Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability are certainly in the forefront of strategic thought processes in organizations today. Future leaders must not only understand what CSR and sustainability are, but also the current issues surrounding both topics. Information technology (IT) and the IT industry, play a Jekyll and Hyde role in CSR and Sustainability. On one hand, the IT industry is a major negative contributor to sustainability issues. Power consumption and hardware disposal are just a couple of the big issues that are often discussed relative to IT. One the other hand, advances in information technology are helping to solve sustainability problems such as the ability of information systems (IS) to gather information necessary to monitor and ensure compliance with sustainability regulations. Another example of this so-called green IS is the use of information to manage business processes in ways that are less resource intensive, such as in fleet management. Other advances are rapidly reducing the carbon footprint of the computing industry in significant ways while still advancing the capabilities available to companies that are very reliant consumers of IT.

The first two modules focus on CSR and sustainability to produce a basic understanding of both concepts and related prevailing issues of each. The third and fourth modules focus on the negative and positive influences of IT and IS on sustainability, respectively.

Module Learning Objectives:

The first set of two modules (Day 1 & 2) focuses on the Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. After these two classes, students should be able to:
 

• Explain CSR and what is motivating the increasing focus on CSR by corporations
• Articulate their own opinions about CSR and how important it is
• Describe how organizations approach CSR and evolve in their CSR initiatives
• Define sustainable development and list some of the potential global sustainability issues faced
• Describe several possible corporate approaches to sustainability imperatives

The second set of two modules (Day 3 & 4) focuses on the roles of Green Information Technology and Green Information Systems in sustainability efforts. After these two classes, students should be able to:
 

• Explain the sustainability problems caused by the extensive use of information technology
• Describe existing and emerging green trends in information technology and its applications
• Explain information technology and information systems ability to help with monitoring relative to sustainability
• Describe sustainable business processes and explain leading edge uses of information systems in building these processes
• Describe how information systems can be used to manage an organization’s supply chain to reduce energy consumption and harmful emissions