Posted: November 19th, 2022

PLOs: PLO#3 Sustainability/Ethics (Mastery

Assignment Overview
Length: 8-10 pages (cover page, reference list and appendices do not count toward the minimum paper length)
Due: Friday Midnight of Week 8
Value: 300 points for 30% of the total course grade
Delivery: APA Paper Submission in Turnitin
PLOs: PLO#3 Sustainability/Ethics (Mastery); PLO#1 Business Functions/Processes (Practice); PLO#2 Strategic Planning (Practice); PLO#4 Leadership (Practice)
CLOs: CLO 1, CLO 3, CLO 4, CLO 6
This signature assignment fulfills the Master of Business Administration (MBA), Program Learning Outcomes #3 Sustainability/Ethics: Integrate ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability in decision-making.
Background
“Sustainable business means balancing social, economic, and environmental considerations in business decision-making, stewarding the natural resource base upon which the business depends, giving back to the communities in which business is done, and promoting long-term value creation for the company’s investors” (Sanders & Wood, 2020, p. 3). The quest to improve the organization’s sustainability has become the key driver of innovation in the past decade (Nidumolu et al., 2009) and innovation is a key competence of sustainable and responsible leadership. This assignment is designed as a project plan for creating an innovative solution to increase your organization’s sustainable performance; make the business case for the idea, and thoroughly analyze its implementation and impact. In the last decade, the quest to improve an organization's sustainability has become a key driver of innovation (Nidumolu et al., 2009), and innovation is a key competency of sustainable and responsible leadership. This assignment is intended to serve as a project plan for developing an innovative solution to improve your organization's long-term performance; make a business case for the idea, and thoroughly analyze its implementation and impact.
References
Nidumolu, R., Prahalad, C. K., & Rangaswami, M. R. (2009). Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation. Harvard
Business Review, 87(9), 56-64.
Sanders, N. R., & Wood, J.D. (2020). Foundations of Sustainable Business: Theory, function, and strategy. Wiley.
Summary
For this assignment you need to think of one innovative idea for improving the sustainable performance of your organization*. Your proposal should (1) describe thoroughly your idea and its value to sustainable performance, (2) assess the fit of the idea to the organization’s strategy. and (3) thoroughly plan the implementation of the idea. Your proposal should be written in the form of a paper that strictly follows the APA rules for writing and citations. You need to start with a cover page and include a reference list. You need to use a minimum of 15 different references to support your arguments and recommendations, of which minimum 5 references are academic. Please refer to the step-by-step directions for a full review of all requirements for this assignment and to the Grading Rubric for the performance criteria point allocation. For this assignment, you must come up with one innovative idea for improving your organization's long-term performance*. Your proposal should (1) thoroughly describe your idea and its value to long-term performance, and (2) assess the idea's fit with the organization's strategy. (3) thoroughly plan the idea's implementation Your proposal should be written in the form of a paper that strictly adheres to APA writing and citation guidelines. Begin with a cover page and include a reference list. You must use at least 15 different references to back up your arguments and recommendations, with at least 5 of them being academic. Please refer to the step-by-step instructions for a complete review of all assignment requirements, as well as the Grading Rubric for the performance criteria point allocation.
* If you are currently not employed, you can choose a previous employer or a Fortune 100 company.
Step-by-Step Directions
• Introduction (1 paragraph)
o Describe concisely the purpose of your paper and your goals for it.
• Organization Description (about 0.5-1 page)
o Present the company you work for or the company you want to use for the paper.
o Describe its industry, size, product/services offered, location, regional/global spread, number of employees, financial statements, and other key information you find relevant to your project.
• Sustainable Innovation Proposal (minimum 1.5 pages)
o Describe thoroughly one sustainable idea you believe will increase the sustainable performance of the organization.
o Support your ideas with thorough research that supports the sustainable value of the idea and/or shows how similar ideas were implemented in other organizations.
o Discuss the type of innovation you propose (process, product, marketing, or organization).
o Address the sustainable performance indicator your idea will target (refer to Table 5.8, Sanders & Wood, 2020).
o Argue for the overall value of your sustainable idea.
• Assessment of Organizational Fit (minimum 2 pages)
o Assess that is the organization’s attitude towards sustainability (e.g. complying, benchmarking, partnering, or integrating) and discuss what that attitude means for the approval of your idea.
o Assess what are the drivers of sustainability for the organization (e.g. economical, ethical, institutional, technological, or a combination) and reflect how your idea relates to those drivers.
o Assess what is the organization’s business strategy and how your idea will support it.
o Research whether there are laws or regulations that can support the urgency to implement the idea.
o Analyze the risk associated with the idea and the potential risk response strategies you can adopt.
• Planning or Idea Implementation: Resources (about 0.5-1 page)
o Describe the human resources needed for the implementation: who would you need on the project team, who will need to be involved, who will oversee the idea once implemented.
o Estimate the budget needed for the implementation.
o Discuss other needed resources, if any.
• Planning or Idea Implementation: Monitoring & Reporting (about 1 page)
o Explain how you will monitor the sustainable performance after the idea is implemented (see Figure 5.1, Sanders & Wood, 2020): e.g. what type of data you need, how will you collect the data, and how often.
o Discuss how you will report the effects of the idea and to whom (consider both internal and external stakeholders).
o Predict the results you would expect 1 year after the idea implementation and 5 years after the idea implementation.
• Planning or Idea Implementation: Marketing (about 1 page)
o Describe the sustainable marketing message you would propose for the idea.
o Assess the audience for the message (consider both internal and external stakeholders).
o Discuss the marketing channels you would suggest based on the audience you want to reach.
• Planning or Idea Implementation: Supply Chain (about 0.5-1 page)
o Describe the supply chain position of the organization (e.g. supplier, manufacturer, distributor, retailer customer) and the more specific supply chain of the products/services it offers.
o Assess whether your idea will affect in some way (directly or indirectly) the supply chain of the organization. If yes, how? If not, why?
• Planning or Idea Implementation: Operations Management (about 0.5-1 page)
o Explain in what ways the idea implementation will affect the operations management of the organization.
o Explain the sustainable value of the idea to operations (use as a reference Table 9.2, Sanders & Woods, 2020).
• Conclusion (1 paragraph)
o Conclude your paper by summarizing the business case for your sustainable idea based on all the analyses you completed in the paper.