| Dates | Location | Tuition |
|---|---|---|
| - |
San Francisco
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$7,500 |
Sustainability practices represent some of the most compelling opportunities for strengthening your brand, reducing costs, decreasing risk, and improving your bottom line. And yet many organizations still approach "going green" narrowly, as nothing more than compliance with environmental protection laws with perhaps a nod to sustainability as part of a compartmentalized social responsibility commitment. The role of business in providing profitable long-term solutions to serious environmental problems is growing, however, and companies that continue to follow this outdated approach will fail to maintain their competitiveness.
Business Sustainability Leadership will help executives to move beyond a narrow view of sustainability toward an expansive one that includes bringing significant long-term value to the organization and its investors. Whether you are new to sustainable business practices or are charged with implementing or adjusting existing strategies, this program is designed to teach you to use sustainability for competitive advantage, actively plan for future risks and opportunities, and grow your sustainability leadership capacity.
Business Sustainability Leadership is a new program in a business sustainability programming series currently in development at Wharton Executive Education. For more information, contact Joann Spigonardo, Associate Director, Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL), at 215.746.3878 or spigonaj@wharton.upenn.edu.
Co-Sponsoring Organization:
SAP, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, is the market leader in enterprise application software. Founded in 1972, SAP has a rich history of innovation and growth as a true industry leader. The company is committed to improving its own operations to be more sustainable and to delivering customer solutions that can help improve sustainability on a grand scale. Over the past 10 years, their efforts have been recognized by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for upholding ethical, environmental, social, and governance values and by Newsweek's Green Ratings as among the top 20 largest green companies globally. The development and launch of BSL has been made possible by a generous start-up grant to the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) from SAP.
Tuition for this program includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by e-mail or by telephone at +1 215.898.1776. Plan your stay.
Business Sustainability Leadership Session Descriptions
Wharton's Business Sustainability Leadership program, the first of its kind offered at this scale, provides a unique opportunity for executives charged with leading their organization's sustainability efforts. It blends Wharton's world-renowned leadership insights with industry-spanning sustainability knowledge and experience. Blending lecture presentations, group conversations, team exercises, and expert panel discussions, the program's approach is both research-based and actionable.
DAY 1
Morning Sessions
Introduction and Overview: Business Sustainability Leadership
This session will introduce the theme of "business sustainability leadership" and will provide a contextual overview of current major sustainability issues facing business, and it will begin an interactive discussion of cross-cutting views among participants. Different leadership styles and skills are required for different organizational levels and different constituent interests. The session will consider some of these different styles and skills drawing on the practical experiences of participants as examples.
Sustainability Leaders from Practice
This session assembles some of the world's leading practitioners to teach you about the best practices which they employ. The examples which they will impart, in simple case studies, will better inform you as to those approaches which you can take in your own company. Metrics that they will cite will offer you a way to measure sustainability results, once you employ them.
Afternoon Session
Sustainable Leadership
How do we maintain our long term sustainability objectives in the context of a complex, rapidly changing business environment? How do we effectively manage a near term crisis without negatively impacting our long term sustainability goals? The solution to these questions may lie in the creation and management of High Performing and Mission Critical Teams. In many ways, efforts in sustainability are as much about the right culture as they are about the right operations. By creating and managing teams that are focused on sustainably interacting with uncertainty; we help to inoculate our organization against the negative issues of complexity and change while at the same time providing us the bandwidth to focus on the opportunities.
Technology's Role in Sustainability
DAY 2
Morning Session
Scenario Thinking: Understanding the Future of Sustainability
We will outline the need for viewing uncertainty as an ally in the face of significant economic, market, technological, regulatory and other uncertainties. We will also discuss some systematic critical thinking and decision traps that require a different way of thinking about uncertainty. We will start the day with a focus on the future of energy and water.
Afternoon Session
Scenario Planning for Sustainability
Following a brief presentation to outline the methodology for developing alternative futures for key sustainability issues, participants will be put in teams to brainstorm future issue drivers, categorize these forces into trends and uncertainties, and based on these forces construct alternative futures. These futures will then be sketched out via a blueprint, and the more detailed identification of each future's major drivers, themes and implications. For each of their scenarios, teams will identify the future key success factors – competencies and initiatives that will discriminate winners from losers under that scenario. They will then identify those robust key success factors (that apply across multiple scenarios) and the ones that are more fragile, and perform a gap analysis and determine the cross-impact of those key success factors.
