Week 15: Corporate Social Responsibility (Module 4)

Week 15 had ended and so has Module 4 on Corporate Social Responsibility. The class is pass fail and the grade is 50% for the in class presentation and 50% for the individual paper. This week has mainly been each team presenting their topic in one hour segments.

One thing that I found surprising was how our presentations have really improved since the program started. Everyone feels compelled to take it to the next level since they know everyone else will be doing the same.

Some of the topics covered:

• Meaning of CSR
• Duties, rights and best practices
• Basic Framework
• Strategic Framework as it relates to CSR (i.e. Michael Porter and Triple Bottom Line)
• Corporate Governance as it relates to CSR
• Shareholder Activism as it relates to CSR
• Stakeholder Relations as it relates to CSR
• Hypocrisy as it relates to CSR
• Volunteering as it relates to CSR
• Fair Trade as it relates to CSR
• Diversity as it relates to CSR
• Philanthropy as it relates to CSR
• Profit as it relates to CSR
• Corruption & Bribery as it relates to CSR
• Human Rights as it relates to CSR
• Science and Technology (i.e. cloning) as it relates to CSR
• Sex (i.e. as used by corporations in marketing) as it relates to CSR
  

The paper requires each student to pick a company that was not used in one of the case studies presented in class and evaluate how their corporate strategy compares to their corporate social responsibility strategy. To give people time to prepare their presentation, the paper is do Sunday evening. So the weekend is pretty much shot.

Overall I have learned a lot and I recognize that it is these softer skills that will differentiate between a good manager and a great one.

This week's point four has been moved to this evening and it will be a Karaoke cruise on the lake! Should be a blast! In addition some of the MBA administration staff are coming too.

Next week we dive into another 4 course monster module that will see us take Operations Management, Business Decision Models, Marketing Fundamentals and Finance Fundamentals.