The Company - Social Responsibility and Environment

The course covers the companies responsibility in the globalization process based on the principles from UNs Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), hereunder sustainable development, environmental requirements, and social responsibility in the value chain.

The course covers principles for environmental management (EMAS and ISO 14000-Serie),integrated SHE (Safety, Health and Environment)-management, reporting, environmental performance indicators, communication, and legislation. The course covers stakeholder analysis and ethical problems and principles for management changes related to CSR. ISO 26000 will be used as a guidance for implementation of CSR-management in business.

The course gives introduction to selected parts of organizational theories, sustainability principles and on occupational health, environmental and safety management for organizations and companies. It is organized in 4 parts and shall give knowledge on the following topics:
Part 1: Organizational theory and ethics, hereunder general organization theory, change management and organization development, corruption and ethics.
Part 2: Sustainable development, historical trends and frameworks for corporate social responsibility
Part 3: Safety-, Health and environmental management systems, hereunder methods for environmental accounting, life cycle assessment, use of performance indicators, auditing and reporting
Part 4: Social responsibility and corporate challenges, hereunder sustainability strategies and their implications on CSR-practices

The course shall give skills in
- Working in dialogue with companies for implementation of environmental management systems
- How to identify and analyze CSR-aspects from a corporate perspective
- Understanding of social responsibilities in a global economy and implications for change-processes within companies.

Lectures, exercises, one mandatory semester project. Portfolio assessment is the basis for the grade in the course. The portfolio includes an term paper (25%) and a written exam (75%). The results for the parts are given in %-scores, while the entire portfolio is assigned a letter grade. If there is a re-sit examination, the examination form may change from written to oral.