Teaching the strategic management course can be a challenge for many professors. In most business schools, strategic management is a ŇcapstoneÓ course that requires students to draw on insights from various functional courses they have completed (such as marketing, finance, and accounting) in order to understand how top executives make the strategic decisions that drive whether organizations succeed or fail. Although students have taken these functional courses, many students have very little experience with major organizational choices. It is this inexperience that can undermine many studentsŐ engagement in the course.

Russell Cooper and Andrew John have written an economics text aimed directly at students from its very inception. You’re thinking, “Yeah, sure. I’ve heard that before.”This textbook, Microeconomics: Theory Through Applications, centers around student needs and expectations through two premises:• Students are motivated to study economics if they see that it relates to their own lives.• Students learn best from an inductive approach, in which they are first confronted with a problem, and then led through the process of solving that problem.Many books claim to present economics in a way that is digestible for students; Russell and Andrew have truly created one from scratch. This textbook will assist you in increasing students’ economic literacy both by developing their aptitude for economic thinking and by presenting key insights about economics that every educated individual should know.How? Russell and Andrew have done three things in this text to accomplish that goal:1. Applications Ahead of Theory: They present all the theory that is standard in Principles books. But by beginning with applications, students get to learn why this theory is needed.The authors take the kind of material that other authors put in “applications boxes” and place it at the heart of their book. Each chapter is built around a particular business or policy application, such as minimum wages, the stock exchange, and auctions.Why take this approach? Traditional courses focus too much on abstract theory relative to the interests and capabilities of the average undergraduate. Students are rarely engaged and the formal theory is never integrated into the way students think about economic issues. And traditional books are organized around theoretical constructs that mean nothing to students. The authors’ applications-first approach ensures that students will not see chapters with titles like “Cost Functions” or “Short-Run Fluctuations”. They introduce tools and ideas as and when they are needed. Each chapter is designed with two goals. First, the application upon which the chapter is built provides a “hook” that gets students’ attention. Second, the application is a suitable vehicle a vehicle for teaching the principles of economics.2. Learning through Repetition: Important tools appear over and over again, allowing students to learn from repetition and to see how one framework can be useful in many different contexts.Each piece of economic theory in this text is first introduced and explained in the context of a specific application. Most are re-used in other chapters, so students see them in action on multiple occasions. As students progress through the book, they accumulate a set of techniques and ideas. These are collected separately in a “toolkit” that provides students with an easy reference and also gives them a condensed summary of economic principles for examination preparation.3. A Student’s Table of Contents vs. An Instructor’s Table of Contents: There is no further proof that Russell and Andrew have created a book aimed specifically at educating students about economics than their two tables of contents.The Student’s Table of Contents speaks to students, piquing their interest to involve them in the economics, and a Instructor’s Table of Contents with the economics to better help you organize your teaching—and frankly, you don’t need to get excited by economics, you already are.

Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.

The Open Textbook Network (OTN) promotes access, affordability, and student success through the use of open textbooks.

We believe in the power of open education to transform higher education. Open textbooks not only contribute to student academic success, but also offer faculty the chance to reclaim their courses based on their expertise.

The leadership, actions, and results of our network members drive this transformation, and OTN connects these efforts to pool expertise and promote best practices. Be a part of our community of schools, universities, and institutions making a difference in higher education. Learn about the benefits of membership, get in touch to join, or visit the Open Textbook Library (OTL).

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.

Two leading researchers in Management, Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan, bring you a new Organizational Behavior textbook that 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 by Bauer and Erdogan 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. One great example is the "OB Toolbox" here in the Leadership Chapter.Talya and Berrin's 1.1 version has an additional 14 cases for instructors to mix and match for their Organizational Behavior course. Some of the new cases included are: Nau, Goodwill Industries, Zappos.com, LinkedIn, Camden Property Trust, Steve Katzenberg, Edward Jones Investments, and Starbucks. A matrix to help instructors mix and match the cases is included in the updated Instructors Manual.In addition, discussion question have been added for each case, and the Toyota, Google, and Steve Jobs chapter opening cases have all been revised to reflect the most current information on the companies and people.

This is a comprehensive Personal Finance text which includes a wide range of pedagogical aids to keep students engaged and instructors on track. This book is arranged by learning objectives. The headings, summaries, reviews, and problems all link together via the learning objectives. This helps instructors to teach what they want, and to assign the problems that correspond to the learning objectives covered in class.Personal Finance includes personal finance planning problems with links to solutions, and personal application exercises, with links to their associated worksheet(s) or spreadsheet(s). In addition, the text boasts a large number of links to videos, podcasts, experts’ tips or blogs, and magazine articles to illustrate the practical applications for concepts covered in the text.

