21E16001 - Sustainability in Business, Lecture, 5.9.2022-13.10.2022

The group research project allows students to apply the insights from the course to a company or organization. The focus is on integrating your learning about the relationship between business and sustainability and applying this to evaluate the sustainability practices and performance of a company that you are excited to study. You will assume the role of a consultant (or evaluative/investigative journalist) and develop a briefing about a specific firm's sustainability performance thus far, its comparison to its main competitors, and key recommendations on how to improve its competitive positioning by considering sustainability.

You must choose one specific company of interest and one sustainability issue connected to topics that we have discussed in the second half of the course. It is strongly recommended that you be narrow in the topic you cover so that you can go into sufficient depth. For instance, H&M and climate change is quite a broad topic as the firm is a multinational corporation with a global reach and a multitude of activities (including productions, distribution, retailing) that contribute to climate change. Instead, you might seek to study the climate change impacts of a more specific area of H&M's operations, for example, GHG emissions from its supply chain in a specific region.

The report should be framed as addressing a specific question, for example, "How can Starbucks address its sourcing challenges, notably concerning the price paid to farmers for coffee, such that it aligns self-interest with sustainability?" You may wish to choose a company with which you are already familiar. For instance, if you have worked with the company or intend to do so in the future. We recommend that you choose a company for which sufficient information is available to analyze the chosen issues.

A standard format for the report would include the following sections (though we are open to alternative formats if you believe these work better; we will be marking content, not adherence to some template):

Overall, the key output of this report is the set of options and recommendations. The discussion of the sustainability issue, the comparison to competitors, and the stakeholder analysis should all be woven together to lead to these options and recommendations. As such, the structure and content of this "front-end" will vary between projects.  It is your job to decide what makes the most sense for the job you have at hand. In doing this, it is imperative that you only include relevant information; do not write something simply to write it. If information about a stakeholder is not important for the options and recommendations, you should ask yourself whether you need to include that information at all or go back and include it in your analysis of options.

When putting together these options and recommendations, both the sustainability and financial sides must be considered. From a financial side, this means providing rough estimates of how much the different options may cost in terms of materials and/or people time.  From the sustainability side, this means quantifying and monetizing the elements at play when possible.  Some issues are much easier to quantify and monetize than others (e.g. environmental is generally easier than social; there are set social costs of carbon numbers to use in order to monetize).  This is understood in assessing the report.  In any case, though, quantifying things on the financial side should always be possible by using grounded assumptions. Considering the sustainability and financial sides in tandem makes it easier to assess which option may be better.

Students are expected to use companies' sustainability reports, annual reports, media reports (e.g., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and the Globe & Mail), analyst reports, academic articles, and other reputable sources to conduct their analysis. Stronger reports might also include your findings from short interviews with one or more managers, industry or other experts. Finally, the reliability of the references is a key factor. When dealing with sustainability issues, sources such as blogs are likely to be heavily opinionated and cannot be expected to provide reliable facts and figures. Course concepts should be used throughout the report. Again though, these concepts should only be used where they further the analysis and recommendations. 

You must reference all sources throughout the text and provide a complete list of references. The report must be your original work, written specifically for the course. Your report must not be a repetition of other coursework. Furthermore, you should not use existing published case study material or reports. For further details on referencing and plagiarism, see the information and web link provided in the following section.

The report is to be a maximum of 3500 words plus any exhibits (exhibits are not a place to move excess content; they are for the clarity of presentation), and any appendices (appendices are also not a place for excess content; they are a place to put lengthy calculations or supporting information that is needed to validate an argument but is too lengthy for non-technical readers). You should find that a report of this length is very easy to assemble—your challenge is to write an insightful analysis of a sustainability challenge, discuss plausible options, and provide a sound recommendation. For larger firms, focusing on a single line of business should help you to focus your report. Naturally, we expect to see sufficient depth to demonstrate your understanding of key course concepts.

This is a group assignment, and every student is expected to contribute substantially to the teamwork. In order to mitigate any potential free-rider problem, peer evaluation processes are available for situations where group contributions were substantively uneven. Content, structure, language, referencing, and teamwork are all factors that will be considered when evaluating your group research project. To ensure the quality of group work, all students should prepare a group contract submitted to Mycourses. After choosing your topic amongst your group, there will be a discussion board on Mycourses to post the group topic. This gives us the chance to comment on the topics to help you narrow them down if needed. The deadline for submitting the topic choice, group contract, and the final report is listed in the course schedule.