4 CSR & NGO Management

Objectives: This course offers students advanced project management techniques for managing complex projects, Traditional project management approaches assume that project contexts are unchanging and key factors, though complicated, are reducible to unambiguous elements for management and control. However, these techniques do not work in projects which may be described as complex. Complexity may result from various sources (for example magnitude of variables to be managed, strong interdependencies between variables, long-duration, multi-stakeholders, dispersed stakeholders, diverse cultural or institutional environments). Consequently, complex projects are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty regarding project objectives and/or project implementation.

Content:

• Understanding Complexity in Projects

• Determining Project Complexity

• Limits of Conventional Project Management

• Project Cycles of Complex Projects

• Complexity and Project Design

• Complexity and Project Implementation

• Complexity and Leadership

4.2 NGO Business Strategy and Organization:

Objectives: Showing the importance of Corporate and Organisational Strategy Concepts in NGOs, the students will learn to transfer the typical concepts and instruments of Strategic Planning (i.e. Strategy, Governance vs. Management vs. Operational Level, Shareholder vs. Stakeholder, Vision vs. Mission) into NGO Planning Processes. They understand the importance of Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. They get an overview of the variety of NGOs and how an NGO is organized – taking into account recent trends in the NGO world and using many practical/ real examples. 

Content:

• Basic concepts and definitions for strategies of NGOs Corporate Policy Management (i.e. basic corporate policy approaches)

• Business Environment of NGOs legal environment

• Corporate Strategic Planning and Monitoring Corporate Organisation (Organisational development)

• Staffing/ Leadership in NGOs

• Public Relations

• External NGO Perspective: identification of relevant fields of action, structure analysis, implication for strategy development

• Internal NGO perspective: organisation analysis, internal resource evaluation, process analysis, budgeting and outcome, implication for strategy development

• NGO Strategy formulation: Competition or Cooperation strategy approaches, Differentiation strategy, Niche strategies for NGOs

• Strategy and Controlling: Assessing strategies, with instruments like use-of-potential analysis, future scenarios, early diagnosis systems for NGOs

• NGO Organisation: OD concepts in NGOs, NGO M&A

4.3 Corporate Social Responsibility:

Objectives: Students should be able to reflect the CSR approach in small and medium sized (even family owned) companies as well as bigger ones and multinationals. They can differentiate the role of CSR in the emerging world and industrialized countries. They can adopt a CSR strategy to a specific company with its own history, market and responsible sustainability.

Content:

• A brief history of CSR and the relevant values

• The growing national and international importance of CSR

• ISO 26000 as a standard guideline

• “Communal activities” in a supporting function of public goods

• The important role of ILO/International Labor Organization

• Practical experience with the implementation and evaluation of CSR

• NGOs as a critical observer and admonisher of CSR

• Trust, criticism and anti-corruption measures as central elements of CSR

• CSR as a driver for financial sustainability

4.4 Business Plan Development:

Objectives: In previous classes, the students have learned about risks and returns which have to be measured for each investment and having gained knowledge of finance, investment and creating value for business. This class will provide a chance to put it all into practice by creating their own business plan for a social business. The combination of investment policies and social responsibility is key to this exercise which will be done in groups. That way they will assess current trends and activities in a national and international NGO context will learn the fundamentals of business creation.

Content:

Developing and writing a business plan