DAY 3
Morning Session
Corporate Diplomacy: Engaging Global Stakeholders
Successful practitioners of corporate diplomacy meld art and skill in engaging external stakeholders to advance their corporate interests. They craft international coalitions of stakeholders spanning politicians, regulators, bureaucrats, analysts, investors, lawyers, reporters, consumers and activists. They influence these stakeholders' opinions, perceptions, behaviors and decisions so as to secure a favorable policy outcome, collective decision or shift in group opinion that enhances their corporation's ability to generate a profit by satisfying a market demand. During this session, Professor Henisz draws on case studies of successful and failed implementation from the energy, financial, mining, tourism and construction sectors around the globe in order to develop an interdisciplinary framework. The insights gained can be applied to influence team decision-making and organizational politics as well as by individuals and organizations in lobbying, marketing, sales, political campaigns and corporate, national or multilateral projections of soft power.
Managing Stakeholders across Borders
Many corporations learn the hard way that they cannot simply port their "domestic" strategy over to another country as their "global" strategy. In this session, Professor Henisz surveys the implications of the past few decades of globalization for the strategies of multinational firms. He emphasizes through examples that despite globalization, the variation in culture, administrative systems and economic systems across countries are no more likely to converge than are their geographic positions. Professor Henisz will highlight different strategies to enable you to successfully bridge international economies.
Afternoon Session
The Financial Returns to Stakeholder Capital
Nearly all corporations clearly understand the importance of driving growth either organically or through acquisition, why it is a financial imperative for their return on invested capital (ROIC) to exceed their weighted average cost of capital (WACC), all while generating a positive cash flow from operations. Some customer centric corporations can also articulate customer lifetime value (CLV), as the NPV of the cash flows attributed to the long-term relationship with a customer, but very few corporations understand the NPV of their relationship with other stakeholders. In this session, Professor Henisz will reveal the economic importance of engaging with other stakeholders beyond customers and investors to reveal the NPV of other stakeholders often overlooked.
Business Sustainability Leadership is designed for senior executives who are responsible for their organization's sustainability strategy and efforts. These include CEOs, CFOs, Chief Sustainability Officers, Environmental Health and Sustainability Officers, as well as entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders of non-profits and NGOs with a focus on sustainable business policies and practices.
We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.
Business Sustainability Leadership is designed to provide senior executives with a greater understanding of the intersection of their role as leader and knowledge of the demands and rewards of sustainability practices. Appreciating current policies and shaping practices now and for the future will transform your organization (and the world) toward sustainability. You will:
- Advance your understanding of sustainability leadership with Wharton faculty and current leaders in the field
- Develop the tools and mindset for scenario planning, framing the critical issues for your organization and industry and determining strategies for a number of future scenarios
- Build capabilities for meeting stakeholder needs and demands and for creating relationships that translate into quantitatively estimated financial value
- Learn from other leading business practitioners of sustainability from a range of business sectors
- Develop a global network of peers and experts with substantive knowledge and experience relating to sustainable business issues.
ERIC W. ORTS, JSD
Director, Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership
The Wharton School
Professor Orts directs the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership. He has also had ten years of experience in serving as the academic co-director of the FINRA at Wharton certificate program for securities compliance and regulatory professionals. He teaches environmental management and policy, corporate law and governance, and professional ethics. Prior to joining Wharton's faculty in 1991, Orts practiced law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City and was a Chemical Bank fellow in corporate social responsibility at Columbia Law School. His primary research and teaching interests are in environmental law and policy, corporate governance, and professional ethics. His scholarly work is widely published in academic journals and books. One of his most recent articles is entitled "Climate Contracts."
BERNARD DAVID
Director and Board Chairman, ReProduct
Partner, Energy Management International, Inc.
