Accountability in a Sustainable World Course

Accountability in a Sustainable World
SUS40160, ACCT40160, LAW70372, MSA70173, MBA70173
University of Notre Dame
Mendoza College of Business
Fall 2024

Contact Information

Instructor: Peter Easton

Director, Center for Accounting Research and Education (CARE)
Editor-in-Chief, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly
Director, Accountability in a Sustainable World Conference 2021-2024

Email: peaston@nd.edu

Office: 305A Mendoza College of Business

Office Hours: By appointment. Email Lorie Marsh at lmarsh1@nd.edu to schedule

Teaching Assistant: Lorie Marsh

Program Manager, Center for Accounting Research and Education (CARE)
Editorial Manager, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly
Manager, Accountability in a Sustainable World Conference 2021-2024.

Email: lmarsh1@nd.edu

Office: 305A Mendoza College of Business

Brief Course Description

This course is designed to develop future sustainability leaders through active engagement with key influencers, critical synthesis of research on the measurement of climate change effects, and movement toward quantifiable, achievable goals. The course is open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students from disciplines university-wide. The interdisciplinary nature of the class ensures lively debate.

Who should take this class?

The target students for the course are highly motivated sustainability minors and accounting, economics, engineering, finance, law, and science majors who have a strong interest in climate change, sustainability, and ways that they would like to become influencers and responsible guardians of the future of our planet. They will have a solid drive to develop informed opinions and a willingness to express and debate them with their classmates, guest speakers, and in Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly. ALL students, regardless of discipline, with these personal qualities are very welcome because they will offer different perspectives and topics to the discussion. The pre-requisite for the course is a Notre Dame GPA of 3.6 or above or special permission from the instructor.

Class Times:

There are two offerings of the class:

Tuesday and Thursday, 9.30-10.45 am (Section 1)
Tuesday and Thursday, 11.00-12.15 pm (Section 2)

About the course

This course is designed to develop future leaders by building skills in active engagement with key market players, critical synthesis of research on the measurement of climate change effects and movement toward achievable goals, consulting on ESG standards and regulations, and investment for sustainable growth. Students will converse with and learn from climate scientists and activists, investment fund managers, CFOs, consultants, partners in large accounting firms, and ESG standard setters and rating agents. Students will meet exemplary professionals that have one thing in common—they are working to transform our current climate change and environmental crises into societal opportunity. They are influencers and guardians of the future of our planet. Students can join this cause as future leaders through this course. Students will evaluate conference sessions, create a future career plan, and more.

"Sustainability" and "Responsible Investing" are relatively commonplace terms, requiring no further explanation, but: "Why Accountability?" Claims such as "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" answer this question. Accountability is at the heart of a sustainable future and will be at the heart of mitigating climate change. Scientists, engineers, accountants, economics, and finance graduates are trained to measure, to determine what should and can be measured, to provide assurance that the measures are accurate and meaningful, and to understand and warrant appropriate processes to ensure movement toward a sustainable future as well as to provide consulting information that is useful for responsible investing. Investors in the ESG (environmental, societal, and governance) sustainability space frequently express concern about the difficulty of measuring each ESG component and the need for comparability of available metrics. In this course, students, as future leaders, will learn the fundamentals of mitigating the difficulty of measurement.

The catalysts for the class discussions will be the annual University of Notre Dame “Accountability in a Sustainable World,” conferences. YouTube galleries of recordings from the 2021, 2022, and 2023 conference may be found at the links below.

2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHx65UG5Vil2wTGrZMZCFTS4LUcuMQGj

2022: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHx65UG5VimsqRFgi8wmV6Kf1i6gE9Ll

2023: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHx65UG5Vil7O6fbe4MoB925CfZ97_q4

The 2024 conference will be held virtually on September 25 and 26, 2024.

These conferences are in conjunction with the Sustainable Investment Forum North America in cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme – Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI).

The final class sessions will be devoted to filming a panel of students, which will be part of the 2025 Accountability in a Sustainable World conference.

Course objectives

Students will learn how to analyze cutting-edge results from research and recommended strategies from experts to guide future sustainable business decisions and responsible investing.
Students will learn how to identify cutting-edge measurement reporting strategies to provide for accurate assessment and evaluation of the implementation of accountability metrics for a sustainable world.

Course strategy

To achieve the learning objectives of the course, students will:

Evaluate selected research papers from prominent journals (cliff note versions of most of these, sometimes including YouTube videos) will be provided;
Review selected presentations and panel discussion videos from the Accountability in a Sustainable World conferences as preparation for the opportunity to converse with the actual presenters as live guest speakers who will elaborate on and extend their conference talks;
Formulate key questions for discussion with the guest speakers;
Contribute to the University of Notre Dame journal, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly, and to the 2025 conference, Accountability in a Sustainable World.
Discuss, debate, and elaborate on key issues presented at the conferences; and
Explore concerns, questions, and ideas on how students and others of their generation can develop careers as significant influencers and guardians of the future of our planet.

