With the universal acceptance of the United Nations Brundtland Commission report, sustainability became a major challenge for business leaders and managers. Its deceptively simple core theme of “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ is now central for organizational success.
Achieving organizational sustainable development and operation involves the engagement with and management of the full range of stakeholders; including customer, shareholder, corporation, employees, community, government, non-government and others. Geographical dimensions range from local to regional to global.
Many organizations now accept sustainability as important to their mission and have strategized for this, yet outcomes have been mixed, at best. Organizations struggle to align their missions and sustainable objectives, something that critics, including their important stakeholders, are quick to point out and often do so loudly to organizational detriment. Poorly conceived or absent organizational ethics are increasingly a key facet for these conflicts.
This course focuses on the planning, development and management of sustainability as a central and integral component of successful organizational outcomes as undertaken in the Asian region. The course has an applied bias that brings the essence of sustainability theory into practical industry, government and community application where the perspectives of the different stakeholders are central to success as a clear understanding of the complexities of Asian contexts.
No prior knowledge of the principles or application of sustainability is required, as this course will be delivered accordingly. Participants in this course will address large-, medium- and small-scale organizations in a variety of Asian contexts. Ways of thinking about these, the issues involved and the crafting of proactive strategies are relevant to a range of business contexts. Thus a higher-level intent of this course is the development of skills for dealing with complex problems in general.
