Introduction to Business


Book Description

Introduction to Business covers the scope and sequence of most introductory business courses. The book provides detailed explanations in the context of core themes such as customer satisfaction, ethics, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing change. Introduction to Business includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations, which feature a variety of individuals. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for student success in this course and beyond. This is an adaptation of Introduction to Business by OpenStax. You can access the textbook as pdf for free at openstax.org. Minor editorial changes were made to ensure a better ebook reading experience. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.




An Introduction to the Law of Business Organizations


Book Description

This edition continues to bridge the gap between lawyers' understanding of the perspective of managers and vice-versa. It continues to meet the needs of both law students and management students. This new edition incorporates additional material on the personalities involved in and the political and social issues raised by the cases studied, and now includes two anti-takeover cases (involving Time magazine and Paramount studios). In an era of re-examination of the basic assumptions of business regulation, this text is a good introduction to the field.




Business Case Essentials


Book Description

A brief but complete outline of what belongs in a business case and why it belongs. It assumes no prior background in finance or business planning. The focus is on questions like these: How do I prove that one choice is the best business decision? How do I show that all important costs and benefits are included? How do I show that alternative action proposals are compared fairly? How do I establish value for benefits--even non financial benefits? How do I build a business case when I am in a government or non profit organization? How do I minimize risk and show management how to maximize business results?




Too Big to Ignore


Book Description

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior. How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer lies deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions. It's time to start thinking big. In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate. Too Big to Ignore explains why Big Data is a big deal. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.




IT in Business: A Business Manager's Casebook


Book Description

'IT in Business: A Manager's Casebook' examines the impact of new IT initiatives from the business angle. The case material is derived from the year's best research projects from three leading UK Business Schools - Bath, Cranfield and Warwick. This incisive exploration of managing processes in IT companies is essential reading for IT managers in 'end-user' businesses who have to deliver strong business benefits from IT. In a climate of rapid and continual change, such contemporary information is invaluable. 'IT in Business: A Manager's Casebook' tackles managerial issues using specific case studies such as Tesco, Johnsons News Limited and the Department of Health to illustrate these points. David Targett is the Professor of Information Management at Imperial College Management School, University of London. For eight years, 1990-98, he was the Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Centre for Research into Strategic Information Systems (CRSIS) at the University of Bath. Previously, he was at the London Business School and before becoming an academic he was an industrial engineer in the motor industry. David Grimshaw is Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at Cranfield School of Management and was previously at the University of Leeds and Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. He has wide teaching experience and has taught in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Portugal, Russia and Singapore. He has ten years' practical experience in information systems and as an independent consultant has advised many companies on strategic information systems planning and on geographical information systems. Philip Powell is Professor of Information Systems at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Prior to this he was Reader in Information Systems and ICAEW Academic Fellow in the Operational Research and Systems Group, and Director of the Information Systems Research Unit at Warwick Business School. Before becoming an academic he worked in insurance, accounting and computing. He has taught in Southampton, Australia and Portugal and held a number of other posts overseas.




The China Business Casebook


Book Description

The China Business Casebook draws on real business case studies created by senior managers, many of whom are studying on or alumni of Executive/International MBA (EMBA/IMBA) Programmes in Mainland China. The Casebook captures unique, actual, operational and strategic business cases, written to reflect and learn from real-world problems and challenges. It will be of great benefit to teachers, researchers and practitioners (including EMBA/IMBA students) around the world, and provides important and valuable insights into decision-making in China-based companies. The Casebook features cases from a wide range of China-based companies, from multinationals to small and medium-sized enterprises, including for-profit and not-for-profit organisations, a significant proportion of which are China-owned. The China Business Casebook is the first title in The China Business Case Study Series. It is published in association with the University of Aberdeen (UK), Webster University (USA), and the China Association for Socially Responsible Leadership, CASRL (UK).




Casebook of Indigenous Business Practices in Africa


Book Description

Africa’s unique and diverse culture, embedded in age-long business practices, presents an interesting proposition for advancing indigenous knowledge and building sustainable structures. Casebook of Indigenous Business Practices in Africa is a collection of case studies across Northern, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern Africa.




A Casebook of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility


Book Description

This casebook argues that corporate sustainability agendas should look beyond stakeholder demands and desires, towards strategic opportunities to achieve social and commercial benefits simultaneously. It encourages shifting focus from a strategic approach to a sustainable business practice. As the cases in the book highlight, it is in every company’s best interest to identify a manageable number of sustainability initiatives whose shared benefits—for society at large and the company—are significant and also substantially help the company strategically position itself in the competitive marketplace. Strategic sustainable business practices can lead to shared value creation, strengthening the company’s competitiveness and establishing a symbiotic relationship. Companies can achieve solid profits by doing good things for the environment; it is a “win-win” for society and for business. This casebook provides examples of multi-stakeholder partnerships that aim to create sustainable enterprises. Ideal for teaching purposes, after a brief introduction to the case method, the cases are presented with no comments or criticisms.




IT Crisisology Casebook


Book Description

The book focuses on the real-world case-based crisis management in digital product development. This includes forecasting, responding, and agile engineering/management methods, patterns, and practices for sustainable development. This book introduces a set of case studies for sustainability in management as a blend, the components of which have been carefully selected from a few domains adjacent to digital production such as IT-intensive operation, human resource management, and knowledge engineering, to name a few. The key ingredients of this crisis management framework include information management, tradeoff optimization, agile product development, and knowledge transfer. The case studies this book features will help the stakeholders in understanding and identifying the key technology, business, and human factors that may likely result in a digital production crisis, i.e., critically affect the organization outcomes in terms of successful digitalization and sustainable development. These factors are particularly important for the large-scale applications, typically considered very complex in managerial and technological aspects, and, therefore, specifically addressed by the discipline of IT crisisology.




European Business Ethics Casebook


Book Description

Business cases are at the heart of business ethics as a discipline. Analysis and reflection on the morality of business often is triggered by concrete cases. After four introductory chapters into recent developments within business ethics and the value of case analysis, the present volume offers extensive description of eight recent European cases, mainly stemming from The Netherlands and Belgium and all of them with a clear moral impact. Among them are the Lernout and Hauspie speech technology disaster, Heineken struggle with the promotion girls selling beer in Cambodia, cartels in the Dutch construction industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the Aids crisis, and Unilever allegedly making use of child labour in the cotton industry in India. The book will be of interest to researchers as well as teachers of undergraduate and graduate courses in Business Ethics, Business in Society, Management and Organisation Theory and Strategic Management. It will also be useful for business practitioners eager to learn about business ethics by means of cases.