The demand for MBA skills in the social sector is increasing dramatically. The breadth of courses in the core MBA program at Fuqua provides a strong foundation for any student looking to become a successful social impact leader. CASE’s social impact program builds off of this core curriculum by providing opportunities for students to cultivate the additional competencies needed to drive social impact. At Fuqua, impact-motivated students can choose from a wide variety of courses, including:
From Social Entrepreneurship to Business for Good: Is about creating and leading organizations and initiatives that strive to advance the well-being of people and planet. Social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs use innovations and new practices to accomplish some very long-term and ambitious social and environmental challenges: end inner-city poverty, improve public education, reduce global warming, and improve healthcare around the world, to name a few. The class is designed to arm students with current skills, tools, and frameworks used by social entrepreneurs, their C-Suite teams, investors, funders, advisors and professional impact consultants working to support innovative solutions to global problems at scale. Whatever kind of organization you work within or create, the course will professionalize your skill sets so you can bring the full suite of disciplined thinking and professional lessons to the hard work of improving impact on people and planet through business.
Impact Investing: Impact investors seek to generate environmental and social impacts in addition to financial returns through their investments. This emerging investment strategy is developing around the globe as a way to expand the ability of investors to use their dollars to promote changes they care about and to invest in vehicles to achieve a great variety of impact— for example the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, or impact related to energy, water, climate change, community development, health, sustainable development, and education. The emerging field of impact investing includes both private market instruments, like venture capital, private equity, and debt, and public market strategies including divestment, negative screening, and investing for positive factors such as environmental, social and governance (ESG). Students develop contextual understanding in areas including financial instruments, fund structures, investment strategy and impact measurement and management.
Kirby Prize Lab: Funding Impact at Scale: We speak in impact classes of the concepts of scale readiness, impact business models, impact evidence, and pathways to achieve scale – but there is nothing like the opportunity to look across hundreds of social enterprises around the world to solidify your understanding of the range of strategies and approaches. The Kirby Prize Lab provides the opportunity for MBA students to serve on the Selection Committee for the annual $150,000 F.M. Kirby Prize for Scaling Impact, assessing how key impact concepts are translated through a variety of business models, gaining the perspective of a funder (including how to be a responsible, equity-oriented funder), and identifying ways to add value to the whole pool of applicants, while narrowing it down to one prize winner.
Social Venture Capital: Students learn about seed, early stage, or growth private capital that seeks to achieve market based financial returns while making a positive social impact. In each case, students look at the deal from the lens of both the fund investing in the deal as well as the entrepreneur creating the business. The course focuses on deal, investment and growth strategy, managerial choices in creating and building businesses as well as the unique challenges of creating and running a social venture business or creating a social venture fund. The course also covers current methods of evaluating ESG considerations in private capital investing.
Climate Change, Sustainability & Corporate Governance: Global challenges such as urbanization, food security, water crises, inequality, natural resource degradation, and climate change increasingly present material risks to corporations. Yet these same trends can create profitable opportunities for companies if innovation is harnessed to create products and business models that provide solutions for growing global markets. As these challenges grow, companies are increasingly integrating sustainability as a business imperative and a key to competitive advantage. In the course, students examine how businesses assess their risks and opportunities, and how they develop strategies to promote more sustainable practices.
Business Sustainability Reporting and Analysis: This course aims to assist students in developing the skills to read, critically assess and use the information in business sustainability reports. The course includes an overview of the current sustainability reporting environment, with a focus on the major reporting frameworks, regulatory requirements in the European Union and elsewhere, and sustainability reporting standards, including issues related to faithful representation, verifiability and comparability. The main focus is on reading, understanding, and evaluating sustainability information; using sustainability information to assess corporate sustainability-related activities; using sustainability information both to make operating and investing decisions and as an input to incentive contracts and performance evaluation.
AI Footprint: Sustainability, Strategy, and Society: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the global economy with unprecedented speed, reshaping industries, labor markets, decision-making processes, and the ecological impacts of digital infrastructure. Through case studies, scenario planning, and interactive role-play, we will consider to analyze AI’s externalities while also envisioning pathways for responsible leadership. The course emphasizes strategy and governance: how companies and policymakers can credibly respond to AI’s footprint while leveraging its handprint to advance global sustainability goals. This course will provide a critical understanding of AI’s risks and a constructive orientation toward shaping a future where intelligent technologies contribute to – not undermine – human and planetary prosperity.
