Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation
Tom Theis; Jonathan Tomkin · OpenStax CNX · 2015
With “Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation”, first and second-year college students are introduced to this expanding new field, comprehensively exploring the essential concepts from every branch of knowledge – including engineering and the applied arts, natural and social sciences, and the humanities. As sustainability is a multi-disciplinary area of study, the text is the product of multiple authors drawn from the diverse faculty of the University of Illinois: each chapter is written by a recognized expert in the field. This text is designed to introduce the reader to the essential concepts of sustainability. This subject is of vital importance seeking as it does to uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet but is only peripherally served by existing college textbooks. The content is intended to be useful for both a broad-based introductory class on sustainability and as a useful supplement to specialist courses which wish to review the sustainability dimensions of their areas of study. By covering a wide range of topics with a uniformity of style, and by including glossaries, review questions, case studies, and links to further resources, the text has sufficient range to perform as the core resource for a semester course. Students who cover the material in the book will be conversant in the language and concepts of sustainability, and will be equipped for further study in sustainable planning, policy, economics, climate, ecology, infrastructure, and more. Furthermore, the modular design allows individual chapters and sections to be easily appropriated without the purchase of a whole new text. This allows educators to easily bring sustainability concepts, references, and case studies into their area of study. This appropriation works particularly well as the text is free downloadable to anyone who wishes to use it. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to work with the text. Provided there is attribution to the source, use
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Think Complexity: Exploring Complexity Science with Python
Allen Downey · Green Tea Press · 2018
Complexity science uses computation to explore the physical and social sciences. In Think Complexity, you'll use graphs, cellular automata, and agent-based models to study topics in physics, biology, and economics. Whether you're an intermediate-level Python programmer or a student of computational modeling, you'll delve into examples of complex systems through a series of worked examples, exercises, case studies, and easy-to-understand explanations. In this updated second edition, you will: Work with NumPy arrays and SciPy methods, including basic signal processing and Fast Fourier Transform Study abstract models of complex physical systems, including power laws, fractals and pink noise, and Turing machines Get Jupyter notebooks filled with starter code and solutions to help you re-implement and extend original experiments in complexity; and models of computation like Turmites, Turing machines, and cellular automata Explore the philosophy of science, including the nature of scientific laws, theory choice, and realism and instrumentalism Ideal as a text for a course on computational modeling in Python, Think Complexity also helps self-learners gain valuable experience with topics and ideas they might not encounter otherwise.
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Gateway to Business Analytics with Microsoft Excel®
Humberto Barreto · PALNI · 2025
Business analytics is a new, expanding subfield with fuzzy edges that overlap into a variety of other established disciplines, including economics, econometrics, computer science, data science, finance, statistics, mathematics, and even psychology. Business analytics includes such traditional techniques as regression and data visualization, but also newer methods such as web scraping, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Its key distinguishing feature is using data to make and communicate business decisions. This textbook utilizes Microsoft Excel to present a mix of topics appropriate to an undergraduate level introduction to business analytics course with an engaging delivery style.
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Business Fundamentals
Kerri Shields · eCampusOntario · 2025
Business Fundamentals is an all-encompassing introductory textbook designed to introduce readers to the business world. Geared toward college and university students, especially those with little to no prior experience in business, this resource lays a strong foundation for individuals embarking on their academic journey with ambitions of pursuing a business career. The book delves into key functional areas of business, illustrating how departments within organizations work together to generate sales, boost revenue, manage finances, develop innovative products and services, attract and retain customers, manage resources, and make sound decisions. It also addresses essential topics such as corporate social responsibility, business ethics, teamwork, risk management, personal finance, and strategies for academic and professional achievement. Furthermore, it provides an introduction to entrepreneurship and highlights the pivotal roles of managers and leaders in business operations. Tailored for first-year students, the text includes Canadian-specific insights on economics and banking while maintaining a global outlook with examples from Canada, the United States, and other countries. By blending content from various open educational resources (OERs) with original material, this textbook offers a thorough and engaging overview of the business field.
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Business Finance
Sagarika Mishra; Hoa Nguyen · Deakin University · 2023
Developed for an international cohort, this text is designed to explain business finance concepts in an easily understood manner without overwhelming students with too much content.
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Fundamentals of Finance
Annette Nguyen · Deakin University · 2024
This textbook is designed to serve as an additional resource for the course "Fundamentals of Finance." It provides an introduction to the field of finance, encompassing a broad range of key topics. These include the time value of money, bond and equity valuations, risk and returns, and various sources of capital. This book aims to enhance the learning experience by offering a thorough understanding of these fundamental financial principles.