Flat World Knowledge is thrilled to publish a first edition re-launch of Tim Tregarthen’s acclaimed Principles of Economics book, and proud to bring Tim's remarkable talents as a teacher to future generations of students.In 1996, Tim published the first edition of his principles of economics textbook to great acclaim, and it became widely used in colleges around the country. That same year, MS made him wheelchair-bound. The disease forced his retirement from teaching at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 1998. He lost the use of his arms in 2001 and has been quadriplegic ever since.Tim never let his disease get him down. In fact, he turned back to his love of writing and teaching for inspiration. He obtained a voice-activated computer, recruited a co-author, Libby Rittenberg of Colorado College, and turned his attention to revising his principles of economics book.Today we are excited to introduce Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen’s Principles of Economics. The authors teach economics as the study of “choice “ by providing students with an accessible, straightforward overview of economics. This text combines the clarity and writing of Tregarthen's seminal periodical "The Margin" with great teaching insights.Rittenberg and Tregarthen help students to understand how real individuals actually work with economics. In this new book, the authors illustrate the practicality and relevance of economics with a variety of new illustrations and insights.The authors take a three-pronged approach to every concept: (1) the concept is covered with a “Heads Up” to ward off confusion, (2) a “You Try It” section makes sure students are staying on top of the concept and (3) a “Case and Point” section that uses a real-world application to harness the concept in reality. For one example of how this plays out in the text see "Chapter 3, Section 2 on Supply." hereThis book is intended for a two-semester course in economics taught out of the social sciences or business school.

Recognizing that a course in economics may seem daunting to some students, we have tried to make the writing clear and engaging. Clarity comes in part from the intuitive presentation style, but we have also integrated a number of pedagogical features that we believe make learning economic concepts and principles easier and more fun. These features are very student-focused. The chapters themselves are written using a “modular” format. In particular, chapters generally consist of three main content sections that break down a particular topic into manageable parts. Each content section contains not only an exposition of the material at hand but also learning objectives, summaries, examples, and problems. Each chapter is introduced with a story to motivate the material and each chapter ends with a wrap-up and additional problems. Our goal is to encourage active learning by including many examples and many problems of different types.

This textbook teaches management principles to tomorrow’s business leaders by weaving three threads through every chapter: strategy, entrepreneurship and active leadership.

This book's modular format easily maps to a POLC course organization (Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling, attributed to Henri Fayol (1949, General and industrial management. London. Pitman Publishing company), and suits the needs of most undergraduate or graduate course in Principles of Management.

Principles of Marketing by Tanner, Raymond and Schuster teaches the experience and process of actually doing marketing - not just the vocabulary. It carries five dominant themes throughout in order to expose students to marketing in today's environment: Service dominant logic, sustainability, ethics and social responsibility, global coverage, and metrics.

Have you ever had trouble teaching the various topics of social psychology and fitting them together to form a coherent field? Dr. Stangor felt like he was presenting a laundry list of ideas, research studies, and phenomena, rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. He wondered how his students could be expected to remember and understand the many phenomena that social psychologists study? How could they tell what was most important? It was then that he realized a fresh approach to a Social Psychology textbook was needed to structure and integrate student learning; thus, Principles of Social Psychology was born. This textbook is based on a critical thinking approach, and its aim is to get students thinking actively and conceptually Đ with a greater focus on the forest than the trees. Yes, there are right and wrong answers, but the answers are not the only thing. What is perhaps even more important is how students get to the answers Đ the thinking process itself. To help students better grasp the big picture of social psychology, and to provide you with a theme that you can use to organize your lectures, Dr. Stangor's text has a consistent pedagogy across the chapters.

Principles of Sociological Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods also provides balanced coverage of qualitative and quantitative approaches by integrating a variety of examples from recent and classic sociological research. The text challenges students to debate and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.

Finally, one of the most important goals Amy had for Principles of Sociological Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods was to introduce students to the core principles of social research in a way that is straightforward and engaging. As such, the text reflects public sociology’s emphasis on making sociology accessible and readable. No one can validate that claim more than a teacher or student. So, take a look for yourself today and review Principles of Sociological Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods by Amy Blackstone to see if its approach toward relevance, balance, and accessibility are right for your course and students.

