Sustainable Business Processes - Period 2

This course aims to introduce students to operationalizing sustainability in business and societal problems. We define sustainability as the combined economic, environmental, and social optimum of business process alternatives that take into account constraints, such as technological limits or legislation, also known as the triple bottom line (TBL) approach of People-Planet-Profit optimization. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is presented as a methodology to quantify the environmental impact of products and processes and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to quantity social impact. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis is introduced as a concept to operationalize the TBL approach for practical business process problems. Next, we discuss systems thinking using Systems Dynamics for understanding and evaluating the complex and interactive behavior of systems, such as sustainable supply chains. Finally, the transition from a linear to a circular economy and its effects on business processes is discussed.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.