Ethics is about determining value; it's deciding what's worth doing and what doesn't matter so much.Business ethics is the way we decide what kind of career to pursue, what choices we make on the job,which companies we want to work with, and what kind of economic world we want to live in and thenleave behind for those coming after. There are no perfect answers to these questions, but there's adifference between thinking them through and winging it. The Business Ethics Workshop provides aframework for identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical dilemmas encountered through working life.

In this course students will learn how to: Demonstrate an understanding of law, its historical development, judicial process, and the role of law in a complex social system, with emphasis on the American legal system and its institutions; Demonstrate the ability to analyze fact patterns in accordance with the legal professional case analysis method; to apply appropriate vocabulary and substantive legal principles; and then to analyze, compare, and evaluate the logic, reasoning, and arguments of other students, in accordance with established legal principles; Demonstrate the ability to complete a group project with other students, by identifying the applicable legal issues in a case or proposed statute, debating those issues, and producing a live course presentation; Identify and describe the basic principles of major business law subjects, such as constitutional authority to regulate business; common law contracts; the Uniform Commercial Code; agency; business associations; real and personal property and business-related torts; And identify and describe approaches to business ethics, social responsibility, and justice, and, demonstrate the ability, when confronted with an ethical dilemma, to weigh the arguments for alternative courses of action, and logically and persuasively argue for a particular course of conduct.

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.

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.

The author's goals in writing Exploring Business were simple: (1) introduce students to business in an exciting way and (2) provide faculty with a fully developed teaching package that allows them to do the former. Toward those ends, the following features are included in this text:1- Integrated (Optional) Nike Case Study: A Nike case study is available for instructors who wish to introduce students to business using an exciting and integrated case. Through an in-depth study of a real company, students learn about the functional areas of business and how these areas fit together. Studying a dynamic organization on a real-time basis allows students to discover the challenges that it faces, and exposes them to critical issues affecting the business, such as globalization, ethics and social responsibility, product innovation, diversity, supply chain management, and e-business.2- A Progressive (Optional) Business Plan: Having students develop a business plan in the course introduces students to the excitement and challenges of starting a business and helps them discover how the functional areas of business interact. This textbook package includes an optionalintegrated business plan project modeled after one refined by the author and her teaching team over the past ten years.3- AACSB Emphasis: The text provides end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases that ask students to do more than regurgitate information. Most require students to gather information, assess a situation, think about it critically, and reach a conclusion. Each chapter presents ten Questions and Problems as well as five cases on areas of skill and knowledge endorsed by AACSB: Learning on the Web, Career Opportunities, The Ethics Angle, Team-Building Skills, and The Global View. More than 70% of end-of-chapter items help students build skills in areas designated as critical by AACSB, including analytical skills, ethical awareness and reasoning abilities, multicultural understanding and globalization, use of information technology, and communications and team oriented skills. Each AACSB inspired exercise is identified by an AACSB tag and a note indicating the relevant skill area.4- Author-Written Instructor Manual (IM): For the past eleven years, Karen Collins has been developing, coordinating and teaching (to over 3,500 students) an Introduction to Business course. Sections of the course have been taught by a mix of permanent faculty, graduate students, and adjuncts.

The author's goals in writing Exploring Business were simple: (1) introduce students to business in an exciting way and (2) provide faculty with a fully developed teaching package that allows them to do the former. Toward those ends, the following features are included in this text:1- Integrated (Optional) Nike Case Study: A Nike case study is available for instructors who wish to introduce students to business using an exciting and integrated case. Through an in-depth study of a real company, students learn about the functional areas of business and how these areas fit together. Studying a dynamic organization on a real-time basis allows students to discover the challenges that it faces, and exposes them to critical issues affecting the business, such as globalization, ethics and social responsibility, product innovation, diversity, supply chain management, and e-business.2- A Progressive (Optional) Business Plan: Having students develop a business plan in the course introduces students to the excitement and challenges of starting a business and helps them discover how the functional areas of business interact. This textbook package includes an optionalintegrated business plan project modeled after one refined by the author and her teaching team over the past ten years.3- AACSB Emphasis: The text provides end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases that ask students to do more than regurgitate information. Most require students to gather information, assess a situation, think about it critically, and reach a conclusion. Each chapter presents ten Questions and Problems as well as five cases on areas of skill and knowledge endorsed by AACSB: Learning on the Web, Career Opportunities, The Ethics Angle, Team-Building Skills, and The Global View. More than 70% of end-of-chapter items help students build skills in areas designated as critical by AACSB, including analytical skills, ethical awareness and reasoning abilities, multicultural understanding and globalization, use of information technology, and communications and team oriented skills. Each AACSB inspired exercise is identified by an AACSB tag and a note indicating the relevant skill area.4- Author-Written Instructor Manual (IM): For the past eleven years, Karen Collins has been developing, coordinating and teaching (to over 3,500 students) an Introduction to Business course. Sections of the course have been taught by a mix of permanent faculty, graduate students, and adjuncts.

Fundamentals of Business (2016) is an openly licensed (CC BY NC SA 3.0) textbook designed for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business introductory level business course, MGT1104 Foundations of Business.
This work is a project of University Libraries and the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech.

A new version of this book was released in August 2018. See http://hdl.handle.net/10919/84848 for more details.

If you are an instructor reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook, please help us understand a little more about your use by filling out this form http://bit.ly/business-interest

See also the faculty sharing portal at: https://www.oercommons.org/groups/fundamentals-of-business-user-group/1379

Operation of the business firm; function of the businessperson; nature of economic system and private enterprise; orientation to collegiate business education.  

Subject enhances students' ability to take effective action in complex organizational settings by providing the analytic tools needed to analyze, manage, and lead the organizations of the future. Emphasis on the importance of the organizational context in influencing which individual styles and skills are effective. Employs a wide variety of learning tools, from experiential learning to the more conventional discussion of written cases. Subject centers on three complementary perspectives on organizations: the strategic design, political, and cultural "lenses" on organizations. Restricted to first-year Sloan master's students.

Table of Contents:

I. Society and Business Readings
1. Adopting a Stakeholder Orientation
2. Weighing Stakeholder Claims
3. Corporate Social Responsibility
4. Carroll’s Pyramid of CSR
5. Legitimacy and Corporate Governance
6. Corporate Governance and Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Other Recent Reforms
7. Red Flags in Management
8. Multiple Versus Single Ethical Standards
9. Ethical Principles and Responsible Decision-Making
10. A Framework for Making Ethical Decisions
11. Recent Governance Reforms: An Executive Summary
12. Debating CSR: Methods and Strategies
13. Corporations and Politics: After Citizens United
14. Marketing Ethics: Selling Controversial Products
15. The Influence of Advertising
16. The Insurance Industry
17. Ethical Issues in the Provision of Health Care
18. The Workplace Environment and Working Conditions
19. What Constitutes a Fair Wage?
20. An Organized Workforce
21. Privacy in the Workplace
22. Loyalty to the Company
23. Loyalty to the Brand and to Customers
24. Contributing to a Positive Work Atmosphere
25. Financial Integrity
26. Criticism of the Company and Whistleblowing
27. Diversity and Inclusion in the Workforce
28. Accommodating Different Abilities and Faiths
29. Sexual Identification and Orientation
30. Income Inequalities
31. Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Workplace of the Future
32. Corporations and their Social Responsibility