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Another FaCTS Mellon Project

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Envisioning Social, Financial and Environmental Enterprise through an Interdisciplinary Lens

by Dr. Richard Peters

The present course offering, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability (CSRS) will be revised to incorporate multiple disciplines of thought, literature, arguments and approaches to this contemporary and complex concept. Specifically the course will be divided into six sections: (1) Ethics, (2) Economics, (3) Strategic Business, (4) Politics, (5) Science and (6) Global issues that will reveal differing approaches to this complex concept. Each section will draw on literature and knowledge specific to that domain and thus students will be given an interdisciplinary introduction to social responsibility and sustainability.

Guest speakers (academics and practitioners) will be utilized to provide key insights into how CSRS differs and shares similarities across disciplines.

Students will therefore be introduced to a variety of approaches related to the field and be able to assess how these approaches complement as well as potentially conflict with each other. Also students will be given the opportunity to work with an existing organization to prepare and promote a CSRS initiative that increases the social, environment and financial capital of the firm.

Further, the course will be used as an experiential case study in creating and delivering an interdisciplinary CSRS class. Few such classes exist and information garnered throughout the process will be helpful to the scholarship of teaching arena, particularly in the field of social responsibility and sustainability.

Start date: Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Finish date: Tuesday, March 31, 2015