Special Note 1: As a unique student opportunity, the last 3 class sessions will be devoted to preparing and filming a 60-minute video, which will air at the 2025 Accountability in a Sustainable World conference, where there is an expected audience in excess of 2,000 people. The session will be similar to the "Youth Engagement" panel at the 2024 conference. A transcript of this panel discussion will be published in Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly.

Special Note 2: The guest speakers and conference panelists are from countries around the globe, including climate scientists; climate activists; managers of ESG investor funds; sustainability experts; corporate and social responsibility experts; accounting, auditing, sustainability, and ESG standard setters; CFOs; consultants; ESG rating agencies; Big-4 partners in charge of accounting for sustainability; and faculty from universities around the world.

Pedagogical approach

This course will follow a constructivist learning approach to engage students in considering how they can change the direction of climate change and environmental crises. In this class, students are encouraged to take charge of their skill development in learning how to evaluate research, enhance their participant learning opportunities from experts in the field, and practice the art of discussion and debate on challenging topics. In this way, students can co-construct their futures as lifelong problem-solvers of the planet's most pressing threats to survival.

Grading Strategy

Students will be evaluated on the quality of their participation in the following course activities according to the rubrics provided below:

Class Participation (& 3 discussion questions before class)	25%
Review and presentation of climate change book	25%
Review of accounting research articles (10 x 2 points)	20%
Review of a 2023 conference panel	5%
Review of a 2024 conference panel	5%
Participation in the development of the fireside chat for the 2025 conference	20%
Total possible	100%

~5 points extra credit provided for up to 3 additional conference panel reviews

Class participation

Class participation will be evaluated according to the rubric below. This includes the weekly speaker questions submitted to Canvas and general class participation.

Class Participation Rubric
Skill	Full credit	Partial Credit	No credit
Active engagement	Proactively contributes to class discussion; initiates relevant discussion	Few contributions to class discussions; seldom volunteers	Absent or does not participate meaningfully or regularly
Listening skills	Listens and appropriately responds to the contributions of others; shows respect to other students	Listens to other students part of the time; perhaps interrupts other students; responses are at times tangential to the conversation	Absent or does not listen when others talk; interrupts or makes inappropriate comments; puts down the responses of others
Preparation	Student turned in discussion questions that were closely relevant to the guest speaker topic	Student turned in discussion questions that were only partially relevant to the guest speaker topic	Did not turn in discussion questions before class

Review of research articles

Students should respond to the five questions in the rubric below to guide their article reviews. Short, concise answers are valued, and students can adequately review an article within two pages of double-spaced, typed text. Submissions, which are due immediately before the class discussion of the article) will be evaluated according to the assignment evaluation rubric below.

Required readings for article reviews (one per week) (Links are available in the corresponding Canvas module)

Robert Kaplan and Karthik Ramana, E-liability Accounting: Accurate and Verifiable Measurement of Corporate GHG Emissions
Robert Kaplan, Karthik Ramana, and Marc Roston, Establishing the Foundation for Carbon Trading Markets
Ayako Yasuda, Impact Investing
Ayako Yasuda, Decoding Sustainable Investment Strategies: Bridging Intentions and Actions
Anup Srivastava, Rushing Headlong into Creating an Integrated ESG Reporting System
Joachim Gassen and Bianca Beyer, How Does Carbon Footprint Information Affect Consumer Choice
Summer Kim and Katrein Morbee, Regulating ESG Using Labels
Summer Kim, Managing the Duality of Variance Among ESG Assessments
Florian Berg, Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG ratings
Jurian Hendriske, ESG Ratings and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Article Review Rubric
Guiding questions	Full credit	Partial Credit	No credit
1. What is the core research question?	Student identifies the key research question that is driving the hypotheses and the research method	Student only partially answers the question	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
2. Why is the question important?	Student identifies the context of the question, why it matters, and how it would contribute to the literature	Student only partially answers the question	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
3. How did the authors answer the question?	Student identifies what accounting theory and research method was used on which sources of data, evaluated by what kind of analysis	Student only partially answers the question	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
4. What was the answer that the authors provided?	Student identifies whether the authors produced significant results, whether it was consistent with their hypotheses, and how it answered the core research question	Student only partially answers the question	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
5. How does the research inform the public?	Student identifies how the author describes the relevance of the results, and the student offers an opinion on how the research informs the real world	Student only partially answers the question	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question

Review of conference panels (please note that panels sessions are those that involve 3 or more speakers)

Students should respond to the four questions below to guide their conference panel reviews. Short, concise answers are valued, and students can adequately review the sessions within two pages of double-spaced, typed text. Submissions will be evaluated according to the assignment evaluation rubric below.

