Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Law for Entrepreneurs
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel; Jethro Lieberman · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Law for Entrepreneurs is an up-to-date textbook that covers the broad spectrum of legal issues that entrepreneurs must understand when starting and running a business. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Law for Entrepreneurs provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, product liability, intellectual property, insurance, agency law, partnerships, corporations, and employment law. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy that entrepreneurs need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, employees, creditors, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
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Introduction to the Law of Property, Estate Planning and Insurance
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel; Jethro Lieberman · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Introduction to the Law of Property, Estate Planning and Insurance is an up-to-date textbook that covers legal issues that students must understand relating to real estate (an especially important business asset), as well as estate planning and insurance. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Introduction to the Law of Property, Estate Planning and Insurance provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to property rights and duties, estate planning, insurance, secured transactions, mortgages, and related topics. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy they will need when working with these concepts, which are critical to business planning and success.
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Business Law and the Legal Environment
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Our goal is to provide students with a textbook that is up to date and comprehensive in its coverage of legal and regulatory issues—and organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. This book engages students by relating law to everyday events with which they are already familiar (or with which they are familiarizing themselves in other business courses) and by its clear, concise, and readable style. (An earlier business law text by authors Lieberman and Siedel was hailed “the best written text in a very crowded field.”) This textbook provides context and essential concepts across the entire range of legal issues with which managers and business executives must grapple. The text provides the vocabulary and legal acumen necessary for businesspeople to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, government officials—and to their own lawyers.
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Beyond Lean: Simulation in Practice
Charles Standridge · Grand Valley State University · 2013
Lean thinking, as well as associated processes and tools, have involved into a ubiquitous perspective for improving systems particularly in the manufacturing arena. With application experience has come an understanding of the boundaries of lean capabilities and the benefits of getting beyond these boundaries to further improve performance. Discrete event simulation is recognized as one beyond-the-boundaries of lean technique. Thus, the fundamental goal of this text is to show how discrete event simulation can be used in addition to lean thinking to achieve greater benefits in system improvement than with lean alone. Realizing this goal requires learning the problems that simulation solves as well as the methods required to solve them. The problems that simulation solves are captured in a collection of case studies. These studies serve as metaphors for industrial problems that are commonly addressed using lean and simulation.
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The Sustainable Business Case Book
Ross Gittell; Matt Magnusson; Michael Merenda · Saylor Foundation · 2012
The issue of sustainability and specifically sustainable business is of increasing interest and importance to students of business and also students in the sciences, government, public policy, planning and other fields. There can be significant benefits from students learning about sustainable business from the rich experiences of business practice. The Sustainable Business Case Book by Gittell, Magnusson and Merenda is one of the first of its kind. It combines the the theory of sustainability with key concepts, analytical information and contextual information with a collection of cases which provide insights, perspective and practical guidance on how sustainable businesses operate from different business functional area perspectives. The Sustainable Business Case Book can be used as a stand-alone text or as a supplemental textbook for undergraduate courses that have an interest in sustainable business. While the book's primary focus is on the relationship between business and sustainability, the book can also be used in courses offered in fields other than business, including environmental and earth systems sciences, environmental studies, urban planning, economics and public policy. The first part of The Sustainable Business Case Book, Chapter 1 through Chapter 3, introduces students to the meaning of sustainability, and the practice of sustainable business. The introductory chapters also describe key concepts, analytical frameworks, and contextual information relevant for the understanding of business sustainability. Chapter 1, defines sustainability and describes how and why businesses choose to engage in sustainable practices and how sustainable business practices relate to corporate profitability and social responsibility. Chapters 2 and 3 provide important background and contextual information affecting sustainable business practice. Chapter 2, The Science of Sustainability, reviews scientific evidence about climate change and the human and business influenc
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Leading with Cultural Intelligence
Mai Moua · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Organizations in the 21st century are in need of culturally intelligent managers and leaders. The pressure to build authentic global networks and to cultivate an appreciation and respect for cultural differences and similarities has driven cultural intelligence to the forefront of diversity and inclusion work. Preparing today's students to be effective leaders in their professional lives requires that they hone their cultural intelligence as it is vital to working inter- and intra-culturally in today's global economy. This unique ability to identify, recognize, and acknowledge the differences and similarities that exist between and among cultural groups and systems will set their leadership skills apart from the masses. And when applied, cultural intelligence can bridge the gap in cultural misunderstanding by creating awareness, knowledge, and patience of cultural norms and behaviors. The purpose of Leading With Cultural Intelligence by Mia Moua is to outline the important ideas of cultural intelligence and the steps that must be considered and then practiced to become a culturally intelligent leader. The most important aspect covered within this book is that cultural intelligence is both a strategy and a tool towards cultural competency and proficiency. This book outlines the importance of understanding culture and its impact on organizations, the strategic value of cultural intelligence, and the significance of integrating and practicing cultural intelligence in everyday business life. When all these aspects are properly integrated and applied in the leadership and management process, organizations are more innovative and adaptable to respond to cultural changes.
