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1. Variable Overhead Variance (VOH) Concepts VOH Rate: Pre-determined during budgeting. Applied when production occurs → called Applied Variable Overhead. Accounting System captures actual VOH incurred. In between: we calculate Budgeted VOH for Actual Quant...

1. Introduction In many industrial products (e.g., pharmaceuticals, food), multiple materials or ingredients are used. Each material's variance can be computed individually if: Materials are independent. However, when materials form a mix, the interaction ...

1. Introduction Variance analysis is not limited to costs—it also applies to revenues. Actual sales and profit can deviate from budgeted values. Due to fixed costs, it's better to analyze contribution margin instead of profit. Key types of revenue-related var...

1. Variance Reporting Process The IT department typically generates and circulates variance reports. Reports are shared with departmental managers for review. Managers analyze variances relevant to their departments and identify causes. 2. Budget Committee ...

1. Historical Origins & Key Influencers While the idea of living within limits is ancient, the modern sustainability movement has more recent roots. 18th Century: Earliest mention by Hans Carl Von Carlowitz in the context of "sustainable forestry." Post-WWI...

1. Timeline of Key Milestones This timeline traces the evolution of corporate responsibility from a niche idea to a central part of global business and policy. Early Foundations (1950s-1970s) 1953: Howard Bowen's book, Social Responsibilities of the Business...

1. The Anthropocene: The Age of Humans Definition: The Anthropocene is the proposed current geological epoch, marking the period (roughly the last 200 years) where human activity has become the dominant influence on the climate and the environment. Origin o...

1. Agenda 2030: A Global Plan of Action What is it? A UN plan of action for "people, planet and prosperity," adopted by member states in 2015. Core Principle: It recognizes that development goals like ending poverty, improving health and education, and redu...

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Framework The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is a core sustainability framework that reframes the definition of business success. Origin: Popularized by John Elkington in 1994 and further detailed in his 1997 book, Cannibals With Forks...

1. The Corporate Sustainability Dilemma The lecture poses a central question for students of sustainability: While many businesses claim to be focusing on sustainable development, are these claims always credible? This leads to a critical evaluation of corpora...

The Meteoric Rise of the CSO The demand for high-level sustainability leadership has surged in recent years. This isn't a slow trend; it's an explosion. Rapid Growth: More CSOs were hired in 2021 than in the previous five years combined. US Data: The number...

What is Climate Change? Climate change refers to long-term alterations in global temperatures and weather patterns. While Earth's climate has always changed naturally, the current rapid changes are unequivocally caused by human activities. Primary Cause: The...

Deep Ecology vs. Shallow Ecology This is a core philosophical distinction within environmentalism, first articulated by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1973. Feature Shallow Ecology (Mainstream) Deep Ecology (Radical) Core Goal Manages pollution and...

The "Pandemic Pause": A Natural Experiment The unprecedented nationwide lockdown offered a temporary but dramatic glimpse into the effects of reduced human activity on the environment. Positive Impacts (The "Himalayan Effect") The most visible effect was a dra...

Guha's Critique of Western Environmentalism Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha argues that Indian environmentalism has fundamentally different roots and concerns than the mainstream environmentalism of the West, particularly the Deep Ecology movement fro...

Defining the Ecological Footprint The Ecological Footprint is a metric that measures the amount of biologically productive land and water area an individual, a population, or an activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste...

Understanding the Problem Spectrum Not all problems are created equal. They can be classified based on their predictability and the expertise required to solve them. Problem Type Analogy Key Characteristics Simple Following a recipe The process is repea...

Defining a System While there are several definitions, the lecture synthesizes them into a comprehensive one. A system is an integrated whole made up of interconnected elements. Through the processes of self-organization and emergence, this whole exhibits esse...

Why Systems Thinking? The need for a new approach is best captured by Albert Einstein's famous quote: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." The Problem: Sustainability challenges like climate change and food secu...

The Anatomy of a System A system can be broken down into three fundamental components, as illustrated by the analogy of people paddling a boat. Elements : These are the tangible and intangible "parts" or "things" in a system. For example, the paddlers, the b...