SEE040 Leadership for Sustainability Transitions

 

Course name:	Leadership for Sustainability Transitions
Course code:	SEE040
Credits:	7.5
Academic year:	2025/2026
Study period:	SP1
Programme owning the course:	Industrial Ecology
Department giving the course:	Space, Earth and Environment
Course language	English

 

Examiner:	John Holmberg, john.holmberg@chalmers.se
Course administrator: (primary contact)	Frans Libertson, frans.libertson@chalmers.se
Teaching staff:	Johan Holmén, johan.holmen@chalmers.se Clara Saglietti clarasag@chalmers.se Timon Renzelmann timonr@chalmers.se
External staff and guest lecturers:	Göran Carstedt: goran@carstedt.se Martin Sande: martin.sande@dialogues.se Lotta Göthe: lotta.gothe@ecoplan.se

 

Student representatives (selected by the student centre):

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Aim

The course aims to support you in becoming a leader for sustainability transitions. The course provides theoretical perspectives, methods, and tools for leading sustainability-driven systems innovation in society. The concept of leadership within this course builds on backcasting as an overarching approach, where you develop leadership capabilities on three levels: leading yourself, leading together with others, and leading for humanity. These theoretical perspectives and tools introduced through literature and lectures are applied in a real-world case and are developed through individual and group exercises and reflection. Based on this foundation, you will in your future be able to purposefully lead complex transitional processes involving stakeholders across societal sectors in society. Some students attending this course choose to deepen their leadership capabilities further by taking the course SEE050 "System interventions for sustainability transitions", which in turn prepares them for a thesis in line with Challenge Lab.

 

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, you will be able to:

1. Understand and describe challenge-driven innovation processes.
   This includes understanding different innovation logics and the kind of leadership that is required for sustainability transitions, as well as the ability to put knowledge into practice.

2. Conduct future studies.
   This includes reflecting on different approaches to engaging with futures, with a focus on backcasting approaches, testing robustness, and handling critical uncertainties. Being able to formulate guiding principles for a system from different sustainability dimensions is also included.

3. Apply systems thinking and mapping of socio-technical systems in order to identify sustainability transition strategies.
   This includes zooming across scales, understanding systems dynamics and identifying root causes, identifying leverage points in multi-level systems, understanding "lock-in" mechanisms, developing and critically appraising conceptual solutions (design thinking), iteration, and experimentation.

4. Apply tools to surface multiple perspectives and facilitate dialogue in a multi-stakeholder setting.
   This relates to the ability to learn about yourself and from others, to understand and respect needs, perspectives, and actions. This includes techniques for self-leadership and participatory problem-solving, dialogue tools, co-creation, perspective awareness, and active listening.

5. Apply transition strategies and challenge-driven innovation processes.
   This includes identifying leverage points in multi-level systems, understanding "lock-in" effects, developing and critically appraising conceptual solutions (design thinking), iteration and experimentation, and the ability to put knowledge into practice.

6. Apply tools to enable and facilitate dialogue in a multi-stakeholder setting.
   This relates to the ability to learn from others, to understand and respect the needs, perspectives, and actions of others. This includes techniques on collaboration and participatory problem-solving, dialogue tools, co-creation, perspective awareness, and active listening.

7. Apply critical thinking.
   This includes both critical reflection inwards (one's values, norms, and actions) and outwards (phenomena in the outside world).

8. Integrate problem identification and problem-solving frameworks.
   This is the overarching ability to comprehend and integrate the abovementioned competencies/abilities.

9. Lead oneself, lead together with others, and lead for humanity.
   This includes the ability to develop one's own leadership capabilities based on the abovementioned competencies/abilities.

 

Content

Backcasting from sustainability principles is a key methodology during the course. Backcasting is helpful to break free from path-dependency and free the mind by starting from a desirable, sustainable future and consists of four steps:

1. Formulate guiding principles for a sustainable and desirable future
2. Analyse the present situation in relation to the principles
3. Identify leverage point interventions for bridging the gaps
4. Strategically experiment on leverage points

As well as in the backcasting approach, the course applies two perspectives for an encompassing approach in dealing with complex sustainability challenges in society:

• Outside-in perspective; including system dynamics, transition, and design as tools to understand and deal with the external requirements that global sustainability puts on societal systems.
• Inside-out perspective; including methods and tools to understand and reflect on your own values, strengths, and visions, as well as to understand and lead in the interaction with different stakeholders within complex systems.

