Reform of ERS courses: LSM modernises its Sustainability programme for 2026-2027

As the 2026–2027 academic year approaches, Louvain School of Management (LSM) is taking a step forward by launching a major reform for its ERS (Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability) courses.

In response to the constantly evolving environmental and social challenges that businesses face on a daily basis, the faculty has rethought its course offering. The objective is to incorporate student feedback, modernise the content of its courses and align with global best practice through in-house multidisciplinary work, international benchmarking and collaboration with external experts.

In a video interview, Valérie Swaen, Professor of ERS at LSM explains the changes and the new features awaiting students in the Master’s programmes in Management and Business Engineering on the Louvain-la-Neuve campus.

New core ERS courses for all master students in LLN

The new courses replace the former ones on “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Green Transition”.

The course titled “Ethics, Responsibility, Sustainability: Risk Management” will lay the essential foundations for ERS risk management. It focuses on identifying, preventing, mitigating, and remediating non-financial risks, covering topics such as ethics, corporate governance mechanisms, whistleblowing systems, codes of conduct, due diligence, human and labour rights, anti-money laundering and anti-corruption measures, as well as European and international regulatory frameworks. Students engage directly with practitioners from NGOs and the manufacturing sector to bridge theory and practice. It is aimed at all types of organisations, whether or not they are formally engaged in sustainability work.

The course “Business and System Change” will help students develop systemic thinking in order to understand organisational transformation. It will be tailored to the specific characteristics of each Master’s programme in:

Management Sciences (Strategic Innovation for Sustainability), the focus is on business model innovation and hybrid organisational forms (such as B Corps, cooperatives, social enterprises, and regenerative organisations), alongside governance, stakeholder engagement, and perspectives from the Global South. In Business Engineering (Engineering Sustainable Transformation in Complex Systems), the course draws on students’ analytical skills to model complex systems through causal loop diagrams and feedback analysis, and applies technical tools such as carbon footprint assessment and life-cycle analysis, exploring circular and functional economic models alongside decentralised governance approaches like platform cooperatives and blockchain-enabled systems.

A new major: Sustainability Management

Formerly known as the ‘Philippe de Woot’ major, this major aims to explore the subject in greater depth and includes three new courses:

1. Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship: a course based on active learning, in which students design and develop their own social and sustainable entrepreneurship project, informed by testimonies from practitioners in the field.
2. Finance and Responsible Investment Practices: a course essential to mastering corporate valuation methods integrated with ERS considerations, exploring the relationship between risk, return, and impact. 
3. Sustainability Transition and Social Change: an approach combining psychology and political economy, analysing the roots of climate inaction, the growth-based economic paradigm, paradigm change as a lever for transformation, and the role of civil society and social movements.
4. Measuring and Reporting ERS Performance: fully aligned with new standards (such as the European CSRD directive), this course will teach students how to measure a company’s impact and produce credible sustainability reports.
5. Leadership and Inner Development for Sustainability Transition: inspired by the global framework of the Inner Development Goals (IDG), this immersive and reflective course focuses on the student as a future leader. It will help students develop their interpersonal skills, collective intelligence and ability to navigate the internal and external tensions of leading sustainability transformation.

With this reform, LSM reaffirms its commitment to training responsible leaders who are ready to become true agents of change in our society.

Here below is Professor Valérie Swaen's video interview in which she explains in detail the reform.