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Flagship Courses for Corporate Responsibility

Flagship Courses - Core Subjects - Breadth Courses - Electives - Special Practicums - Non-GSM

A number of electives at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management are specifically designed around fostering social and/or environmental impact through business. Established courses are listed below and new ones are developing through our Curriculum Development initiative.

MGT 298-4 - SEMINAR ON SUSTAINABLE AND RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS

How can we create a sustainable world while providing progress and prosperity worldwide? What is the purpose of a business? What are the new business opportunities for today’s graduates? This seminar-style course - created by Davis Net Impact members - examines the challenge of meeting the needs and interest of all stakeholders in a way that balances social, environmental, and economic resources and impacts. The goal is to investigate avenues for using market strategies to build a path toward global sustainability. Through a combination of case studies, lectures, movies, guest speakers, and a capstone research project, students will explore methods and rationale for simultaneously managing social, natural, and economic capital.

Too view a sample of students' final project reports, please click here...

MGT 291 - TOPICS IN SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Social entrepreneurship is a rapidly developing and changing business field in which business and nonprofit leaders design, grow, and lead mission-driven enterprises. As the traditional lines blur between nonprofit enterprises, government, and business, it is critical that business students understand the opportunities and challenges in this new landscape. Through guest speakers, case discussion, lecture, and student presentations this course will explore this emerging field. Students will be expected to develop a business plan for a social enterprise. Because the field of social entrepreneurship is interdisciplinary and in its infancy, the course will be introductory in nature and will draw heavily from cases, speaker experience, and student inquiry.

MGT 298-2 - MANAGING A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT (SRI) FUND

Throughout the academic year, students work as a team to organize, develop, and manage a socially responsible investment fund responsible for managing (a fictional) portfolio of $1 million. Students will be responsible for multiple tasks involved in the development of the fund, which must be completed by June 2006. The major tasks include:

• Developing and articulating screening criteria
• Creating an Analyst reports for existing fund holdings and potential replacement firms
• Constructing a well-diversified portfolio from selected stocks
• Identifying appropriate performance evaluation tools
• Developing a fund prospectus


 
Ethical issues pervade this course. We examine corporate governance from the perspective of shareholders and other stakeholders. We look at the role of shareholders and stakeholders in corporate governance plus the role of directors, auditors, financial markets and regulators. Guest speakers in this class last winter were a board member, the person in charge of CALpers corporate governance program and a former partner at Arthur Andersen and a man who faces white collar crime charges for price-fixing. For texts, I used a book by shareholder activists Bob Monks and Nell Minnow and a biography of Warren Buffett. I expect students to become experts in understanding the causes and consequences of one of the recent major business scandals and to present their findings to the class.
 

MGT 298-1 - MANAGEMENT OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

The management of educational, social, charitable, and religious organizations chartered as nonprofit corporations or associations. Emphasis will be placed on mission statements, finance, staffing and compensation, reporting and marketing of the products and services offered. Special topics include the motivation and administration of volunteer boards and staff assistants, fund raising in the philanthropic sector, and the accountability of charitable organizations and institutions.

MGT 291-2 - GREENING BUSINESS: BEYOND COMPLIANCE & TOWARD STRATEGY

The focus of the Fall 2007 pilot - "Greening Business: Beyond Compliance and Toward Green Organizational Strategy" - will be what farsighted thinkers, entrepreneurs, & commercial firms are proposing and doing to address both deepening public anxiety and government regulations over worrisome environmental trends while improving their own “bottom lines.” Called by some “strategic environmentalism,” this win-win view of environmental protections and business opportunity hails a change in orientation for many in the commercial sector where previously environmental wins tended to be viewed as business losses.