Matteo
Mura

Over the last decade sustainability, corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management practices have become paramount for companies as well as for the society at large. Although most companies have developed sustainability programs over the years, as they’re cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and otherwise enhancing operational efficiency, we are witnessing a mishmash of sustainability tactics that does not add up to a sustainable strategy. To endure, a sustainable strategy has to cope with the competing – and apparently divergent – interests of all stakeholders: investors, employees, customers, governments, NGOs, and society.

In this context corporate Performance Measurement Systems (PMS) play a key role as they help companies to formalize and implement their sustainable strategies as well as to proactively identify new trajectories that help companies to appropriately reconcile the trade-offs between different stakeholders’ wants and needs.

Sustainability and Business Innovation
Green Energy and Sustainable Businesses

Every year our society makes use of the resources that the planet Earth takes about a year and a half to regenerate. This and other empirical evidence of global significance bring the theme of sustainability to the center of the economic, political and social debate. Recent studies show that a sustainability-oriented management approach adopted by some companies leads to a medium-long term competitive advantage over competitors, a success achieved thanks to the ability to innovate the business model and to introduce measurement tools to monitor and to better manage the value creation process. The course aims at opening a debate on the introduction of sustainability policies and practices within companies.

Executive MBA

Measurement and control systems represent key ingredients of organizational success. By exploring connections between strategy, data, decisions and actions in this course we will focus on how to measure, control and manage performance in organizations.
We will first look at how to design performance measurement systems – balanced scorecards, control dashboard, strategy maps – as a key means to strategy implementation. We will then look at the different uses of performance measurement systems, not just as a way to monitor and control current activities, but rather as a way to stimulate organizational learning, reconfigure existing strategies and business models. Finally, we will focus on strategic cost management, by providing students with the main techniques of cost computation for decision-making. The course will be strongly rooted in organizational practice as we will explore cutting edge tools to design proper control systems and apply recent developments in cost accounting to different company data in order to effectively support decision-making.

Over the last decade sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices have become paramount for companies as well as for the society at large. Although most companies have developed sustainability programs over the years, as they are cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and otherwise enhancing operational efficiency, we are witnessing a mishmash of sustainability tactics that does not add up to a sustainable strategy. To endure, a sustainable strategy has to cope with the competing – and apparently divergent – interests of all stakeholders: investors, employees, customers, governments, NGOs, society and the natural environment.

The purpose of this course is to initiate a debate around the role and functioning of modern corporations as sustainability challenges, opportunities and solutions emerge. In particular, the objective of the course is to detail and disentangle the links between sustainability, CSR and the key role that digital technologies can play as a mean to translate sustainable strategies into effective outcomes.

Within this perspective, three major learning outcomes are expected:

• To allow students to gain a solid and robust understanding of what sustainability and corporate social responsibility mean in a business context;
• To allow students to understand key approaches and frameworks for measuring and reporting sustainability and CSR in organizations;
• To gain an understanding of what sustainability oriented innovation means and how it can be applied to a digital organizational context.

In order to achieve these objectives the course will combine (i) case studies and whole class discussion; (ii) talks by business leaders and managers dealing with sustainability issues; (iii) lectures.

This course explores the ethical, social responsibility, and governance challenges facing businesses today and how individuals and firms can address those challenges. The course aims to enhance the skills and expertise of participants through combining an examination of ethical, social responsibility, corporate governance and managerial theory with a discussion of common ethical, sustainability, and governance problems in context. Course material includes individual moral theory, stakeholder theory, and theories of corporate governance. The course also covers the development and evaluation of ethical, governance and sustainability management systems designed to respond to ethical, governance, and sustainability challenges, and includes wide-ranging discussions regarding current major trends, challenges, and opportunities in the field of ethical business, corporate governance and social responsibility. Finally, the course explores how business ethics, social responsibility, and corporate governance affect society at large by impeding or by fostering the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Digital Marketing and Communication

The course aims to provide students with an introduction on how to measure sustainability in organizations. Specifically we will highlight how the agri-food sector could benefit from a proper implementation of sustainability measurement processes and practices. The course will have an “hands-on” approach, rooted in Life Cycle Thinking, and developed in accordance with the EU main regulatory frameworks. Students will receive the necessary knowledge for setting up a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for a product, a process or an organization. The course will provide a solid theoretical introduction and but also practical activities which will allow students to deal with the main critical aspects of the LCA methodology (e.g. conceptual model definition, interpretation of results) and acquire a first practical experience of these tools.

Food Innovation and Regeneration