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Foundations of Business Law and Legal Environment
Don Mayer · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Foundations of Business Law and the Legal Environment is an up-to-date textbook with comprehensive coverage of legal and regulatory issues for your introductory Legal Environment or Business Law course. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with which they are already familiar with their clear, concise and readable style. Business Law and the Legal Environment provides students with context and essential concepts across a broad range of legal issues with which managers and business executives must grapple. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy necessary for business people to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, government officials — and to their own lawyers.
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Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel; Jethro Lieberman · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment is an up-to-date textbook with coverage of legal and regulatory issues that are more technical than the topics in the authors' Foundations of Business Law and the Legal Environment. Appropriate for students who have already taken an introductory Legal Environment or Business Law course, the text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with which they are already familiar with their clear, concise and readable style. Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to the Uniform Commercial Code and various aspects of property law. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy necessary for business people to talk in an educated way to their customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
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Contract Doctrine, Theory & Practice
J.H. Verkerke · CALI's eLangdell® Press · 2014
This is the first in a series of Contracts casebooks. It was originally titled "Collaborative Teaching Materials for Contracts." The first semester of law school is mostly about learning to speak a new legal language (but emphatically not “legalese”), to formulate and evaluate legal arguments, to become comfortable with the distinctive style of legal analysis. We could teach these skills using almost any legal topic. But we begin the first-year curriculum with subjects that pervade the entire field of law. Contract principles have a long history and they form a significant part of the way that lawyers think about many legal problems. As you will discover when you study insurance law, employment law, family law, and dozens of other practice areas, your knowledge of contract doctrine and theory will be invaluable.
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Contract Doctrine, Theory & Practice
J.H. Verkerke · CALI's eLangdell® Press · 2012
This is Volume 2 in a three volume series written for Contracts Law. Its orginal title was "Collaborative Teaching Materials for Contracts." The first semester of law school is mostly about learning to speak a new legal language (but emphatically not “legalese”), to formulate and evaluate legal arguments, to become comfortable with the distinctive style of legal analysis. We could teach these skills using almost any legal topic. But we begin the first-year curriculum with subjects that pervade the entire field of law. Contract principles have a long history and they form a significant part of the way that lawyers think about many legal problems. As you will discover when you study insurance law, employment law, family law, and dozens of other practice areas, your knowledge of contract doctrine and theory will be invaluable.
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Beginning Management of Human Resources
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2016
Human Resource Management teaches HRM strategies and theories that any manager—not just those in HR—needs to know about recruiting, selecting, training, and compensating people. Most students will be managing people at some point in their careers and not necessarily in a human resource management capacity. As businesses cut back, they may outsource HR duties to outside vendors. Or, in smaller businesses, the HR department is sometimes small or non-existent, and managers from other departments have to perform their own HRM. Therefore, teaching HRM from the perspective of a general manager, in addition to an HR manager, provides more relevance to students' careers and will give them a competitive advantage in the workplace. This text also provides practical applications of theory relevant to today's workplace. You won't find discussions about “posting vacancies on a job board” or “sending memos.” In the real world, HRM leverages technology in every aspect of the job—from online training modules to technology for better managing flex-time workers and telecommuters. Consider how most companies have gone “paperless” with pay stubs by using software. While such technology has made HRM easier, it has also created a new set of challenges. For example, how does a manager actually implement a new pay system? Therefore, it's important for students to understand what kinds of platforms exist in today's workplace to enhance their effectiveness as future managers. The conversational style of Human Resource Management engages students, while the academic rigor of its content provides them with the tools that any manager needs—whether they work in HR or a different department. PLUS it offers an array of supplements that gives them practice creating real HR documents and role-playing real HR scenarios. Add value to your students' education, enhance the relevance of your curriculum, and make your students more employable by adopting this book for your HRM class. Read it now online to
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Business English for Success
Scott McLean · Saylor Foundation · 2011
