Biography
Michael Hernke is a Lecturer at the Wisconsin School of Business and an affiliate of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He teaches Foundational Skills for Business Analysis, Business Analytics, Sustainable Approaches to System Improvement, and the WSB Excel Proficiency Course. Michael earned an undergraduate degree in Marketing and a doctorate in Operations & Information Management, both from UW-Madison. His current research projects consider organizational approaches to global resource constraints, dynamics of micro to macro resource efficiency, and synergy between sustainability science and global health.
Research
Selected Published Journal Articles
Jacobson, T. & Kler, J. & Hernke, M. & Braun, R. & Meyer, K. & Funk, W. (2019). Direct human health risks of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide Nature Sustainability
Robèrt, K. & Hernke, M. & Fortney, L. & Podein, R. (2018). Systems thinking for global health and sustainable development Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health
Isil, O. & Hernke, M. (2017). The triple bottom line: a critical review from a transdisciplinary perspective Business Strategy and the Environment
Finster, M. & Hernke, M. (2014). Benefits organizations pursue when seeking competitive advantage by improving environmental performance Journal of Industrial Ecology
Hernke, M. & Podein, R. (2011). Sustainability, Health and Precautionary Perspectives on Lawn Pesticides, and Alternatives EcoHealth
Teaching
Undergraduate Courses
Sustainable Approaches to System Improvement (OTM 370), Summer 2021.
This course examines innovative approaches organizations engage to improve their core mission by embedding sustainable practices into their behavior and systems. Students learn to critique and integrate several sustainability perspectives, including scientific, social, economic, environmental, and promotional considerations. This course discusses how to integrate these approaches into a broad spectrum of organizational concerns such as environmental impacts, stakeholder satisfaction, quality, productivity, cost, lean, profit, brand image, brand value, supply chain management, quality of work life, employee engagement, market selection, product design, customer satisfaction and retention, value creation, valuation, theory of constraints, marketing, humanresource management, accounting, base of the pyramid, triple bottom line, engineering, operations, and health.
Learning Objectives:
To identify the forces in an organization’s ecosystem that drive sustainability, to determine the capabilities needed to respond to those forces, and to recommend improvements that strengthen the organization’s core mission.
Business Analytics II (BUS 307), Fall 2021.
Emphasis on hands-on experience with many commonly used analytic methodologies using the modeling and optimization tools available on almost every professional desktop. The focus is predictive and prescriptive analytics. Predictive approaches use historical data to infer causal relationships and forecast future outcomes from a given action. Prescriptive methods take this a step further, helping managers formulate decision models that identify optimal actions given a set of circumstances.
Foundational Skills for Business Analysis (BUS 106), Fall 2021.
Build fundamental skills and processes to develop a strong foundation in business analysis utilizing Excel. Students learn the fundamentals of data construction, manipulation, summarization, analysis and presentation.
Graduate Courses
Eve MBA: Data to Decisions (BUS 765), Summer 2018.
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