Overview
(Week 1)
A business case is a formal argument used to justify a course of action. In this unit, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about how business cases can be used to promote climate action projects within an organization. You’ll explore the typical elements of a business case and orient to some of the common analytic approaches used to support the case.
Before making decisions, most organizations seek assurance that a given course of action at best will provide a benefit to the organization, and at worse, will not undermine the organization’s viability. In other words, most business cases are based on an underlying principle of self-interest.
Throughout this course, we’ll take a pragmatic approach to the business case, accepting this basic principle of contemporary organizational decision-making. However, it is important to pause first to critically assess the implied ethics of the business case principle. You’ll compare these implied ethics to other ethical frameworks—notably, Indigenous world views and humanistic perspectives, neither of which are premised upon self-interest or payback.
You’ll consider how the approach to decision-making might differ under these alternative frameworks. You’ll engage with the important debate on whether the same system that created the current climate crisis can be relied upon to solve it. This theme will be revisited in the final unit of the course, in which we’ll consider transformative adaptation.
Activities and Assessment
- Participate in the Online session
- Complete assigned readings and engage in independent scholarly reading
- Independent readings and exploration
- Team discussion forums
- Background work for Assignment 1