What is it all about?

In today's fast-paced business landscape, the spotlight on companies extends beyond profit margins and the bottom line. Companies face a rising tide of expectations from their stakeholders on topics such as environment, people, and corporate governance, increasingly also with a view towards the strategic anchoring of these topics. Navigating this dynamic terrain is no longer a choice but a necessity for companies as the convergence of these elements becomes the cornerstone for every successful long-term business model.

Addressing this development and supporting companies in dealing with the evolving intertwined issues professionally, the University of Zurich’s finance executive education program is launching a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Stakeholder Management and Stewardship. The curriculum for this course was developed together with the leading professional associations in the field, the Center for Corporate Reporting and exchange operator SIX.

“This CAS combines a unique combination of lecturers from Academia and industry, offering participants insights into the conceptual thinking behind the various stakeholder topics as well as experience reports on the implementation of different approaches."

Dr. Christoph Wenk Bernasconi, CAS Program Lead

Structure

Starting from the most established corporate dialogue on financials, the CAS modules, which can be booked individually, expand to increasingly strategically relevant discussions and engagements on board structures, compensation arrangements, climate change impacts, and biodiversity considerations with stakeholders such as institutional investors, employees, customers, NGOs, or governments, all within a constantly evolving legal and regulatory framework.

The CAS makes use of the University of Zurich’s broad offering of disciplines to provide participants with cutting-edge research from the University and ETH Zurich on topics such as business administration, communications, earth sciences, finance, legal, media or public sphere and society. Combined with hands-on views from industry experts, this program not only provides participants with the background knowledge of the stakeholder topic, but also offers guidance on how to implement it.

“The dialogue with stakeholders is a central element of a listed company’s sustainability efforts. Participants will learn best practices on stakeholder engagement, with a particular focus on the key topics discussed in our SIX Sustainability Handbook. This program is a natural next step in our efforts to increase transparency on sustainability matters.”

Vera Sokulskyj, Head Issuer Relations, Primary Markets, SIX Swiss Exchange

Target group

The CAS is targeted at professionals working in the field of investor relations, communications, sustainability, finance and legal and shall establish a comprehensive, structure education program for the Swiss market. The first modules will start in August 2024.

"The Center for Corporate Reporting (CCR) has built an international network of experts to support member companies in line with its mission “Enabling Stakeholder Excellence and Value Creation”. The CCR is convinced that interdisciplinary teamwork across functions and hierarchies coupled with integrated thinking is needed to meet today’s challenges of the transformation to a sustainable economy. Therefore, we support the new CAS of UZH since it provides inspiration and tools to meet increasing and diverse stakeholder requirements."

Reto Schneider, Founder, Center for Corporate Reporting

Interested?

More information on the program.

Apply now!