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This week, participants will choose from 8 seminars focusing on sustainability and responsible management. All of them will be conducted by multicultural visiting faculty from both the academic and the corporate world. According to the director of EADA’s International Master in Finance Jaume Bonet, “This is an excellent opportunity for our participants to open their minds to alternative subjects that are completely different from the financial classes that they are accustomed to,” he says. “The financial environment is constantly changing, so the professionals in this field must be fully ready to face new challenges. Another plus is the chance for students to expand their network with their counterparts in other programmes.”

Dr Josep Maria Coll, director of the International Master in Sustainable Business & Innovation, confirms that "the International Week is a unique opportunity for the participants to test their knowledge and dig into key issues in sustainability and responsible management, all under the guidance of well-known experts from all over the world”.

Antony Poole, EADA’s Master in Marketing director, assures that this week is a great chance for programme participants to focus intensively on two very important perspectives for their future careers. Firstly, the question of sustainability: “Marketing professionals are often asked to create a sustainable image for a brand or company when this is not really a question of marketing but a question of company strategy and company behavior. During this week they will see what being sustainable implies, in all its facets, and how that can be presented”.

Secondly, “the participants will enhance their ability to deal with diversity. Working with participants from other specializations and contacting with professors from all over the world who bring specific experiences, enables them to learn from cultures and markets outside their comfort zone, with whom they have less knowledge of”.

The seminars

Managing humanitarian emergencies

This seminar will introduce participants to the main components required to respond to humanitarian emergencies. At the end of the training, participants will be able to plan a comprehensive response to a refugee situation, by designing, planning and deploying key activities in a refugee camp. This course is conducted by Nines Lima, who has 15 years experience in humanitarian aid in different positions from Field Doctor to Missions Director & Emergency Coordinator. Our participants will learn about different ways of managing highly independent teams, focused on achieving results, extremely operative and identifying with the principles and policies of the organization.

Social enterprise business model design

This workshop will help participants obtain knowledge and skills in business model design and development. It is conducted by Dr Yuwei Shi, professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California (USA) and research director at Middlebury’s Center for Social Impact Learning. He founded the Frontier Market Scouts Fellowship Programme, that won the 2013 Ashoka-Cordes Award for Innovation in Social Entrepreneurship Education. Shi has more than 15 years of experience building successful products and running startups, as well as in management consultancy. In this course, participants will learn about social entrepreneurship and business and about design thinking.

Sustainability & Well-being: Developing sustainable behaviors

This seminar will provide basic knowledge, theories and research on environmental and social psychology to define and understand sustainable behavior and sustainable organizations. Specifically, the course will outline how future managers can develop interventions to influence their own sustainable behavior, the sustainable behavior of their employees and the behavior of their organizations. Dr. Florencia Sortheix, who has broad expertise in interactions between personal and cultural values and sustainability and well-being outcomes, will give this seminar. 

Making a social impact at the bottom of the pyramid through Marketing

This course is focused on the significance and potential of markets at the bottom of the world income. More than 5 billion people at the bottom of the pyramid are often ignored by companies, who assume they are unprofitable. To make an impact on people’s lives at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) companies must provide quality products at the right price. While doing so they should also aim for reasonable profits otherwise the business would not remain sustainable. If the business model is not sustainable, companies will not be able to improve people’s lives on a long-term basis. Dr. Harvinder Singh, professor in Marketing with IMT Ghaziabad (India) and IMT Dubai (UAE), will be debating this point during his week at EADA.

Responsible leadership and sustainable business practices

In this course, students will explore individual and organizational responsibilities, and the changes needed for responsible and sustainable actions that address today’s complex and pressing socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Specifically, they will explore core leadership competencies and alternative models of (responsible) leadership, and understand the role of key decision makers and business leaders in this transformative process toward organizational and sustainability and responsibility. It is conducted by Stefan Gröschi, a professor at ESSEC Business (Paris, France) who is widely known for his expertise in responsible leadership, sustainability, diversity management, international human resources management, and organizational behavior. 

The effect of innovative entrepreneurship of the sustainability and perdurability of the business

Felipe Jánica, a global partner at Ernst & Young (EY) –he is the market segment leader of the Bogotá office in Colombia and also leads the Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) in LATAM– will analyze this week the effect of innovative entrepreneurship on the sustainability and perdurability of the business. This seminar aims to understand the conceptual framework of innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. The case in point is how global businesses and regulatory entities around the world could work together for the prevention of business failures and for driving long-term sustainable growth.

Sharing Economy: Cases and challenges

This workshop talks about business models, critical success factors, platform technologies, regulation issues, and city life of the sharing economy. The main objective is to understand the business models of current sharing economy business and various challenges against the success of this business model. This is conducted by Hee-Dong Yang, who is a full professor of Management Information System (MIS). He has published more than 80 papers in different journals. Nowadays, he serves as dean of the Graduate Studies at Ewha School of Business.

Sustainability and competitive advantage

This module will address the topic of sustainability from a strategic perspective, with a particular emphasis on decision-making and trade-offs. Topics covered include the drivers of the sustainability debate, the business case for sustainability, sustainability and competitive advantage, sustainable strategies and value creation, business models, and sustainable operations and supply chain. The class will be involved in an engaging debate covering different perspectives of the topics discussed, including the economic, the environmental and the social one. This seminar is conducted by Dr. Paolo Taticchi, director of the Weekend MBA and Global Online MBA at Imperial College Business School where he also holds the position of Principal Teaching Fellow in Management and Sustainability, and the role of Director of Global Initiatives.