In-Class Assignment 3/27

Businesses around the world are looking for more sensible business decisions for both the short and the Long term. With vast new improvements in technology businesses are at the forefront of developing new techniques, and attempting to prolong the use of these techniques. Sustainability combines many different disciplines and combines there viewpoints. Therefore instead of focusing solely on sustainability as a whole, we will need to break up the disciplines that comprise sustainability. Sustainability can be broken up globally and specifically for business aspects. For business, sustainability majors would be in charge of finding a way to cut costs, or developing new policies used to improve work efforts. On the other hand a sustainability major looking at the global scale could be asking questions on how to sustain our environment. The types of questions asked from this discipline really will vary due to the type of field each person is specific in. With that being said each sustainability major will have different filters to their questions. What those filters might be we do not know yet. Although this might not be a bad thing. All of the different disciplines that comprise sustainability will add to the amount of questions that can be asked. This brings us back to our main point that sustainability is a very diverse department. As we look closer at the questions we have to ask, we may run into an abyss. An abyss of questions that never end. As my partner and I discuss the implications of becoming a sustainability major we have came across that we both excelled in all aspects of school, not just one study. So now we can look at what we don't know. We don't know how a sustainability major would go about approaching a problem, as well as how they would solve it. Addressing this in our interview would be the first step to understanding. It would seem to be beneficial to be able to pick the brains of people in different industries with a similar sustainability background. Knowing how someone approaches a problem would ultimately help us understand our major much more, as well as helping us figure out how to ask questions in this specific discipline. To the best of my knowledge each situation will be different in sustainability. This is the main question we will need answered to move ahead; Does each specific project need to be approached in a different way? Or does each problem have a universal approach by the sustainability discipline. Are hypothesis needed in sustainability? Businesses hire sustainability majors to save them money, while the government hires them to help keep the earth clean and green. Sustainability majors have limitless possibilities with what their job details might entail.

Interview Questions

1. What is the main goal of studying sustainability? What are the experts in Business Sustainability trying to accomplish? Do you believe they are trying to accomplish a common goal, or do they have different ideals?
2.  What are the main ideas, principles, and theories that guide thinking within Business Sustainability? Is there a specific mindset that a person needs to have when entering the field?
3. What, if anything, is taken for granted in this discipline?
4. What kind of information and proof is used to settle controversial disputes within the discipline?
5. Is there somewhat of a cutoff line where a project or belief is "not sustainable enough?"
6. How important do you think your fieldwork is for society?
7. What are current debates in your field?
8. What sources do you view as credible when learning new management tactics?
9. If the field of Business Sustainability were to devote all of its time, energy and resources to one thing in your field what would it be?
10. What assumptions do people who study your discipline hold?