Episode 3: The Sustainability Skillset

Host:

Dr. Kasie Whitener, Clinical Assistant Professor, Management

Guest:

Dr. Kealy Carter, Clinical Associate Professor, Marketing

episode photo courtesy of Colorado State at this link.

Conversation topics:

• Applied research: what are the big issues facing businesses today?
  • Sustainability - growth in sustainably marketing products  
• Is sustainability a corporate buzzword?
  • No, companies have been engaging on this for 35 or 40 years
  • The word itself has just seen exponential use in media and policy
• UN sustainable development goals
  • Environmental, Social, Economic
• Sustainability is a global problem and requires attention and action across multiple categories of stakeholders
  • Corporate
  • NGOs
  • Governments
• Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 emissions and companies addressing their own environmental impact
  • Value chain impacts: how to we influence suppliers and consumers
  • 1 - the emissions of your specific activities (i.e. manufacturing)
  • 2 - the emissions of your suppliers as you accessed their products (i.e. energy production and consumption)
  • 3 - all the emissions throughout your value chain - from raw material growth and transport, to product disposal - much harder to affect but where many companies are focused now
• In the classroom: what businesses are we studying? What conversations are we having?
  • The business case for these focused activities
  • This is not philanthropy or altruism, it’s strategy.
• The triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit
  • A lot of these companies have been on this journey for decades
  • Investment community started paying attention to ESG performance
• The tension between short term gains and long term investments and where sustainability lives therein
• The sustainability concentration: a 12-credit sequence that can be added on to any major in the Moore School
  • Lifecycle recognition and analysis
  • Carbon footprint metrics and analysis
  • Reporting frameworks and their strengths and weaknesses
• Collaborative efforts in South Carolina including SC Nexus for Advanced Resilient Energy
• The functional skillset and the bigger picture understanding of sustainability: an interdisciplinary concept that requires understanding outside of the traditional business education - get the science, get the engineering, get the added components to provide a full understanding and accessible skillset.

When you learn Moore, you know more, and when you know Moore, you do more.

Thanks for listening!

Moore Impact is a product of the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. For episodes, notes, and links visit sc.edu/moore