The Master’s in Sustainability Leadership is part of CISL’s mission to empower individuals and organisations to take leadership to tackle critical global challenges.

More specifically, through a combination of interdisciplinary insights, academic analysis, practical business application, peer-learning and personal reflection, it aims to develop a community of leaders who have:

• a wide awareness and deep understanding of the social, environmental, ethical and economic challenges and opportunities facing the world;
• the vision and ambition to drive business leadership to achieve real systems change;
• the knowledge, experience and ability to critically evaluate a range of strategic levers for change; and
• the leadership capacity and confidence at a personal and organisational level to best use these levers to effect transformation.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the programme, successful participants should have enhanced their ability in the following areas:

Understanding and awareness

• Have a broad and deep understanding of the global social, environmental, economic and ethical "system pressures" affecting business, government and civil society.
• Articulate the evolution of the sustainability debate and the conceptual frameworks that underpin it.
• Develop a multidisciplinary perspective on sustainability, with insights from departments across the University, and understand the contribution of these fields in addressing sustainability challenges and opportunities.
• Understand the systemic failings that drive unsustainability in our current economic system, and recognise the paradigm shifts necessary to achieve a sustainable economy.
• Identify relevant aspects of the broader social, economic, political, technological and legislative environment, and potential levers for wider system impact.
• Have a clear understanding of the major arguments advanced in the "business case" for sustainable business, as well as the research and limitations surrounding these claims.

Leadership and Change

• Understand their own personal leadership motivations and values, and how these align with wider business needs and drivers.
• Understand a range of theories of organisational change and embedding sustainability, and analyse their  own organisation’s approach to change.
• Gain knowledge on the different theories, types, actors and levels of change and to be able to apply these to a sustainability context.
• Develop the ability to communicate sustainability-related messages effectively to non-sustainability target audiences.
• Embody the characteristics of a change agent for sustainability, including listening, building coalitions, identifying key leverage points, influencing and inspiring others, and resilience.

Critical evaluation and analysis

• Able to be reflective and reflexive regarding sustainability worldviews or paradigms and the assumptions that shape those views.
• Understand and interpret academic and practitioner theory and apply this to an organisation.
• Engage with complexity and contradictions in the knowledge base, challenge and critically review evidence, and apply their own opinions and judgement to sustainability issues.
• Competently follow and contribute to academic and practitioner debates on sustainability issues. 

Engagement and collaboration

• Able to work collaboratively across subject disciplines, institutional sectors and functional silos in order to advance sustainability goals.
• Able to work effectively in a group setting (in situ and remotely) and to show the ability to learn from this experience. 

Innovative, creative and strategic response

• Develop an appreciation for a variety of leadership responses to sustainability, including policy development, international agreements, partnerships, advocacy, etc.
• Apply learning from best-practice cases of how business, government and civil society are responding to complex sustainability challenges.
• Frame and develop business strategies that address sustainability challenge(s). 

Academic research

• Appreciation of and experience with research methods and associated research skills.
• Able to access leading-edge insights and research on sustainability from leading Cambridge academics and other thought leaders.
• Able to undertake sound sustainability-relevant research using an appropriate research methodology.
• Able to write in a clear, concise, coherent and academically rigorous way.

Open Days

The Institute holds 'Meet the Directors' webinars periodically throughout the admissions periods. Please check the CISL events webpages for details of upcoming webinars. Potential applicants are advised to contact the course director for a telephone call or to arrange a meeting to discuss the programme.

The University of Cambridge will be hosting its Cambridge Postgraduate Open Day on Friday, 1 November 2019. Visit the Events page on the Graduate Admissions website for more details.

Departments

This course is advertised in the following departments: