Corporate sustainability regulation teaching – postgraduate (BTF5910) and undergraduate (BTX3100)

A/Prof Anita Foerster, 2025

Purpose

The units aim to provide business students with a foundational understanding of law and regulation used to address global sustainability challenges (such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, natural resource scarcity). The focus is on what these sustainability challenges and associated law and regulation mean for business entities—what are compliance expectations? what regulatory risks and trends are emerging? how will these impact business strategy and models? what are the business consequences of a failure to effectively regulate sustainability challenges? The aim is to equip students to advocate effectively for shifting to more sustainable business practices in line with emerging regulatory risks and trends—either from positions within, or from positions external to, business entities.

Practice

The units have been substantially revised and improved to ensure comprehensive treatment of current, topical sustainability issues for business and to provide enhanced opportunities for applied learning. Grounded in regulatory theory, students are exposed to different forms of law and regulation to address sustainability challenges and invited to interrogate how these approaches work and their effectiveness in influencing business behaviour.

Outputs

Assessment is designed to allow for contextual, applied consideration of different regulatory frameworks and approaches and their influence on business decision-making and behaviour. Tasks include:

• Detailed corporate case studies which analyse the sustainability challenges relevant to a particular enterprise, the applicable regulatory frameworks, relevant regulatory risks faced by the business and opportunities to transition to a more sustainable business model;
• Analysis of emerging sustainability regulation issues and cases (e.g. greenwashing, strategic litigation targeting corporate actors) to explore the implications for particular business entities;
• Strategic responses to real-life business problem scenarios involving case studies of businesses facing compliance challenges, emerging regulatory risks and stakeholder pressure to shift to more sustainable practices.

Outcomes

Students develop foundational understanding of existing and emerging law and regulation addressing sustainability challenges as relevant for business entities as well as a critical appreciation of the importance of sustainability regulation for business and the effectiveness of different regulatory approaches. Students are thereby equipped to advocate for shifting to more sustainable business practices in line with emerging regulatory risks and trends.

Impact

Graduates with foundational understanding of corporate sustainability regulation influence business practices from positions within business organisations (e.g. sustainability teams, risk management teams, corporate governance teams), or from positions external to business organisations (e.g. industry associations, NGOs, government regulators).