Designing Sustainable Organisations
A ten-session course on organisations as systems
A course built on one idea: organisations are systems, and sustainability is a property of how they are designed — not a programme bolted on top. Sustainability commitments hold or fail in the concrete design choices organisations make: their business models, structures, workflows, cultures, and workspaces. Across ten sessions, the course takes one design dimension at a time and asks where commitments actually live.
The ten sessions
| Session | The question | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Systems and Sustainability | What makes an organisation a system, and why does that matter for sustainability? |
| 2 | Purpose and Impact Ecosystems | Why does the organisation exist, and what web of other actors does it depend on? |
| 3 | Stakeholders and Strategy | How does it hold competing claims together — and when do its claims stop being honest? |
| 4 | Innovation | How does it innovate and transform, and why is problem definition where innovation lives or dies? |
| 5 | Workflow | How does work actually flow — through the organisation and its supply chain — and what happens when you measure and publish it? |
| 6 | Growth | What does success look like, who decides, and how do missions survive growth, succession, and financing? |
| 7 | Structure and Roles | How do you make sustainability work — tasks, authority, accountability — rather than a statement? |
| 8 | Culture and People | What makes a culture sustaining rather than depleting, and why is inclusion sustainability practice? |
| 9 | Workspace | How do physical and digital places shape work, well-being, and footprint? |
| 10 | Technology and the Future | What does AI change about organisations — and can technology give voiceless stakeholders a seat at the table? |
Each week pairs short recorded lectures with a case-led, activity-driven in-person session. Students lead the case discussions; a term-long group project applies the course’s design tools — anchored by the Compass Framework — to a real organisation.
Students: enter your module site
- MSIN0244 — Sustainable Business Practice (password given in Session 1 and on Moodle)
- MSIN0261 — Building Sustainable Ventures (password given in Session 1 and on Moodle)
One course, two pathways: the same systems-and-design lens, with emphasis adjusted for managers of established organisations (0244) and builders of new ventures (0261).
About
Taught at the UCL School of Management. The course draws on the lecturer’s research on location-independent organisations, biophilic design and work, and synthetic stakeholders — technology-enabled agents representing nature and future generations in organisational decisions. (Bio, contact, and research links go here.)