CUHK Business School Youth Online Courses

Key Benefits

Course Information

All businesses manage risk. We can call this process ‘traditional risk management’ (identifying risk or problems before they happen, such as changing consumer preferences, currency fluctuations, shifts in government policy, and so on). Companies, however, are learning this traditional view of risk is insufficient in a rapidly changing world. For instance, supply chains have become more complex, consumers and investors are calling for more transparency, stakeholders are pressing them on a broad range of social and environmental concerns, etc. All of these changing circumstances pose risk, but a different kind of risk; a process in this course we can call ‘non-traditional risk management’ (such as garment factory collapses in Bangladesh, a growing number of harmful chemicals used to manufacture clothes, or CO2 emissions in factories on the other side of the planet in countries we know little about). Most managers are well equipped to manage traditional risks, but few managers are armed with the knowledge to identify and assess ‘non-traditional risks’, let alone to solve them. In this course, we will examine business sustainability as a form of non-traditional risk management via an exploration of some key issues confronting the fashion industry. No prior business studies knowledge is required, or indeed an interest in fashion. The only real prerequisite is you own one item of clothing with a “Made in XXX” tag.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

1. Understand the difference between traditional and non-traditional risk management;
2. Be able to identify and make simple assessments of non-traditional risk management;
3. Comprehend the relationship between business sustainability and managing non-traditional risk;
4. Be able to make a responsible (sustainable) business decision after identifying and assessing non-traditional business risk.

The assignment is a 7-minute ‘video essay’ presentation, which you will work on in pairs.

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