• Structure an Action-Based Plan
• Understand the roles of Social Enterprises and Sustainability management practices.
• Develop critical perspectives on fundamental arguments about economic and social policies.
• Develop an introductory grasp of complexity theory and its relevance to the development of social policies.
• Establish a solid cost/benefit framework for the analysis of internal sustainable management practices.

There has been a clear shift recently in the development economics literature from a focus on economic growth towards a more integrated framework that incorporates such concepts as well-being, sustainability, and other non-economic factors. Even though economic growth is still a necessary condition for development, local policies can increasingly rely on social entrepreneurship and sustainable business policies for improved development. This course invites graduate students to delve into different business practices that can transform the socioeconomic landscape and use recent theoretical contributions from various fields such as economics, complexity theory, and management. The course critically explores social entrepreneurship and sustainability in order to analyze its economic and social impacts. 

The course is structured to provide students with a series of coherent modules. The first module introduces concepts in complexity theory and some concepts from development economics. The main idea is to incorporate novel ideas into more traditional growth theories. This course will provide a broader perspective on development using concepts from complexity theory and other disciplines to provide a solid theoretical framework. The second module introduces concepts from social entrepreneurship and explores case studies, discussing its possible impacts and shortcomings in promoting local development. Concepts from complexity theory will be introduced to the analysis of social entrepreneurship with the goal of establishing the boundaries of local development arising from social enterprises. The last module explores the role of companies in promoting sustainable ideas by transforming the socioeconomic environment: it analyzes the possibility that private firms can be promoters of change by changing internal management practices. We use a Business as Usual to a Future Sustainable Business framework and explore the role of firms in changing the international business context - one of the case studies for this module explores changes in a multinational bank that introduced a credit score system based on sustainability of the agricultural sector. 

Class 1: Determining the main indicators of development.

Class 2: Development Economics models
Class 3: Development Economics models

Class 4: Looking at Data. What does it tells us about the world?

Class 5: Beyond Economics – Sustainability, Social Entrepreneurship and new measures of Progress. 

Class 6: A Primer on Complexity Theory

Class 7: Social Networks and Poverty. 

Class 8: Social Entrepreneurship: Concepts and Ideas and Cases

Class 9: Is there a sustainability imperative? Sustainability: Business Cases.

Class 10: Sustainable Finance.

Class 11: Comprehensive Review

Preliminary Assignment: To help students get maximum value from ISUP courses, instructors provide a reading or a small number of readings or video clips to be read or viewed before the start of classes with a related task scheduled for class 1 in order to 'jump-start' the learning process.

Feedback Activity: A feedback activitity defined by the course instructor will take place app. half-way through the course.
 

The timetable is available on http://www.cbs.dk/files/cbs.dk/isup_timetable_2016_updated.pdf

The course will not make use of a textbook. Instead, students will read excerpts and articles.