Certificate in Sustainable Management

Lesson 1
Module 1: An Overview of Sustainable Management
• Sustainability and its application in an organizational setting
• The connection between the environment and sustainability
• The business case for sustainable management
• The role of government regulation in corporate sustainability efforts
• Leadership in sustainable management
• The criticisms of corporate sustainability
• Sustainable management principles to workplace scenarios

Module 2: Corporate Social Responsibility
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how the concept has been broadened
• The moral and economic arguments for CSR
• The criticisms of CSR
• The role of CSR standards and how CSR is measured
• The impact on corporations of their CSR performance
• Best practices for CSR

Module 3: Measuring Sustainable Management Performance
• How managers can model and measure sustainable management practices
• How strategic performance measurements, including the balanced scorecard and Shareholder Value Analysis, can be employed in looking at corporate sustainability efforts
• How accounting systems, including activity-based costing, life-cycle costing, and full cost accounting can be used in assessing sustainability
• Methods of calculating return on investment for sustainability decisions and green capital investments
• Measuring and reporting sustainability to government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
• Best practices for measuring sustainable management efforts

Module 4: Sustainable Management: Leadership Ethics
• The role of ethics in the workplace and for leadership
• Major ethical frameworks used in developing business ethics
• The use of ethical standards and ethics codes in the workplace
• The role of leadership in setting the ethical tone for an organization
• Ethical principles to workplace scenarios

Module 5: Triple Bottom Line Accounting
• The triple bottom line (TBL) concept and its three pillars of "People, Planet, and Profits"
• The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) TBL accounting framework
• How economic, environmental, and social performance indicators are developed
• How TBL accounting measures an organization's sustainability performance
• The criticisms of TBL accounting
• Best practices for TBL accounting