In a case conducted during the course, you will, through group assignments, identify needs and possible ideas that can point the way for further interventions - bridging the gap between a sustainable future and the current situation.

 

Organization

For each of the steps in the backcasting approach, the two perspectives (Outside-in and Inside-out) will be addressed by three ways of learning:

1. Theory and Tools: Lectures and literature with introduction of tools, as well as literature seminars in which the theories and concepts from the literature are discussed.
2. Case Work: A hands-on case where the tools are applied to a real-world sustainability challenge, selected with other classmates according to your interest.
3. Reflection: An individual written assignment on leadership encompassing the whole course, where you will reflect upon the tools and their use in the case. The purpose of the reflection is to digest the knowledge and experiences (double-loop learning) and relate them to leadership abilities and to your own values.

To apply the theory and tools to address sustainability challenges in socio-technical systems, you will choose a hands-on case. The case will draw from sustainability challenges mainly related to Chalmers’ campus. To be able to lead in a dialogue, while working on the case, you will also explore your own personal values and strengths. (Inside-Out perspective). To be able to better understand the current situation from a systems perspective, you will in group work be interacting with stakeholders – thereby getting a richer picture of the overall challenge and understanding a complex system in focus from different perspectives. In this part, dialogue tools are introduced and applied. The dialogue and the application of systems mapping tools enable the identification of points for intervention in the system. The project ideas, identified in this course, will serve to unlock and facilitate change in the sub-system, and subsequently to initiate possible transformation of the larger system.

 

Examination including compulsory elements

The course is examined through three activities:

• Literature seminars. Throughout the course, four literature seminars will be held to support and examine students’ understanding of and engagement with core concepts from the course literature. The literature seminars replace a previously held midterm examination.
• Individual written assignment with a half-time submission, peer review, and final submission.
• A case. The case takes place during the entire course, and the examination is based on completing group hand-ins and attendance.

 

Criteria for grades U, 3, 4, 5:

A total of 100 points will be handed out throughout the course, which will be translated into grades. The points are distributed as follows:

• Literature seminars
  Prior to the literature seminars, you will submit short notes based on your readings. Sending in your notes and your active participation in discussions and breakout activities are required to pass this activity. While we highly recommend you take part in all seminars to be best prepared for your individual written assignment, active participation in 2 out of 4 literature seminars is required to pass the course. The seminar is weighted based on attendance and participation. Active participation in all four literature seminars contributes 15 points to the total grade (grade 5), three out of four seminars contribute 10 points to the total grade (grade 4), and two out of four seminars contribute 5 points to the total grade (grade 3).
• Individual Written Assignment
  For detailed information about the written assignment, see the written assignment documentation in Canvas under Modules. There you will also find the grading template. Contributes up to 45 points (grade 3, 25 points, grade 4, 35 points, and grade 5, 45 points).
• Case
  Group assignments connected to the case. The group work will be done in small groups. Each student should demonstrate an understanding and application of course tools. For a detailed list of assignments in the case, see the case documentation in Canvas under Modules. The Casework is a compulsory activity and requires attendance to pass. A fixed grade of 35 points is granted for passing. Passing group assignments is compulsory in order to pass the course.

 

Summary of granted points by activity:

	Grade 3	Grade 4	Grade 5
Literature seminars	5	10	15
Individual Written Assignment	25	35	45
Case	35	35	35

 

Assuming passed case, reflection assignment and literature seminars, accumulated points are translated into final grades as follows:

 

Accumulated points	Grade
<60	U
60	3
75	4
≥90	5

 

 

Attendance

This course is designed for you to explore your interests and develop your skills individually and with your classmates. It can be seen as an open space with a lot of freedom that we need to collectively take responsibility for. Therefore, your presence and interactive participation during the classes is of key importance to shape and nurture this space together, as well as an opportunity for you to learn and a responsibility towards your group mates. We understand that many of you are very busy and might have conflicting schedules, but taking part in this course requires some commitment. As we do our best to accommodate different needs with flexibility, some parts of the course have mandatory or highly recommended attendance.

