Bussines course - Critical skills and sustainability
Critical skills and sustainability (45 h)
Two important topics will be taught within this course: critical skills and sustainability.
Strengthening a soft skill is one of the best investments you can make in your career. According to World Economic Forum accelerating changes to business models will have
a profound impact on employment landscape and are expected to have a significant impact of managers widening skills gaps.
Capabilities define what you do and what you need to win making your strategy much more tangible. Thus, future managers should reinforce these so as not to be displaced.
To succeed in front of disruptive changes managers must acquire the necessary business skills because their work is critical to helping everyone else work together seamlessly motivating and inspiring their subordinates, advancing new tech challenges, involving problem-solving, improving decision-making and activating creativity attitudes, among others.
Therefore, this course is a practical introduction to all the Critical Skills for Managers of the Future like critical thinking, negotiation, flexibility, people management and more.
On the other hand, current and future businesses will have to be sustainable. In this sense sustainability is attracting the attention of companies, consumers, policymakers, stakeholders and business agents from around the world.
To carry out this challenge successfully companies are recruiting managers prepared in this cross-disciplinary topic.
So, this course is also an introduction to all the Sustainable Business Management: Global sustainable models, trade, industry, consumption, trends, strategies, key sectors, policy and more.
In the class, students will learn the vision and the tools required to effectively manage all the challenges that new sustainable business models are currently demanding.
The course explains the “whats” and the “whys” of sustainable business to learn a big perspective and deep capabilities around the sustainability competitive advantages.
METHODOLOGY
The class will be based in lectures as well as exercises with examples on both soft skills and Sustainable Business Management. We will be paying attention to both technical and human variables to understand how critical the relationship between business and new managerial skills is. The professor will provide lecture notes and other supplementary material that he will be uploading on the course website at least one day before the scheduled lecture.
ASSESSMENT
Exam: 40%
Essay: 40%
Assistance and class participation: 20%
SYLLABUS
Critical Skills
• Problem solving
• Critical Thinking
• Creativity
• People Management
• Coordinating with Others
• Emotional Intelligence
• Decision Making
• Customer Orientation
• Negotiation
• Flexibility
Sustainable Business Management
• Sustainable Business Concepts
- Business, Environmental and Human Development
- Natural Capital and Publics Goods
- Environmental Externalities
• Planning, Policy and Sustainable Governance
- Policy and Regulatory Tools
• International Policies
- International Policy Developments
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Whetten, D.A: Developing Management Skills. Brighan Young University (University of Michigan, 2016).
- World Economy Forum. The Future of Jobs. (WEF, 2016)
- Scott Fogler, H., LeBlanc, S.: Strategies for Creative Problem Solving. ASEE (3th Edition, 2016).
- Goleman, D. Emotional intelligence. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014).
- Ashford, N. A. & Hall, R. P. Technology, globalization, and sustainable development transforming the industrial state. (Routledge, 2019).
- Jeanrenaud, S., Jeanrenaud, J.-P. & Gosling, J. Sustainable business: a one planet approach. (Wiley & Sons in 2017)
- Molthan-Hill, P. The business students guide to sustainable management: Principles and Practice. (Greenleaf, 2014).
English
Business
45 hours
6 ECTS credits
Face-to-face