Ethics in Management: The overall purpose of this course is to increase students’ capacity to sustain effective and ethical management and leadership in their organizations. This course is an opportunity for students to challenge and sharpen their “philosophy of business” and their own purposes in business. Students are helped to deepen their own self-awareness as ethical beings and leaders, and to strengthen their moral courage. Students see how every single management decision has ethical implications. Students wrestle with the question: Are there universal norms for individuals and business that transcend boundaries? Students are given tools for “finding and speaking their voice” when they confront ethical challenges and lapses.
Sustainable Operations: This course equips students with the critical knowledge and tools necessary to transform businesses through the integration of sustainable practices into firm operations. This transformation aims not only to boost probability but also to ensure a positive environmental and social impact. The first part of this course introduces the fundamentals of operations and supply chain management, exploring the importance of addressing long-term capacity issues, managing process variability, and optimizing inventory to balance demand and supply in business processes. The second part illustrates the critical role of operations in achieving a firm’s sustainability goals and, utilizing life cycle assessment as a pivotal tool, examines sustainability challenges across various stages of the supply chain.
CASE i3 Consulting Practicum: Is a track within the Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum designed to assist students in developing business consulting skills through the application of content learned in other graduate course work to actual problems facing businesses and community organizations working in the impact investing field. Students work in a team with one of several client organizations selected each year from a global application pool. Students gain experience with all aspects of client consulting, including scoping work, regular interim check-ins with client, and producing a final set of deliverables to move the client organization forward in their work, as well as a deep-dive experience with the specific aspect of the impact investing sector the project focuses on.
Fuqua Sustainable Impact Student Investment Fund: Student-run fund seeking to responsibly invest in long-hold public equities that further issues of integrity, equity, environmental stewardship, social awareness, ethics, and good governance. This for-credit experience gives students experience developing ESG and sustainable investment strategies, actively investing funds in public equities, and utilizing capital allocation and impact measurement and management frameworks.
Seminar on Energy & Environment: Gives students a unique opportunity to learn about today’s most important energy and environment industry issues directly from senior business executives. Students have a chance to engage in candid conversations in a small-group setting with influential industry leaders. The seminars are designed to present a variety of energy and environment perspectives and cover topics ranging from global energy market economics and finance, to corporate sustainability, energy system transformation, and cleantech commercialization and entrepreneurship
GATE South Africa: Explore social innovation, impact investing, and the complex interplay of business, politics, and society in post-apartheid South Africa. This immersive course combines engaging classroom sessions with a two-week field experience, including company visits and hands-on research, offering a unique lens on South Africa’s history, economy, and business environment.
Students who want to demonstrate a focus in social impact through their MBA studies can apply for the Social Entrepreneurship Concentration. The Concentration in Social Entrepreneurship is designed for students interested in using their MBA skills in the pursuit of social impact, who aspire at some point in their lives to be managers in social impact enterprises, social impact consultants, philanthropists, board members, or leading volunteers in their local impact communities. Courses in this concentration will also appeal to students interested in incorporating strategies for social impact into their business and entrepreneurial careers.
Other courses offered at Duke:
Fuqua students may take courses at other graduate programs at Duke. Students should check registrar policies on registration. Below is a selection of courses related to impact that have been offered at Duke.
Business Law and Society (Law): This seminar explores the intersection between business law and society. What are companies’ proper role in society? How do (and should) companies pursue social and environmental goals? In what ways does business law implicate issues of social and environmental justice? Each week will focus on a different issue affecting companies of various sizes, stages and governance structures, from early-stage startups to large multinational companies.
Nonprofit Organizations (Law): The subject of the course is the diverse sector of the economy composed of nonprofit organizations. The topics to be covered include their economic function, governance issues, the tax laws covering them, abuses of their special status, and policy issues regarding them.
Nonprofit Management and Strategy (Policy): This course will help students who work (or aspire to work) in the nonprofit sector develop and implement effective strategies for leading their organizations in an increasingly complex and competitive landscape.
Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development (Policy): Examines how one could rationally defend a choice of ‘sustainable development’ policy. Applies cost-benefit thinking in environment-natural-resources and development contexts.
Other curricular programming at Duke:
One of the benefits of studying at a world-class university is the ability to select courses outside of Fuqua to compliment your educational goals. From public policy to human-centered design, Fuqua students have taken advantage of a variety of courses during their time at Duke University. Some commonly utilized campus resources by our students include: