Approaches to Sustainable Development for Business Performance in the Context of Clean Growth

According to the learning outcomes for this module, this assignment will demonstrate that students can:

1. Critically evaluate academic theories and techniques relating to corporate social responsibility and ethical conduct in engineering

2. Demonstrate awareness of the risks to health and safety, the environment and thebusiness as well as current regulatory requirements facing organisations, engineering teams and business leaders.

The objective of the UK government to foster ‘clean growth’ implies that businesses will have to deliver value to their customers and other stakeholders while reducing their impacts on the environment, such as CO2 emissions and waste. Some sectors will be more affected than others, but managers within each sector will use techniques derived from approaches such as those listed below to help them manage the transition.

1. Making use of academic literature, briefly summarise each of the approaches to  sustainable development below, explaining how suitable (or not) each might for theanalysis of business performance in the context of clean growth .

• The Triple Bottom Line

• The Five Capitals

• Natural Capitalism

• Cradle to Cradle

• The Circular Economy

• The Balanced Scorecar

2. Choose a type of business (such as a breakfast cereal manufacturer) from either the automotive, construction, energy or food sectors; then choose two approachesfrom the list above and briefly describe how each can be used to evaluate the chosen business in terms of its environmental impact, its responsibilities and its risks.

This assignment will require careful reading of the lessons used in this module as well as  library research. You will find it helpful to begin your reading using articles and case studies available on this module’s Blackboard shell.

Your assignment report should be in the form of an essay of no more than 1000 words, not including the list of references. Use appendices to include additional charts, illustrations and data as necessary, but the appendices should be no longer than 5 pages.

You should explain any pictures and diagrams you use, reference your sources correctly and choose suitable sources. You should use a font of size no less than 10 points. How the work will be marked:

Assessment will be based on the extent to which the learning outcomes have been met, and the extent to which the above instructions, notes and guidance are complied with (for example regarding word limit, style, structure and citation). The criteria below relate to the current pass mark of 50%.

• Introduction to the report – 10 marks

• Summaries of approaches to sustainable development – 40 marks

• Application of two approaches to a chosen business – 40 marks

• Clarity of writing style, referencing and structure of report – 10 marks

Work that is deficient in most of the respects outlined above, showing no evidence of critical analysis will be awarded an outright fail of 44% or less. A marginal fail of 45% to 49% may be awarded to work that demonstrates some understanding of the problem but where the understanding, accuracy, organisation and critical analysis fail to justify a marginal pass