department
	Rafael Sardá Borroy	Operaciones, Innovación y Data Sciences