Business English for Success is a creative solution to a common challenge across Business Communication courses: Business English or Business Presentations? Some classes place an equal emphasis on oral and written communication. If that's the case for you check out our text Business Communication for Success. If, however, your class places the emphasis squarely on written communication and writing proficiency, then Business English for Success is for you. Business English for Success provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition. This step-by-step approach provides a clear path to student-centered learning. A wide range of writing levels and abilities are addressed, helping each student prepare for the next writing or university course. The text opens with a discussion on the sentence and then breaks it down into its elemental components, before reconstructing them into effective sentences, paragraphs, and larger assignments. Then, starting in Chapter 9: Effective Business Writing, the discussion applies lessons learned from the previous foundational chapters into common business issues and applications. From paraphrasing and plagiarism to style to the research process, the expectations increase as several common business documents are presented, including text messages and e-mail, memorandums and letters, the business proposal, business report, resume, and the sales message. This textbook has been used in classes at:Arizona Western College, Hostos Community College, Virginia State University, Truckee Meadows Community College, San Jose State University, Concordia University - Irvine, University New Brunswick - Fredericton, Cerritos College, University of Houston - Downtown, Flat World Knowledge University, A-C Central High School, University of The People, Truckee Meadows Community College, Danville Community High School
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Risk Management for Enterprises and Individuals
Etti Baranoff; Patrick Brockett; Yehuda Kahane · Saylor Foundation · 2009
This book is intended for the Risk Management and Insurance course where Risk Management is emphasized. When we think of large risks, we often think in terms of natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes or tornados. Perhaps man-made disasters come to mind such as the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Typically we have overlooked financial crises, such as the credit crisis of 2008. However, these types of man-made disasters have the potential to devastate the global marketplace. Losses in multiple trillions of dollars and in much human suffering and insecurity are already being totaled, and the global financial markets are collapsing as never before seen. We can attribute the 2008 collapse to financially risky behavior of a magnitude never before experienced. The 2008 U.S. credit markets were a financial house of cards. A basic lack of risk management (and regulators' inattention or inability to control these overt failures) lay at the heart of the global credit crisis. This crisis started with lack of improperly underwritten mortgages and excessive debt. Companies depend on loans and lines of credit to conduct their routine business. If such credit lines dry up, production slows down and brings the global economy to the brink of deep recession—or even depression. The snowballing effect of this failure to manage the risk associated with providing mortgage loans to unqualified home buyers have been profound, indeed. When the mortgages failed because of greater risk- taking on the Street, the entire house of cards collapsed. Probably no other risk-related event has had, and will continue to have, as profound an impact world wide as this risk management failure. How was risk in this situation so badly managed? What could firms and individuals have done to protect themselves? How can government measure such risks (beforehand) to regulate and control them? These and other questions come to mind when we contemplate the consequences of this risk man
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Principles of Management
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2015
Principles of Management teaches management principles to tomorrow's business leaders by weaving three threads through every chapter: strategy, entrepreneurship and active leadership. Strategic — All business school teachings have some orientation toward performance and strategy and are concerned with making choices that lead to high performance. Principles of Management will frame performance using the notion of the triple bottom-line — the idea that economic performance allows individuals and organizations to perform positively in social and environmental ways as well. The triple bottom line is financial, social, and environmental performance. It is important for all students to understand the interdependence of these three facets of organizational performance. The Entrepreneurial Manager — While the "General Management" course at Harvard Business School was historically one of its most popular and impactful courses (pioneered in the 1960s by Joe Bower), recent Harvard MBAs did not see themselves as "general managers." This course was relabeled "The Entrepreneurial Manager" in 2006, and has regained its title as one of the most popular courses. This reflects and underlying and growing trend that students, including the undergraduates this book targets, can see themselves as entrepreneurs and active change agents, but not just as managers. By starting fresh with an entrepreneurial/change management orientation, this text provides an exciting perspective on the art of management that students can relate to. At the same time, this perspective is as relevant to existing for-profit organizations (in the form intrapreneurship) as it is to not-for-profits and new entrepreneurial ventures. Active Leadership — Starting with the opening chapter, Principles of Management shows students how leaders and leadership are essential to personal and organizational effectiveness and effective organizational change. Students are increasingly active as leaders at an early age, and are
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Organizational Behavior
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2017
Organizational Behavior bridges the gap between theory and practice with a distinct "experiential" approach. On average, a worker in the USA will change jobs 10 times in 20 years. In order to succeed in this type of career situation, individuals need to be armed with the tools necessary to be life-long learners. To that end, this book is not be about giving students all the answers to every situation they may encounter when they start their first job or as they continue up the career ladder. Instead, this book gives students the vocabulary, framework, and critical thinking skills necessary to diagnose situations, ask tough questions, evaluate the answers received, and to act in an effective and ethical manner regardless of situational characteristics. Often, students taking OB either do not understand how important knowledge of OB can be to their professional careers, or they DO understand and they want to put that knowledge into practice. Organizational Behavior takes a more experiential angle to the material to meet both of those needs. The experiential approach can be incorporated in the classroom primarily through the "OB Toolbox." This feature brings life to the concepts and allows students to not only see how the OB theories unfold, but to practice them, as well.
