Summary: Powerpoints

Read the summary and the most important questions on PowerPoints

• 1 Introduction

• Businesses often think they contribute to society, but they're not. Business models are developing to enable businesses to do a better job. However, what is the crux here?

  We should do it together, we should together look where we are going to, to fulfill human needs and not exceed the planets' resources. There are several trends happening and in this course we view whether this is beneficial for society and the planet or not.

• 1.1 Artikel: Vermeulen & Witjes (2015) On addressing the dual and embedded nature of business and the route towards corporate sustainability

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• In the article about dual and embedded nature and need towards corporate sustainability, Vermeulen and Witjes refer to factors that cause the need for more inclusive challenges in business routines. What are the three main reasons?

  1. The western lifestyle
  2. Growing middle class in emerging economies 
  3. Pressure of MNC's to improve social and environmental performance.

• What is the dual element Vermeulen & Witjes refer to?

  Vermeulen & Witjes argue that single organizations can only exist because they're part of a larger production and consumption system. In economic terms this is called the value chain, in environmental terms this is called the product life cycle. 
  
   The dual element refers to simultaneously being related to the production and the social dynamics.

• In the paper of Vermeulen & Witjes, the key questions to implement corporate sustainability are discussed. How do they define corporate sustainability?

  They define corporate sustainability as individual companies implementing strategies to achieve sustainable development.

• What is the somewhat limited Rubik's Cube?

  • Combining the issues dimension (PPP)
    
  • Time dimension (now and then) 
  • Place dimension (here and there) 

• What are the issues dimension?

  • Planet (ecological threats) 
    
  • People (threats for people) 
  • Prosperity (goal for society) 

• What are the five key search directions for societal transformation?

  1. Climate control and renewable energy 
     
  2. Circular economy 
  3. Neutral or positive impact on biodiversity 
  4. An economic system creating shared triple value (community well being, poverty oriented and bottom of the pyramid) 
  5. Equitable market and governance institutions  

• 1.1.1 How should the dual nature be conceived?

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• In the article Dual and Embedded nature of business and the route towards corporate sustainability, Vermeulen and Witjes talk about physical dynamics. What is this?

  The physical reality of products and services with their physical impacts on the wider environment and ecology (chemical, and mechanical processes)

• Why should businesses go from continuous change to transformative change to achieve inclusive corporate sustainability?

  Continuous change is through a plan-do-check-act cycle. It's mostly through rationale planning. This causes single and double loops, but also causes repetitive learning which tends to get frozen in routines. Therefore, transformative learning is needed to unfreeze these routines and jump towards more inclusive corporate social sustainability.

• What are the three process steps in which an organization can unfreeze routines and jump to corporate sustainability?

  1. Support companies in making sense of sustainable developments and what that implies for them. 
  2. Proper view on the current dual and embedded nature of the company. 
  3. Proper view on the externally available and innovative ways in which societal needs can be satisfied with products and services