Corporate Social Responsibility  Certificate of Achievement

Certificate of Achievement in Corporate Social Responsibility Program Highlights

The Certificate of Achievement in Corporate Social Responsibility includes three graduate-level courses that focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of developing and implementing strategic initiatives in an organization’s sustainability and stakeholder involvement.

Required Courses

Governance, Ethics and Compliance

This course aims to provide a basic understanding of corporate governance as a term and practice involving relations between a firm’s executive leadership, governing board, and stakeholders. The course explores various governance models practiced in the US, including both for-profit and non-profit, and looks at the role and responsibilities of each party in these relationships as set down in the legal code and as suggested by current best practices. The role of various board committees will also be discussed, along with their relationships with regulatory agencies such as the SEC. A fundamental part of the course is a discussion of the "purpose of a corporation" and of the various perspectives held by prominent thought leaders in the US on this subject. The course will also look at changes made in board practices following the Sarbanes Oxley legislation in 2002 and at recent trends in corporate governance.

Elective Courses (Choose Two)

Strategy, Missions, and Governance

This course explores the relationship between firm strategy and external environmental factors such as societal norms, governance frameworks, consumer expectations, and supra-national guidelines. Specifically, the course introduces students to the concept of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (hereafter CSR) along with firm strategies, governance mechanisms, and implementation approaches that explicitly integrate CSR concerns. Labeled as "win-win" strategies, these approaches treat the externalities of economic activity, such as environmental damage or social displacement, not as costs to the firm but as opportunities for cooperation and development. They also represent examples of how corporations can address some of the world’s more pressing problems through partnership and innovation.

Corporate Stakeholder Relations and Communications

Approached from a corporate communications perspective, students are provided with techniques for successfully managing and communicating with a firm’s stakeholders. The course looks at the range of communication outlets that require attention in various firm-stakeholder contexts, including negotiations, crisis management, stakeholder protests, etc. You will also explore potential areas of misunderstanding and conflicting priorities that underlie contentious firm-stakeholder relations and study examples of companies that have turned around situations that risked the reputation and legitimacy of the firm.

Measuring and Monitoring ESG Performance

Increasingly, firms are being asked to account for and report on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Firms are developing approaches to measure and monitor their performance to be more than anecdotal accounts. This course looks at the recent history of non-financial reporting, explains the nature of investor and stakeholder expectations for ESG reporting systems, and at the various systems now in use, including the GRI, the ISO standards, as well as voluntary agreements such as the UN Compact for corporations or the PRI for the investment community.