Strategy and Sustainability

Business and environmental sustainability are not natural bedfellows. Business is about making money. Sustainability is about protecting the planet. Business is measured in months and quarters. Sustainability often requires significant short-term costs to secure a sometimes uncertain long-term benefit. To some activists, all executives are exploitative, selfish one-percenters. To some executives, all activists are irresponsible, unyielding extremists.

And yet engaging with the issue isn’t optional – all businesses must have a strategy to deal with sustainability and, like any strategy, this involves making choices. This Strategy and Sustainability course is based on Rosenberg's recently published book by Palgrave (http://www.palgrave.com/la/book/9781137501738) that encourages learners to filter out the noise and make those choices in a hard-nosed and clear-eyed way. Prof. Rosenberg’s nuanced and fact-based point of view recognizes the complexity of the issues at hand and the strategic choices businesses must make. He blends the work of some of the leading academic thinkers in the field with practical examples from a variety of business sectors and geographies and offers a framework with which senior management might engage with the topic, not (just) to save the planet but to fulfil their short, medium and long-term responsibilities to shareholders and other stakeholders. This course promises to be both engaging and thought-provoking, aimed at anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of a subject that is no longer perceived as a choice but a necessity for future managers and business leaders alike.