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Principles of Management
David S. Bright; Anastasia H. Cortes; Eva Hartmann; K. Praveen Parboteeah · OpenStax, Rice University
Principles of Management is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the introductory course on management. This is a traditional approach to management using the leading, planning, organizing, and controlling approach. Management is a broad business discipline, and the Principles of Management course covers many management areas such as human resource management and strategic management, as well as behavioral areas such as motivation. No one individual can be an expert in all areas of management, so an additional benefit of this text is that specialists in a variety of areas have authored individual chapters.
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Principles of Data Science
Dr. Shaun V. Ault; Dr. Soohyun Nam Liao; Larry Musolino; Wisam Bukaita · OpenStax, Rice University
Principles of Data Science is intended to support one- or two-semester courses in data science. It is appropriate for data science majors and minors as well as students concentrating in business, finance, health care, engineering, the sciences, and a number of other fields where data science has become critically important. The authors have included a diverse mix of scenarios, examples, and data types for analysis and discussion purposes. These include both fictional contexts and real-world sources, such as the Federal Reserve Economic Database and Nasdaq. Data sets focus on a range of topics: business, science, social sciences. Applications include healthcare, physical sciences, demographics, policy, and finance. Data ethics and the emergence of artificial intelligence are covered deeply – both in their own chapters and as consistent threads throughout the course material. The authors and contributors have developed rich in-chapter example problems and extensive practice exercises that encourage students to apply concepts in a variety of situations. Technical illustrations and Python code support and supplement the principles and theory. The text also includes direct links to downloadable data sets and Python code, as well as guidance on how to use them.
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Organizational Behavior
J. Stewart Black; David S. Bright; Donald G. Gardner; Eva Hartmann · OpenStax, Rice University
This OpenStax resource aligns to introductory courses in Organizational Behavior. The text presents the theory, concepts, and applications with particular emphasis on the impact that individuals and groups can have on organizational performance and culture. An array of recurring features engages students in entrepreneurial thinking, managing change, using tools/technology, and responsible management.
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Introductory Business Statistics 2e
Alexander Holmes; Barbara Illowsky; Susan Dean; Nancy Foreman · OpenStax, Rice University
Introductory Business Statistics 2e aligns with the topics and objectives of the typical one-semester statistics course for business, economics, and related majors. The text provides detailed and supportive explanations and extensive step-by-step walkthroughs. The author places a significant emphasis on the development and practical application of formulas so that students have a deeper understanding of their interpretation and application of data. Problems and exercises are largely centered on business topics, though other applications are provided in order to increase relevance and showcase the critical role of statistics in a number of fields and real-world contexts. The second edition retains the organization of the original text. Based on extensive feedback from adopters and students, the revision focused on improving currency and relevance, particularly in examples and problems. A detailed transition guide is available for instructors. The first edition of Introductory Business Statistics by OpenStax is available in web view here.
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Introduction to Business 2e
Lawrence J. Gitman; Carl McDaniel; Amit Shah; Monique Reece · OpenStax, Rice University
Introduction to Business 2e provides a strong, multidimensional foundation in the concepts, skills, and real-world examples of contemporary business. Welcoming and relevant narratives support students as they engage in core themes such as decision making, ethics, customer satisfaction, entrepreneurship, global business, and managing technological and societal changes. The material includes hundreds of current business examples from a range of industries and geographic locations. Extensive illustrations, case studies, review materials, and assessments offer instructors and learners the tools needed to develop a deep, practical understanding. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of business concepts, with attention to the knowledge and skills necessary for success in further studies and careers. The Second Edition was written with extensive input from faculty, industry experts, and students. Revisions focus on currency, emerging technologies, changing business practices, and evolving legal and ethical dynamics. The authors emphasize course-wide themes, including the impacts and implications of artificial intelligence, the changing nature of the workplace, and new approaches to team dynamics. A detailed transition guide is available in the instructor resources. Introduction to Business 2e is supported by instructor ancillaries, and is available in OpenStax Assignable. As described in OpenStax’s accessibility statement and related documentation, we focus on inclusive development and detailed evaluation to ensure that our platforms and course materials meet relevant WCAG guidelines.