Consulting for Sustainable Business Strategies (in Kooperation mit TransZent) - Einzelansicht

All sessions of the seminar will be held in English. Students can register themselves for this seminar via WUSEL. Slots are limited to 15 students and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. The seminar is offered in cooperation with TransZent and is open to students from business and non-business Master studies. The course instructors have no formal restriction regarding the combination of this seminar with other Master courses or modules. For questions concerning the accreditation of the seminar, please contact the examination office.

As a result of the severity of global challenges and the augmented societal request, the business sector is increasingly moving towards implementing responsible and sustainable business practices. Sustainable business development implies that companies meet – in their business activities – the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Thus, companies are prompt to integrate on a voluntary basis social and ecological issues into their way of doing business and their interactions with their stakeholders. While there is widespread consent that integrating sustainability into their business strategies is important organizations nonetheless frequently struggle with how to develop and implement concrete sustainable business strategies as win-win situation for themselves and society on the whole.

The main aim of this seminar therefore is to generate a holistic understanding of sustainable development in the business context in order to analyze how sustainable business strategies can be established. In doing so, various topics from the field of sustainability will be discussed, such as sustainable development and the green economy; stakeholder management as well as the process of sustainability strategy formulation and implementation.

These topics shall be analyzed in further depth on the basis of academic literature and applied to practice in form of a consulting case. Hereby, students will act as consultant for one particular organization and advise this organization on its sustainability strategy. The consulting cases are carried out in teams of two students where each team can select its own topic and organization. If desired, the consulting cases can be conducted in active cooperation with an organization. For the consulting case analysis, next to academic literature company-related secondary data, such as sustainability reports, can be used or primary data can be gathered, for instance through interviews with sustainability managers.

Assignments of the seminar include a project proposal, a presentation and a final paper. Topics for the consulting cases will be allocated during the first session. Afterwards, the participants will develop a project proposal on their selected topics and hold a team presentation. The final paper shall be handed in at the end of the lecturing period. Grading will be based on the project proposal, the presentation, the final paper and the participation in class as bonus.

Concerning the structure, the seminar will in total consist of six 3.5-hour sessions. Three of these six sessions are reserved for the team presentations. The remaining three sessions will discuss sustainability-related topics in a highly interactive manner and will prepare the students with the understanding and skills needed to conduct their consulting case assignments. Next to these six sessions, students will receive the possibility to schedule two individual feedback meetings on their consulting cases with the course instructors.  

All registered students will receive as preparation upfront a course manual with further information about the structure and content of this seminar.