1st Semester
Effective Management, Communication and Action – SUS 6195
Unit Hours: 3
Course Strand: People
This course focuses on developing embodied skills in communication and leadership presence through practice for the sake of becoming more effective managers, leaders and entrepreneurs. The course will direct this foundation to the issues of making offers of sustainable business that are commercially valuable in the world, building and working together on effective teams, making and managing promises of value to others, and developing a presence of a leader that produces trust and commitment from others. The skills identified and developed in this course are fundamental to participants’ future results in ventures and leadership, and will be used in the participants’ capstone projects and in their real world ventures and careers.
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Managerial Accounting – SUS 6000
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Numbers
This course integrates the principles of financial and managerial accounting to prepare the manager to use accounting to assess and manage the health of the organization. Topics include financial statements and their interpretation; the bookkeeping process and transaction analysis; accounting for assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity; cost-volume-profit relationships; budgeting; and internal analysis techniques. The class will also explore environmental, social, and ethical accounting issues, which challenge students to apply existing accounting systems to new settings and critically analyze existing and proposed accounting systems. The goal is to equip students to become managers and/or designers of accounting systems that produce relevant information to facilitate corporate and organizational decision-making, and to assure that appropriate information is tracked so managers can make more successful and sustainable decisions.
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Principles of Sustainable Management – SUS 6010
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Sustainability
The primary objective of this course is to impart a basic understanding of the social and environmental sustainability challenges facing managers in today’s world. The course seeks to develop students’ critical capacities for self-reflection and action in relation to these concepts. Course graduates will possess the understanding and experience to integrate environmental and social sustainability with commercial and economic success. Lectures and readings provide an overview of the critical literacies in environmental and social issues, the history of the sustainability movement, including the various social and economic movements from which the current practices of sustainability in business and society grew, and the key actors and the basic literature in the field. The course also addresses the global issues surrounding sustainable management and reviews the major frameworks of sustainability that provide the scientific foundations and economic principles of how sustainability can help managers to achieve natural competitive advantage.
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Managerial Economics – SUS 6020
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Markets
This course is a one-semester introduction to the fundamentals of managerial economics, focusing on microeconomics. It has three primary objectives: provide an understanding of the standard or neoclassical microeconomic model and how this model relates to, and is useful for, business decision-making; provide a critique of this model and present a more heterodox view of economics; and provide a variety of quantitative skills that are useful for economic analysis as well as other aspects of managerial decision-making. The course will cover basic economic relationships, focusing on analysis at the margin, supply and demand theory, production theory, capital theory, profit maximization and cost minimization, firm structure, and types of markets. The critical aspect of the class will both consider how the neoclassical model is unrealistic, and therefore of limited value, and how this model is problematic in terms of sustainability. Quantitative skills developed include linear algebra, statistics, graphing, linear programming, and game theory.
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2nd Semester
Leadership for Sustainable Management – SUS 6210
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: People
This course is a learning journey through which we invite you to explore your relationship to others and to the environment — so that you may serve as leaders and collaborators in creating a sustainable world. We begin by making explicit the emerging worldview that challenges the current status quo and allows for visions of possibility to emerge: the systems perspective. We explore the meaning of leadership as it has changed over time and the new roles required to facilitate organizational and social transformation toward sustainability. Collaborative processes, as the core of the transformational work at the human level required to bring about sustainability, will be seen as a complement to the overemphasis on individual capacity and competition prevailing in the business world.
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Operations and Production – SUS 6110
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Numbers
This course provides an overview of strategic, tactical, and operational decision making environments in service and manufacturing companies. Major topics are process analysis, supply chain management, quality management, service systems management, and operations strategy. These areas are explored through lectures, case studies, assigned readings, and class discussions. The course utilizes concepts of probability, statistics, and optimization commonly applied in operations management tools. It includes a special focus on companies implementing sustainability initiatives in their operations and introduces the new field of industrial ecology, which deals with tools and processes for sustainable operations management.
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Business, Government and Civil Society – SUS 6015
Unit Hours: 3
Course Strand: Sustainability
This course provides an overview of definitions, frameworks and perspectives regarding the role of business in society. The goal is to understand the history and the theoretical perspectives that underpin arguments for responsible business and will aid students in: 1) analyzing the relationships between various stakeholders; 2) better understanding the policy and governance context; 3) identifying appropriate programs; and 4) exploring and building the business case for sustainability and social justice.
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Ecological Economics and Macroeconomics – SUS 6200
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Markets
This course is a continuation of managerial economics, focusing on two additional realms of economics: macroeconomics and ecological economics. Macroeconomics is concerned with the economic aspects associated with national level economic policy and international economic issues, rather than the behavior of households and firms (the realm of microeconomics). Ecological economics is an evolving branch of, or approach to, economics that understands markets in a far more complex, evolving and interrelated manner than traditional economics. It parallels ecology in that it sees elements of the economy as part of an ecosystem rather more than as isolated components. This course has two primary objectives: provide an understanding of the central elements of the macroeconomic model and how these elements relate to managerial decision making, and provide an overview of the field of ecological economics and how this field views and illuminates the issue of sustainability.
