Final Project: Sustainability in the Age of Responsibility

Learning Objectives

Your journey with the concept of sustainability enables you to benefit a business with what Visser has called CSR 2.0. This final project provides you the opportunity to uncover an example of a gold star business that is currently active and engaged in best practices of sustainability, and to present that to your classmates. There are two components to this final project: a presentation and a paper. You will be responsible for creating a presentation on the business of choice, as well as a paper discussing the relationship between your chosen business and the concepts covered throughout this course. Please see the below directions for a step by step breakdown of this project.

? Discover new trends or practices within industry.
? Present the benefits to sustainability as practiced within a business you have researched.

1. Submit a group contract.
A group contract is a document that a group creates to formalize the expectations of group members.

a. Group members’ names and contact information

b. Expectations (ground rules) regarding preparation for and attendance at group meetings, frequency and duration of meetings, and communication. The contract should focus on behaviours that will be expected of all group members and should only include those behaviours that are crucial to the group's effectiveness. Groups could aim for five-seven ground rules.

c. Assignment of specific tasks, roles, and responsibilities along with due dates. The group can itemize the tasks to be completed for the project and provide a space for each group member to sign up for that task.

d. Outline of the specific process for dealing with unmet expectations or other problems that might arise.

e. An agreed-upon method for peer feedback during the project so that problems can be addressed before the project ends.

f. A place for each group member to sign, indicating their agreement to the contract.

g. A place for group members to sign once the project is completed to indicate whether or not they agree that all group members contributed as expected and, therefore, earn the group grade

2. Please ensure that the Word and PowerPoint documents are appropriately named and follow the naming convention:

3. Using the principles of CSR 2.0 as a lens for your research, as described by Wayne Visser in his book entitled The Age of Responsibility, find a ‘gold star’ business that is currently engaged in best practices in sustainability. The business need not have achieved all of their aspirational
goals in their journey towards becoming a responsible company, but must have documented proof of their commitments and effectiveness in keeping those commitments, which you will explain to your classmates. The business can be working within any industry, but should not be
susceptible to the criticisms levied in the Greenwashing Guide.

4. Questions you will want to ask of your industry example of a sustainable business:

a. When did they start their journey and how far along are they in reaching their goals?
b. What makes their efforts unique within their industry?
c. In what ways are they exhibiting the principles of creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity? (Note: the business need not exhibit all principles, but should be exemplars of at least three of these principles).
d. What makes this business interesting or unique in terms of becoming a responsible company? Are they industry leaders? Have they developed a new process, and one in which is more cyclical in nature? Are they heading towards net-zero emissions or netzero footprint? Do they solve social problems in a unique way, furthering social justice or reducing inequality?

5. Create a slide show of no more than 10 slides, in which you will argue for the sustainability credentials of the company that you’ve chosen. Please refer to the 10/20/30 rule located at Guy Kawaski’s website: https://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/.

6. In your group, you and your team, will write an essay of 3-6 pages. Explain the offering of a product or service, of the business you’ve chosen, and highlight the arguments for its sustainability, and provide criticism of what they could do better as a company. These arguments must use the context we’ve developed in class and should draw upon the language used about creativity, scalability, responsiveness, glocality and circularity as a test of both the social and environmental virtues. You may also refer to human bias, ethical guidelines or any of the “Ages” discussed in chapters 1-6. Please submit your written response component of this project to the assigned dropbox folder for formal evaluation and grading.

7. Your assignments will be graded according to the marking criteria found in the Scoring Rubric for Presentations and according to the Scoring Rubric for Essay.

8. Use any of the links provided on the following page, or Google, to conduct your research.