LFU:online

This module covers the topic “Sustainability in organizational live”

This module is designed for students interested in taking charge of, advance, and share jointly developed knowledge on how organizations navigate current societal concerns, such as climate change and socioeconomic inequalities. Particularly business organizations in many highly polluting sectors, including energy, buildings, transportation, and others, have been argued to be a main contributor to the every growing emission gap and societal inequalities. However, as societal awareness for sustainability is growing, quests for organizational change are becoming more pronounced, and many organizations have taken first steps towards addressing those quests. Students will get to know about the current debates, and will understand important practices and organizational responses in the context of sustainability.

The philosophy of this course is to be more consequential and go one step further than traditional classes may do. As many have argued, combatting climate change and other pressing societal challenges requires collective action, experimentation, and change in the existing knowledge base. The educational sector therefore plays a decisive role in transitioning to a more sustainable future. As part of this module, our goal is to live up to this aspiration by communicating and making visible our own educational insights to a wider audience outside of the classroom. By seeking to jointly publish our work in the form of a course book written “from students for students”, we will not only enrich our own knowledge base, but draw attention to the diversity of sustainability practices, alternative forms of organizing, and challenges that exist organizational life, and share those with a wider audience. Accordingly, learning contents include:

Understanding organizations as both causes of social and environmental harm and drivers of sustainability.

Understanding organizational responses in the context of sustainability.

Theoretical foundations to explain and understand phenomena and concepts related to organizational responses and practices in the context of sustainability.

Writing up and communicating own knowledge to wider audience.

Engage with wider audience on the topic of sustainability.

We will jointly read and discuss literature and cases on the various ways that business organizations deal with increasing sustainability quests and potentially contribute to a low-carbon socioeconomic transition. While the VO is designed to set the foundations for our own knowledge on this topic, in the Seminar, students are encouraged to contribute more ‘hands-on’ and to disseminate the knowledge gained to a wider audience. In order to do so, students will gain and make visible new insights by studying and developing own real-life case studies.

Exam (individual grade)

tba; made available via OLAT

positive Beurteilung der Pflichtmodule gemäß Curriculum § 7 Z 2 und 3

The VO and the Seminar are closely interlinked and connected; students wishing to take this module are encouraged to attend bot VO and Seminar.