BUU22594 Organisation Change for Sustainable Futures 2025/26

(5 ECTS)

Lecturer: Iseult Sheehy                                                 

E-mail: isheehy@tcd.ie          

Office Hours: By appointment

Not available to Exchange students

Module Description

This course is designed for students who want to think deeply and creatively about the reality of our shared future given the twin environmental crises we face, of climate change and biodiversity loss. These crises alter not just planetary systems, but all our assumptions about management and organisation. Students will be introduced to climate & biodiversity science literacy, then examine assumptions that are built deeply into business philosophy, such as capitalism, colonialism, value, growth, efficiency, production, consumption. We will then work with emerging concepts that deconstruct these assumptions: political ecology, Doughnut Economics, Natural Capital, de-growth, Indigenous cyclical modelling, and emergent strategy, to name a few. These concepts stretch the span of many disciplines: economics, development, psychology, planning, policy studies and marketing. Equipped with the conceptual vocabulary and analytical processes for diagnosing the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss from individual, firm-level and systems-level perspectives, the course will creatively trial visions of alternative economic and organisational futures aligned with the Nature Positive Economy.

Learning and Teaching Approach

The module will follow a seminar format with emphasis on readings and discussion of assigned materials. Students will complete weekly quizzes, a group project and presentation. This module will be delivered primarily in-person with occasional online learning. Learning material (weekly content -readings/podcasts/other) will be made available online to be reviewed in. The module will use a broad range of learning approaches which may include in-person discussions, practical exercises, reflective practice, and group work amongst others.

Module Level Learning Outcomes

1. Recognize and explain the importance of the natural environment to management and organisational thought;
2. Communicate with environmental literacy – to speak in sophisticated scientific, economic and social ways about the environmental crises
3. Develop the conceptual and methodological tools needed to analyse the interacting systems of nature, organisation, economy, public policy, and technology;
4. Understand the business-nature policy landscape and apply best practice tools to develop a corporate biodiversity strategy
5. Develop self-awareness and resilience in dealing with the emotional burden of environmental change
6. Develop transdisciplinary awareness and understanding of how personal spheres and approaches beyond academic and scientific knowledge (e.g. cultural and traditional) contribute to sustainability
7. Creatively imagine and articulate visions of alternative futures.

Relation to Degree

Workload

Textbooks and Required Resources

All required readings are specified in the course schedule. Please review all weekly readings before that week's lecture.

Required core course textbook

It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform our World, by Mikaela Loach, DK Press, 2023 (Available from library) All other materials will be linked in Blackboard.

Course Communication

Please note that all course related email communication must be sent from your official TCD email address. Emails sent from other addresses will not be attended to.

Announcements on Blackboard (which are also set to your TCD email) will be the primary form of communication on any relevant course updates so please keep an eye on BB and your email. A discussion board is set up on Blackboard for any course-related query to ensure consistency in the response to all students. If you have a query which is of a more personal nature please email your TA directly, you can find their details in the Week 1 slides on Blackboard.

Assessment   (These assessments are subject to change closer to the beginning of term)

Reassessment

For students who fail the module, reassessment will be a exam during the reassessment period. This exam will be an in-person exam and this can not be accommodated from overseas.

Policy on the use of generative AI tools

The module leader may grant the use of generative AI tools for an assessment. If AI is permitted the AI declaration must be included. You will find this in your module on Blackboard 

Biographical Note

Iseult Sheehy is a Political Ecologist, working at the nexus of environment, economics, politics and sociology. She has BA in Economics and Political Science, an MSc in Development and was a Fulbright Scholar with the Indigenous Design and Planning Institute in the University of New Mexico, studying aspects of Puebloan and Navajo praxis for sustainability.

Iseult is the Head of Operations for Business for Biodiversity Ireland and former Executive Coordinator of Natural Capital Ireland where she brought her expertise in Natural Capital to many national projects including Ireland’s 4th National Biodiversity Action Plan and the National Economic and Social Council’s Valuing and Accounting for Nature in Ireland. Iseult is an Adjunct Teaching Fellow at Trinity College Business school where she coordinates the undergraduate module Organisational Change for Sustainable Futures and has a keen interest in fostering ecological knowledge across disciplines.