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Liquidity, Markets and Trading in Action
Deniz Ozenbas ; Michael Pagano; Robert Schwartz ; Bruce Weber · Springer · 2022
This open access book addresses four standard business school subjects: microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance and information systems as they relate to trading, liquidity, and market structure. It provides a detailed examination of the impact of trading costs and other impediments of trading that the authors call “frictions”. It also presents an interactive simulation model of equity market trading, TraderEx, that enables students to implement trading decisions in different market scenarios and structures. Addressing these topics shines a bright light on how a real-world financial market operates, and the simulation provides students with an experiential learning opportunity that is informative and fun. Each of the chapters is designed so that it can be used as a stand-alone module in an existing economics, finance, or information science course. Instructor resources such as discussion questions, Powerpoint slides and TraderEx exercises are available online.
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Fundamentals of Business
Stephen Skripak; Richard Parsons; Anastasia Cortes · BCcampus · 2018
An introductory textbook in business that covers a variety of topics: The Foundations of Business, Economics and Business, Ethics and Social Responsibility, Business in a Global Environment, Forms of Business Ownership, Entrepreneurship: Starting a Business, Management and Leadership, Structuring Organizations, Operations Management, Motivating Employees, Managing Human Resources, Union/Management Issues, Marketing: Providing Value, Accounting and Financial Information, and Personal Finances.
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Money and Banking
Robert Wright · Saylor Foundation · 2012
The financial crisis of 2007-8 has already revolutionized institutions, markets, and regulation. Wright's Money and Banking V 2.0 captures those revolutionary changes and packages them in a way that engages undergraduates enrolled in Money and Banking and Financial Institutions and Markets courses. Minimal mathematics, accessible language, and a student-oriented tone ease readers into complex subjects like money, interest rates, banking, asymmetric information, financial crises and regulation, monetary policy, monetary theory, and other standard topics. Numerous short cases, called "Stop and Think" boxes, promote internalization over memorization. Exercise drills ensure basic skills competency where appropriate. Short, snappy sections that begin with a framing question enhance readability and encourage assignment completion. The 2.0 version of this text boasts substantive revisions (additions, deletions, rearrangements) of almost every chapter based on the suggestions of many Money and Banking instructors. Some specific highlights are: Chapter 11 now contains enhanced descriptions of recent regulatory changes, including Dodd-Frank, Chapter 12 is an entirely new chapter on derivatives covering forwards, futures, options, and swaps that also including comprehensive treatment of the causes and consequences of financial crises, and Chapter 14 has updated discussions of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy tools, including paying interest on reserves, and the structure and leadership of the European Central Bank. Recent financial turmoil has increased student interest in the financial system but simultaneously threatens to create false impressions and negative attitudes. This up-to-date text by a dynamic, young author encourages students to critique the financial system without rejecting its many positive attributes. Peruse the book online now to see for yourself if this book fits the needs of your course and students. This textbook has been used in classes at:Augustana
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An Introduction to Cooperation and Mutualism
Michael Boland · University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2017
This textbook introduces readers to the idea of cooperation and mutualism. Cooperatives and mutuals are participatory organizations in which members participate in control and governance, receive economic benefits through patronage refunds or net income, and become owners through equity. These mutual-benefit organizations exist alongside non-profit organizations and investor-benefit organizations through the global economy.
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Introductory Business Statistics
Lex Holmes; Barbara Illowsky; Susan Dean · OpenStax · 2023
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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Fundamentals of Business
Stephen Skripak; Ron Poff · Virginia Tech Libraries · 2023
Fundamentals of Business, 4th Edition is an open education resource intended to serve as a no-cost, faculty-customizable primary text for one-semester undergraduate introductory business courses. It covers the following topics in business: Teamwork; economics; ethics; entrepreneurship; business ownership, management, and leadership; organizational structures and operations management; human resources and motivating employees; managing in labor union contexts; marketing and pricing strategy; hospitality and tourism, accounting and finance, personal finances, and technology in business. The textbook was designed for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business introductory level business course, MGT1104 Foundations of Business and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 license. If you are an instructor reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook, please help us understand your use by filling out this form http://bit.ly/business-interest. A testbank is now available by request for this book: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93404. The testbank covers chapters 1-18 and (currently) aligns to previous editions of the textbook. It is available to any instructor who has adopted Fundamentals of Business in their course.
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Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy
Guillermo Jimenez; Elizabeth Pulos · Open SUNY · 2016
This textbook provides an innovative, internationally oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies involving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical, and business dynamics underlying CSR in such areas as global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food production, free trade and fair trade, anti-sweatshop and living-wage movements, organic foods and textiles, ethical marketing practices and codes, corporate speech and lobbying, and social enterprise. The book is designed to encourage students and instructors to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices by stimulating a class debate based on each case study.
