The curriculum
The Master’s in Sustainable Entrepreneurship covers all the key elements, from developing and implementing sustainable management and business models to evaluating them, and from leadership to structure, strategic alliances, context, policymaking and performance. For each, we offer state-of-the-art academic perspectives on mainstream and sustainable theories.
Courses MSc Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Block 1. Designing Sustainable Organisations
In the first block, you will learn how to design sustainable organisations in course units on the foundations of the field, leadership and strategy. Courses:
- Foundations of Sustainable Entrepreneurship: Introduction to Key Concepts and Practices
- Sustainable Leadership
- Sustainable Entrepreneurial Strategy and Business Models
Block 2. Implementing Sustainable Organisations
In the second block, you will learn how to implement sustainable organisations. Organization design, managing strategies alliances and positioning sustainable organizations will all be dealt with in detail. Courses:
- Organisations
- Sustainable Networks and Supply Chains
- Contexts and Ecosystems of Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Block 3. Managing Sustainable Organisations
In the third block, you will learn how to manage sustainable organisations. You will review government policies and learn how to balance the interests of people, planet, profit and regions. This block also covers the research methods and philosophy of sustainable entrepreneurship and management. Courses:
Block 4. Leadership Project
In the fourth block, you will work on a leadership project. You will choose a host organization to centre your project on.
Courses MSc Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Block 1
Foundations of Sustainable Entrepreneurship: Introduction to Key Concepts and Practices
The course ‘Foundations of Sustainable Entrepreneurship’ is the first course in Block 1 and offers students state-of-the-art academic insights concerning antecedents and consequences of sustainable entrepreneurship, and acts as a point-of-departure for all other courses. The course labs start to prepare students for research, by exploring how to identify and formulate research problems and questions.
Sustainable Leadership
The course ‘Sustainable Leadership’ is the second course in Block 1 on designing sustainable organizations. The course offers students state-of-the-art academic insights concerning antecedents and consequences of sustainable leadership. It moreover supports the further development of students’ leadership skills both personal and relational. The course ‘Sustainable Leadership’ is constituted by two main activities: one activity is dedicated to critically reflect on recent academic articles dedicated to leadership; the second activity is a leadership lab where participants are given the opportunity to further develop their capacity to care for themselves and others.
Sustainable Entrepreneurial Strategy and Business Models
The course ‘Sustainable Strategy’ offers students state-of-the-art academic insights on strategy, including what it is, what role it plays and how to design strategy for sustainable outcomes. This course gives students the opportunity to learn and reflect on the role of strategy in the design of sustainable enterprises, and how theories on value creation have developed and evolved. In doing so, this course provides a variety of perspectives on why, how and for whom businesses create value, and the tools which can help in these endeavors.
Block 2
Organisations
In this course students learn about various individual- organisational- and institutional-level factors that drive organisations to behave more sustainably. The emphasis is on the organisational level as we seek to understand how the design of organisational structure and core business functions make an organisation more or less sustainable. An important component of the course is to acquire knowledge of quantitative data analysis and apply this to organisational-level data.
Sustainable Networks and Supply Chains
The course ‘Sustainable Networks and Supply Chains’ is the second course in Block 2 on implementing sustainable organizations. The course gives students the opportunity to reflect on the role varied alliances play in establishing sustainable enterprises. The course delivers theoretical perspectives and practical insights on how alliances are formed and strategies that can inform thinking about sustainable alliances.
Contexts and Ecosystems of Sustainable Entrepreneurship
This course offers state-of-the-art academic insights enabling students to understand the relationship between sustainable entrepreneurship and the contexts within which it occurs. Students obtain an in-depth academic understanding on the transformative power of the context on sustainable entrepreneurs and of sustainable entrepreneurs on their context. Students will also engage with question of how context can change what we see as sustainable entrepreneurship, allowing an exploring of a wider set of different sustainable entrepreneurial approaches. In the entrepreneurship lab, students gain knowledge and experience of the case study method.
Block 3
Measuring Sustainable Performance of Organisations
In this course the students get acquainted with the state-of-the-art academic discussions on sustainable performance of organisations and the ways in which it can be measured. The students are stimulated to reflect on and discuss the challenges of double or triple bottom line measurement, internal and external factors influencing performance, and the balance between multiple goals of sustainable organisations and performance in each of them. In the Lab meetings students get acquainted with three performance assessment frameworks, and deepen their knowledge on a chosen framework by conducting a sustainable performance assessment of a company.
Research Methods
In this course students will obtain an in-depth understanding of academic research, with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurship research. To this end there are academic debates and Lab meetings. In the academic debates students will reflect on and discuss literature regarding academic (sustainable entrepreneurship) research. Various types of research strategies and research designs will be discussed. In the Lab meetings students work on their individual research proposal, which will serve as the basis for their Sustainable Entrepreneurship Project (thesis).
Public Policy
The primary objective of this course is to facilitate a deeper understanding of public policy processes among sustainable entrepreneurs by obtaining rigid knowledge about current policies and applied knowledge on how to influence policy processes. This understanding of policy includes, but is not limited to, understanding differences in jargon between policy-makers and entrepreneurs, understanding the relevant links between policy goals and entrepreneurial goals, and learning from best-practices in both regional, national and international contexts. The course is structured around interactive lectures and research labs.
Block 4
Leadership project
In the leadership project you will conduct independent academic research following to your own design, focusing on solving a problem relevant to a corporate sustainability challenge. You can choose one of the two options in the Leadership project; A. The database project B. The case study project
| Last modified: | 25 November 2021 4.41 p.m. |