Conference Session Review Rubric
Guiding Questions	Full credit	Partial Credit	No credit
1. What is the topic of the conference presentation?	Student identifies the topic and describes what aspect of the topic the speakers emphasized.	Student only partially answers the question.	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
2. Why is the topic important?	Student explains the importance of the topic and the controversy associated with the topic	Student only partially answers the question.	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
3. What is the presenter's key point of view	Student identifies the presenters’ points of view on the topic and whether the speakers articulate these points effectively	Student only partially answers the question.	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question
4. In what way is the topic relevant to slowing climate change?	Student articulates the relevance of the speakers’ topics to slowing climate change	Student only partially answers the question.	Offers an inadequate answer or skips the question

Reading and discussion of chapters of assigned books on climate change

Students will read chapters of the chosen books listed below on climate change and make a 10-minute PowerPoint presentation on the key points from the chapters to teach their fellow students the main points from the book. Students will be divided into groups and presentations will be done in teams. Presentations will be evaluated according to the evaluation rubric below. One or more students may make the presentation. Each presentation will begin with a brief reminder of the book’s main points that were introduced before the chapters being presented. Groups must ensure that all students have the same opportunities to present. Non-presenting students should participate in the discussion of the chosen chapters.

Books on Climate Change

FWC: The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

An outline of two possible scenarios for our planet; a description of what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris Agreement's climate targets and what it will be like to live in a regenerative world that has net-zero emissions

HTA: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

A well-reasoned thesis on how we can change and invest in such a way to mitigate the effects of climate change

FA: False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg

A detailed penetrating thesis on the effects of climate change and the costs of benefits of climate change mitigation, emphasizing the importance of comprehensive and thorough measurement.

MF: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

A science fiction novel that develops a possible scenario that may unfold concerning efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, with interesting and informative suggestions that are implied/suggested by current science. This is generally seen as the most interesting of the 4 books. It is, however long. For this reason, students who choose this book will be given 10% additional credit.

Chapter Presentation Rubric
Guiding Questions	Full credit	Partial Credit	No credit
Does the team demonstrate and convey a rich understanding of the chapter?	Students demonstrate a clear understanding of the chapters’ main ideas and associated controversy and impart accurate knowledge	Students demonstrate only a partial understanding of the chapter content and present limited chapter information	Students demonstrate little understanding of the chapter
Does the team present in a manner that facilitates a rich peer discussion?	Students present the chapter content in a way that facilitates active peer discussion	The team presentation method encourages only limited discussion	Students do not present well with limited peer discussion or involvement
Does the team choose an effective presentation method?	Students present the chapter and impart their knowledge in a way that maximizes class discussion and/or active peer involvement	Students merely present chapter information with limited discussion and peer involvement	Students do not present well with limited peer discussion or involvement
Is the team well organized and prepared?	Each team member is well-prepared, organized, and actively involved in the presentation	The team is only partially prepared and organized; peers are only partially involved in the discussion	The team is ill-prepared and disorganized

Participation in the “Youth Engagement” Fireside for the 2025 Conference

The last three sessions of the class will be devoted to preparing and filming a Youth Engagement session for the 2025 Notre Dame Accountability in the Sustainable World conference. The first two classes of the three will be 5-minute presentations by each student. The class will vote on the four best presentations and form teams to support/counsel the chosen presenters. In the last session, Duna Films will record a fireside chat during which Professor Easton will chat with the chosen presenters about the ideas/goals/aspirations/concerns etc. that have been raised in the earlier sessions. This chat will be aired at the 2025 ASW conference and published in Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly. Representing the University of Notre Dame in this way is a great honor that comes with much responsibility. The audience at the 2025 ASW conference is expected to be more than 2,000 and ASWQ is distributed to over 8,000 subscribers. The portion of the grade assigned to this part of the course is commensurate with the importance of this part of the course.

The topic: How will I grow into an influencer in leader in Accountability in the Sustainable World?

Suggestions: Your presentation could explain your primary career dream, how you will lead sustainability in that career choice, how, with whom, and with what company/firm. How has what you have learned about this class influenced your career dream? What do you imagine this will look like in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond. What will you be doing? What position(s) will you hold? How will you be contributing? How can leading sustainability be at the core of how you express yourself in career? What do current job descriptions suggest about the specific skills and experience that you will need to acquire to rise to the top of your field? What will be your strategy to pursue those skills and experience? You can create career resiliency by having two possible back up plans for your career. If your primary career dream doesn’t pan out, what other careers can you pursue? What skills and experience would be needed for those possibilities? What do other job descriptions indicate? How can you acquire some of those skills and experience now? You could explain how climate change might affect your careers and how your leadership in sustainability might influence climate change.

Assessment of Youth Engagement Sessions: If students present ideas for the chat and participate creatively, clearly, and professionally, they will receive full credit for this part of the course. Students chosen to be in the recorded fireside chat will receive 5 points extra credit.

This should be a fun part of the course! Of course, I hope students will find all aspects of the class enjoyable!

Honor code

The Academic Code of Honor, as described in the Student Guide to the Academic Code of Honor (available at: http://honorcode.nd.edu), applies fully to this course.

A few words on the use of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI)I is an exciting new tool that is changing the face of business, academia, and writing for leisure. Using AI without acknowledgment in academic work can be considered academic misconduct. This could include using AI-generated content in an assessment as if it's your own work, or using AI tools without your instructor's permission. Other examples of AI misuse in academia include plagiarism of written content, such as copying or paraphrasing existing works without citation. While I obviously discourage the use of AI, I will not actively fact-check your work with an AI checker. I encourage you to review the university's honor code regarding AI at https://honorcode.nd.edu/official-statement-regarding-generative-ai-may-2023/.