It is mandatory to attend the first class on September 2^nd in order to claim your place in the course, since we have a waiting list with students who want to participate in the course. We will collect your attendance during the first week so that we can understand who is participating and still allow people on the waiting list to join. If, for any reason, you cannot attend the first classes or cannot continue taking the course, please inform the course administrator via email as soon as possible.

The course case is highly participatory and requires attendance in all aspects related to the case (i.e., workshops, group work, and final presentation). In a spirit of trust, we believe that you can self-organise to support each other in the group: if you miss a workshop, you must inform your group as soon as possible and find internal agreements to compensate for the absence and contribute to the group work. The teaching staff is available to support you in catching up or clarifying anything unclear from missed workshops, but we recommend not missing more than 1 or 2 classes, or it might become hard to keep up and feel like you are actively helping in the group.

It is mandatory to attend two out of the four literature seminars. You are recommended to attend all four as they provide a foundation of central course concepts. Absence from literature seminars can be complemented by additional tasks such as providing an extensive summary and reflection on the seminar texts. Contact the course coordinator to be informed of what to do.

All other lectures are non-compulsory. However, attendance is highly recommended as these provide a backbone for the entire course, including the case and written assignment.

 

Submissions, revisions, and re-examination

All submissions in the course should be done through Canvas, and submissions by email will not be accepted. Late case submissions may result in supplementary assignments.

Any revisions to the case or the written assignment should be submitted as soon as possible, but no later than two weeks after having received the feedback.

“Plussning”, attempts to increase an already passed grade, is not available for any part of the course.

 

Course literature

All literature is posted on Canvas at the start of the course. The literature should be seen as adding perspectives to the lectures, not as a substitute for them. Hence, information might be presented during a lecture but not in the literature, and vice versa. A reading guide with tips on how to digest the literature is attached to the literature list.

To further help you get into the course literature, there will be four literature seminars. The literature for each module and seminar can be found on Canvas under Modules and in the literature seminar PM.

Academic honesty

Since examination is about judging your learning outcomes, it is highly important that everything you hand in for examination purposes can be attributed to your own work. Hence, do not put your name on any submission unless you have actually done the work yourself (individual submission) or participated actively in the work (group submission).

We verify the reflection paper assessments via Ouriginal, previously known as Urkund. Ouriginal controls all documents submitted against three main sources; the Internet, published material, and Ouriginal archives (e.g., reports from previous years). All documents, which are controlled through the system, are stored in Ouriginal archives and prevent plagiarism from former and fellow students. Please note that copying your own previous work without proper referencing is also plagiarism. For further information, read for example “Academic honesty and integrity at Chalmers” and “Rules of Discipline”.

Schedule and location

The course will take place on campus. Please see TimeEdit for an updated course schedule with information about location and specific times. We always start sharp in the morning (8.00). When online, sessions will take place via Zoom and a link will be shared through announcements.

 

General scheduling:

Tuesdays 8-12

Wednesday 8-10                                                         

Friday 8-12

For some workshops, it will be possible to start at 8.30 instead: it will be communicated ahead of time at the end of the class before and via the Canvas platform.

 

A full schedule will be published upon course start, below is a presentation of key events:

 

Course introduction (mandatory attendance to guarantee your place in the course): Sept 2 8-12

 

Literature seminar 1: Sept 10 8-10 (Hand-in Sept 9, 23.59)

Literature seminar 2: Sept 19 8-10 (Hand-in Sept 18, 23.59)

Literature seminar 3: Oct 3 8-12 (Hand-in Oct 1, 23.59)

Literature seminar 4: Oct 22 8-10 (Hand-in Oct 21, 23.59)

 

Hand-in case step 1: Sept 19 (23.59)

Hand-in case step 2: Oct 3 (23.59)

Hand-in case step 3: Oct 20 (23.59)

Hand-in case step 4: Upload transition agenda presentation: Oct 23 (23.59)

 

Outline written assignment hand-in: Oct 1 (23.59)

Full written assignment hand-in: Oct 26 (23.59)

Peer-review hand-in: Oct 29 (23.59)

Final written assignment hand-in: Nov 2 (23.59)