SCR/MCR SEMINAR
The Capitalist Model of Sustainable Development: Radical Policy or Business as Usual?
Dr Bettina Wittneben and Dr Eamonn Molloy
In this seminar we will critically examine the assumptions underpinning the model of sustainable development articulated in mainstream business-policy discourse. Often presented as a fundamental shift in societal values, the valuation of nature and society as natural and social capital in this model of sustainable development raises a number of important questions that we aim to present for discussion. For example, what are the ethical and moral implications of reducing nature and society to units of equivalence, and how is this achieved in practice? Are there limits to substitutability between different kinds of capital? Does the capitalist model of sustainable development represent an intellectually or ideologically significant departure from other models of free market capitalism?
Dr Bettina Wittneben is Senior Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, Oxford.
Dr Eamonn Molloy is Fellow in Management Studies at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Biographies:
Bettina B. F. Wittneben received her MBA (International Business) from the University of Alberta and the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Grenoble after having been a school teacher for science and languages for several years in Canada and Germany. In 2005, Bettina completed her PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge on institutional change in the transfer of climate-friendly technology. For this work she was awarded the 2007 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Prize. Bettina has conducted studies for the UN climate treaty secretariat from 2000 until 2003. After consulting the German and European government as Senior Research Fellow at the Wuppertal Institute of Climate, Environment and Energy from 2004 to 2006, she went on to become Assistant Professor for Business-Society Management at the Rotterdam School of Management. In 2007, she founded Erasmus University's Sustainability and Climate Research Centre. Bettina now conducts research into international climate governance at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. She teaches at the Environmental Change Institute and is Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College. Her theoretical research interests include institutional change, new ways of organizing and decision-making processes. Bettina is a German national and also speaks English, French and Dutch.
Eamonn Molloy is interested in the relationships between science, technology and organization. He has a research background in examining the design, implementation and operation of environmental management systems in a wide range of settings including The Body Shop, mining and minerals development projects in Southern Africa, decommissioning magnox nuclear reactors and the decomissionming of nuclear submarines. Recent research projects have examined large scale organizational change projects, the interaction between novel medical technologies and professional identity of surgeons, and the re-emergence of arguments for nuclear power in the UK. He teaches Technology and Operations Management at the Said Business School at the Undergraduate and MBA level, as well as running a specialised MBA elective on Project Portfolio Management. Eamonn is an Associate Fellow of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation, and of the ESRC Centre for Skills Knowledge and Organisational Performance. He holds and Ph.D in Science and Technology Studies and a B Sc? in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Lancaster and the University of California Santa Cruz.
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POKER NIGHT
Poker in the MCR.
