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Corporate Social Responsibility: Course outline (CSR-401)

Course description

This course is designed to engage students in a discussion of Corporate Social Responsibility through a series of interactive learning activities. The course will begin with preparing the students to discuss and debate the definition and importance of CSR to a company’s strategy. We’ll then move on to examine situations in which companies have not done a very good job at demonstrating good CSR practices, and we’ll examine the complexity of those situations and the range of possible responses. Finally, we’ll look at some companies that have demonstrated CSR “best practices”, and discuss what these examples teach us that we can apply in our future careers. The class depends highly on student participation, and student interests will drive the topics and situations that are considered and discussed.

Course content

  • Introduction to CSR
  • The roles and objectives of corporations, and the nature of CSR
  • Externalities (costs and benefits), market failures and CSR components
  • Accountability, corporate governance and voluntary disclosure
  • Stakeholder engagement and stakeholders’ interests
  • Investors’ interests and CSR consideration
  • Disclosure regulation
  • Trends in CSR reporting
  • Theories of CSR behavior and disclosure
  • Theories of CSR behavior and disclosure continued
  • CSR accounting and measurement issues
  • CSR reporting: voluntary initiatives and guidelines

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