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3rd Semester
Strategic Management – SUS 6050
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: People
This course presents cutting-edge ideas on how strategy is evolving and the implications for socially- and environmentally-engaged management. Through considering classical approaches to strategy (such as resource-based views of the firm that capture capability logic), modern approaches (such as hyper-competition and high-velocity perspectives that embody guerrilla logic), and emerging approaches (such as eco-systemic and chaos theory-based views that incorporate a complexity logic), the course covers traditional, mainstream and progressive perspectives on strategic management. As a whole, it provides conceptual tools and practical methodologies for catalyzing organizational transformation based on a strategic, systemic and sustainable appreciation of change. The knowledge, skills and attitudes developed throughout the course focus on consideration of the emerging trends and new areas of opportunity to be taken into account in developing strategies and designing processes and structures in sustainable organizations of the 21st century.
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Managerial Finance – SUS 6040
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Numbers
This course begins with a survey of the finance area, including financial ratios; management of current assets and liabilities; liquidity; long-term capital; rate of return and net present value. The focus then moves to developing the necessary skills to be an effective financial manager. These skills include analysis of cash flow; financial planning and forecasting; and risk assessment and management. Students will explore decision-making through the capital asset pricing model, as well as construct and utilize pro forma financial statements, and assess the feasibility of projects and capital budgeting. The course will address the skills needed to be a persuasive oral and written communicator of corporate financial information. Socially responsible investment (SRI) models and the relationship between human, natural and financial capital will be examined.
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Sustainable Products and Services - SUS 6090
Unit Hours: 3
Course Strand: Sustainability
The evolving principles of sustainable management will be leveraged to explore the creation and development of sustainable products and services. The course merges theory and practice, investigates the linkages between products and services, examines historic, current, and future examples of sustainable products and services and guides students toward practical tools of inquiry and application that will serve them in their careers in sustainable management. The final course outcomes are professional-quality group projects to be published (or be deemed publishable by Presidio faculty) in a major trade or academic journal.
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Managerial Marketing – SUS 6060
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Markets
The purpose of this course is to introduce a framework for marketing management. It provides a survey of trends and an overview of concepts and techniques as they relate to marketing opportunities, marketing strategies and communicating effective marketing programs within the context of sustainable management. Students will engage in an exploration of the implications of sustainability and be challenged to critically analyze marketing strategies, plans and decisions. Most importantly, students will gain the mindset of a marketer – the ability to inquire into real needs, of the individual and society, and to serve them.
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4th Semester
Culture: Values and Ethics – SUS 6105
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: People
This course addresses the business world of increasing globalization, the cross cultural and organizational situations in which managers are challenged to develop solutions between their own culture and the values and ethics of people and organizations in their extended markets. The intent is to develop the managerial skills to lead from a value-based, ethical orientation to resolve workplace dilemmas while also equipping the manager to guide the change of a business, a government entity or a civil society organization. The purpose is to develop the cultural intelligence and change management competencies of students able to equip them in implementing ethical and values-based interventions supportive of sustainable organizations and relationships.
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Economics, Capital Markets and Law – SUS 6175
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: Numbers
Building upon the fundamentals of finance introduced during the first year, this course explores sustainable finance at national and international levels. Topics include financing enterprises through venture capital and private equity funding, initial public offerings (IPOs), fixed income securities offerings, commercial paper, and angel investing. Financial instruments in a global market will be examined through a review of spot exchange, currency forwards, hedging, options, swaps as well as international bonds and equities. Fundraising in the non-profit sector will likewise be considered. Basics of macroeconomics will also be presented as a background to financial decision-making. Topics include monetary and fiscal policy, aggregate demand and supply, exchange rates and inflation. The course also surveys the legal aspects of organizing, financing and operating a business enterprise, with emphasis on torts, contracts, agency, government regulation, intellectual property rights, competition policy, employee rights, business fraud, corporate governance and shareholder rights, environmental law, product liability, as well as the national and international finance and investment systems, including a sustainability critique and reorientation.
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Implementation of Sustainable Business Practices – SUS 6130
Unit Hours: 3
Course Strand: Sustainability
To integrate the skills and knowledge accumulated over the two years of the Sustainable Management MBA, students examine and use the Natural Capitalism Group taxonomy for guiding organizations to a more sustainable future. Calling on the four strands of coursework – numbers, markets, people and sustainability – students explore the step-by-step process for transforming a company, both internally and externally.
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Integrative Capstone Venture Plan – SUS 6145
Unit Hours: 4
Course Strand: All Areas
The purpose of the integrative capstone course is to plan, start or build an ethical, sustainable and profitable venture for an existing or new business, NGO or governmental organization. Students may work individually or in a group to complete a strategic business plan that will include a management plan, financial statements, risk analysis, operations and marketing plan as well as an action plan to implement the venture. Course instruction will center around a series of integrated modules that will focus on the practical implementation of all aspects of the curriculum. Students will explore the interconnections between the strategic foundation of the venture and the cultural, sustainable and spiritual aspects of their values, core purpose and goals within a global business context. The result will be evidence of mastering the core MBA competencies and fulfilling the student's purpose for attending Presidio School of Management to define and implement their calling.
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 Economics instructor Maggie Winslow answers students' questions during an in-class small group exercise.
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