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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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Fundamentals of Global Strategy
Cornelis de Kluyver · Saylor Foundation · 2012
The globalization of the competitive landscape has forced companies to fundamentally rethink their strategies. Whereas once only a few industries such as oil could be labeled truly global, today many—from pharmaceuticals to aircraft to computers—have become global in scale and scope. As a consequence, creating a global competitive advantage has become a key strategic issue for many companies, and students need to possess an understanding of the impact of global strategies on a business. Crafting a global strategy requires making decisions about which strategy elements can and should be globalized and to what extent, and de Kluyver's Fundamentals of Global Strategy can help you illuminate these facts to your students. Fundamentals of Global Strategy poses the following questions for your students to analyze: What markets and/or regions should a company compete in and why? To what degree can and should products and services be standardized? Is it advantageous to adopt a more or less uniform market positioning worldwide? What value-added activities should it keep in-house, outsource, or relocate for competitive advantage? How can competitive responses be most effectively coordinated on a global basis?
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The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business
Terence Lau; Lisa Johnson · Saylor Foundation · 2011
Terence Lau & Lisa Johnson's The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business is a book for today's student, who expects learning to be comprised not only of substance, but also of interactive exercises and multimedia. This book streamlines the presentation of material to ensure that every page is relevant, engaging, and interesting to undergraduate business students, without losing the depth of coverage that they need to be successful in their academic journeys and in their professional careers. This is not Legal Environment of Business (LEB) ”light.“ Rather, this is LEB without risk of students' eyes glazing over in boredom or from lack of comprehension. This is LEB presented in an exciting way, where every page is interesting to students and relevant to real life. The authors recognize that the sheer volume of information to be covered in a LEB course makes it one of the more challenging courses for the business undergraduate. Not only do typical LEB texts read like the first year curriculum at law school, but also the LEB course is grounded in the humanities, which can make the subject even more demanding for students who are also taking statistics, economics, finance, and accounting. Each chapter contains not only substantive law, but also illustrative videos, interactive exercises for hands-on learning, and discussion questions for critical thought. Additionally, each chapter presents ”A Question of Ethics“ section, which contains real world ethical dilemmas relevant to the topic under study. These videos, exercises, discussion questions, and ethics sections all provide opportunities for students to apply concepts that they are learning in the context of relevant LEB topics that shape or restrain actual decision-makers' actions. It's real world practice in the safety of the classroom environment. Lau & Johnson's The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business is a textbook that students will enjoy reading. This will encourage them to come to class prepared, and fre
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U.S. History
P. Scott Corbett; Volker Janssen; John M. Lund; Todd Pfannestiel · OpenStax, Rice University
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
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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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Politische und ökonomische Rahmenbedingungen des Sozial- und Gesundheitswesens in der Schweiz
Konstantin Kehl · Springer · 2023
Das Buch bietet eine kompakte Einführung in die zentralen politischen und ökonomischen Begriffe, Konzepte und Diskurse des schweizerischen Sozial- und Gesundheitswesens. Es spannt den Bogen von den demokratischen Grundsätzen und Eigenheiten des politischen Systems, über die Sozialhilfe, Sozialversicherungen sowie ökonomischen Strukturmerkmale des Gesundheits- und Sozialwesens, bis hin zu Fragen sozialer Ungleichheit und sozialer Gerechtigkeit. Es legt besonderes Augenmerk auf aktuelle Beispiele und Trends, welche professionelles Handeln sowie ein zukunftsweisendes Management beeinflussen.
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Gestión estratégica del talento humano alineado al desarrollo organizacional
César Andrés Guerrero-Velástegui; Ibett Mariela Jácome-Lara; Fernando Neptalí Terán-Guerrero; Edisson Andrés Frias-Pérez · Editorial Grupo AEA · 2025
El presente libro tiene como propósito brindar a estudiantes y profesionales una base conceptual y metodológica para comprender la gestión estratégica del talento humano en las organizaciones actuales. Analiza las características modernas de la gestión de personal y su impacto en las relaciones laborales, utilizando modelos y métodos funcionales para diagnosticar, planificar y controlar el talento humano. Se explora la gestión de recursos humanos desde una perspectiva estratégica, resaltando la importancia del liderazgo y el trabajo en equipo. Se presentan herramientas tecnológicas, como el Mapa de Beer, para mejorar la planificación y control del talento humano, además, se detallan estrategias para la optimización de plantillas y la toma de decisiones con análisis avanzados como el modelo de Markov. En un mundo globalizado, las ventajas competitivas no residen solo en los recursos materiales, financieros o técnicos, sino en la formación y gestión del talento humano. Por ello, este libro busca desarrollar un enfoque sistemático y estratégico que permita diagnosticar, predecir y gestionar eficazmente el talento humano, potenciando el crecimiento organizacional a través del desarrollo del capital humano.