This course considers the sustainability of the modern US corporation – that is, whether the corporation is capable of meeting current social needs while enabling future generations to meet their needs. The course looks at the corporation’s current design: its externalization of social costs, the short-termism of corporate decision-making, the “groupthink” culture of corporate management, and the corporation as political actor. It then considers some current responses to these non-sustainable attributes: planet (voluntary environmental stewardship), people (voluntary EG movement), and profits (institutional shareholder activism). The course concludes by considering paradigm shifts: the new benefit corporation form,
revamped ESG disclosure, new shareholder-management consortia — as well the corporation as moral organism and re-conceptualizations of corporate leadership. Students work in groups on a weekly basis, submit reflection papers for each unit, and write a paper at the end of the term on a “corporate sustainability” topic of their choice.
* This course may be offered for 3 hours during some years.