A successful technology entrepreneur and Wharton graduate, Mr. David has founded, built and sold several businesses. He co-founded SaveSmart, Inc. (Prio, Inc.) which was sold to Infospace. He also founded officesupplies.com which was sold to Office Depot. Recently, he has been a private investor, aligning his interests in sustainability with his investment approach. Bernard was also the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of ErthNxt, Inc. (which recently merged with the National Wildlife Federation) and a Trustee of The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. He is an Advisor to EnerTech Capital.
JOHN AUSTIN, PhD
Decision Strategies International (DSI)
John has a B.A. in economics from The Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in management from Boston College. Dr. Austin is a thought leader in the areas of team leadership, knowledge transfer in teams, and organizational change implementation. His research on knowledge-based decision making teams is widely cited in the academic literature as is his work on the strategic actions of internal change agents.
Dr. Austin is an award winning teacher with experience teaching undergraduates, MBA students and practicing managers. John has conducted training on change management, team performance, decision making, leadership, creativity, and strategic planning. His experience with individuals at all levels of organizations enables him to translate broad strategies and concepts into actionable, engaging programs. Dr. Austin recently assisted in the design, and taught in, an innovative online Masters in Human Resources program for Penn State University.
Dr. Austin’s research has been published in leading management and applied psychology journals including Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organization Science. In addition, he has presented his research at the annual conferences of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, INFORMS, and International Association of Business and Society. John’s work has been recognized with three Best Paper awards from the Academy of Management. Dr. Austin’s work has been mentioned in a number of media outlets including CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Barron's.
WITOLD J. HENISZ
The Wharton School
Professor Henisz has served as a consultant for the World Bank, The Inter-American Development Bank, The Conference Board, and Eurasia Group. He previously worked for The International Monetary Fund. He is currently a principal in the political risk management consultancy PRIMA LLC.
PRESTON CLINE
The Wharton School
Prior to coming to Wharton, Preston ran Adventure Management, an operational risk management consulting firm that worked with governments and universities around the world on issues related to teaching and working in remote environments. Preston graduated with honors from Rutgers University, with Bachelors of Environmental Science and a minor in Professional Youth Work, as well as a Masters of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Risk and Prevention Program, where he completed formal research in the etymology and epistemology of risk.
My company has recently started a sustainability initiative and I'm in charge of managing sustainability issues for my company. Is this program right for me?
The BSL is targeted to mid- and senior level executives interested in weaving sustainability into their firms' business operations and management strategies. No direct experience in dealing with sustainability issues in a business context is required (though of course welcome). A strong interest in taking on a leadership role in one's organization on these issues, however, is critical.
How will the content provided in the Business Sustainability Leadership program be different from what I might learn at a sustainability conference or seminar?
Unlike most sustainability sessions, the BSL will combine both real-world best practices grounded by rigorous academic research. Nowhere else can participants be exposed to this type of world-class systems thinking.
How will this program make me a more effective leader or advocate for sustainability within my company or organization?
Executive Education participants will emerge from this three-day program with a discrete set of skills to enhance their abilities to lead efforts to integrate sustainability into their businesses profitably. These skills include sustainable leadership methods, disciplined scenario planning, and quantitative stakeholder analysis. These skills will improve the capacity of business leaders to translate long-term sustainability considerations into short-term decision frameworks and financial horizons. A by-product of the program will be to increase one's network of business leaders committed to addressing sustainability issues and discovering new profit-making and cost-cutting opportunities.
Will this program give me more insight into business sustainability practices from around the globe?
Sessions such as the Sustainability Leaders from Practice will include some of the world's leading practitioners who will teach you the best practices that they employ. Examples here and in other sessions will provide insights from emerging to developed economies as well as US and non-US-based companies.
Will this program show how business sustainability can create economic value for my company or organization?
The only way in which sustainable business practices, themselves, can be sustainable is to have them benefit the corporate top and/or bottom line. Various sessions, including "Calculating NPV for Stakeholders" and the "Sustainability Leaders from Practice," will give specific examples of ways in which your company can tangibly benefit from the effort you put into sustainability.I have a question that's not addressed here. Who can I contact?
For more information, please contact: Katrina Clark, Associate Director, Customer Care & Program Consultation +1.215.898.1776