In a world that is becoming more virtual, more global, and more complex, the project manager's ability to function in this environment becomes critical to the success of the project. Project Management from Simple to Complex explores project management within this complex, virtual, and global environment.

This is not a standard textbook that was adapted to the new publishing paradigm but was designed from the beginning to utilize its capabilities. The book is written in collaboration by an expert in Project Management—Russell Darnall—and an expert in writing instructional texts and using technology for communicating online—John Preston—to create a unique learning environment that prepares students to manage projects in a global, multicultural, and online environment.

Project Management from Simple to Complex features a new model for managing projects, as well as, exploration into the personal dynamics of project management and the role those dynamics play in project outcomes.

Psychology is designed to meet the scope and sequence for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. For many students, this may be their only college-level psychology course. As such, this textbook provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of psychology and understand how those concepts apply to their lives. The authors strive to make psychology, as a discipline, interesting and accessible to students. A comprehensive coverage of core concepts is grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research, including coverage of the DSM-5 in discussions of psychological disorders. The text incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.

The overarching goal of this textbook is to present the basics of psychological research methods focusing on the concepts and skills that are most widely shared within the discipline emphasizing both their centrality to our field and their contribution to our understanding of human behavior. The book will include several features that will help accomplish this overarching goal.The Core Concepts: Dr. Price based his choices about content and terminology on the most influential original books and articles in the research methodology literatureŃas determined by an empirical analysis of the reference lists of secondary sources. He also relied on the Undergraduate Psychology Major Learning Goals and Outcomes document commissioned by the APA.

Social Problems: Continuity and Change by Steve Barkan is a realistic but motivating look at the many issues that are facing our society today. As this book’s subtitle, Continuity and Change, implies, social problems are persistent, but they have also improved in the past and can be improved in the present and future, provided that our nation has the wisdom and will to address them.

It is easy for students to read a social problems textbook and come away feeling frustrated by the enormity of the many social problems facing us today. Social Problems: Continuity and Change certainly does not minimize the persistence of social problems, but neither does it overlook the possibilities for change offered by social research and by the activities of everyday citizens working to make a difference. Readers of Steve Barkan’s book will find many examples of how social problems have been improved and of strategies that hold great potential for solving them today and in the future.

You will find several pedagogical features help to convey the “continuity and change” theme of this text and the service sociology vision in which it is grounded: Each chapter begins with a “Social Problems in the News” story related to the social problem discussed in that chapter. These stories provide an interesting starting point for the chapter’s discussion and show its relevance for real-life issues. Three types of boxes in each chapter provide examples of how social problems have been changed and can be changed.

The founders of sociology in the United States wanted to make a difference. A central aim of the sociologists of the Chicago school was to use sociological knowledge to achieve social reform. A related aim of sociologists like Jane Addams, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others since was to use sociological knowledge to understand and alleviate gender, racial, and class inequality.

Steve Barkan’s Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World makes sociology relevant for today’s students by balancing traditional coverage with a fresh approach that takes them back to sociology’s American roots in the use of sociological knowledge for social reform.

From audience analysis to giving a presentation, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking will guide students through the speech making process. The authors focus on the process of speech making because they have created this book to be a user-friendly guide to creating, researching, and presenting public speeches. While both classic and current academic research in public speaking guide this book, the authors believe that a new textbook in public speaking should first, and foremost, be a practical book that helps students prepare and deliver a variety of different types of speeches — and that is the primary goal of this book.With practicality in mind, the authors developed, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, as a streamlined public speaking textbook. Many public speaking textbooks today contain over twenty different chapters, which is often impossible to cover in a ten-week quarter or a sixteen-week semester; this textbook is eighteen unique chapters. The fifteen chapters are divided into four clear units of information: introduction to public speaking, speech preparation, speech creation, and speech presentation.

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was written to squarely emphasize media technology. Jack believes that an introduction to mass communication text should be a compelling, historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver with his new textbook.

Today’s students are immersed in media technology. They live in a world of cell phones, smart phones, video games, iPods, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and more. They fully expect that new technology will be developed tomorrow. Yet students often lack an historical perspective on media technology. They lack knowledge of the social, political and economic forces that shape media technology. This is not knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is knowledge that can help them understand, comprehend, appreciate, anticipate, shape and control media technology.

With this focus, Understanding Media and Culture becomes an appropriate title. Indeed, the title has particular significance. Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media is a key text in media studies. Written in the 1960s, Understanding Media was the subject of intense debates that continue to this day. Its central message was that the technology of media — not their content — was their most important feature. In a typically pithy phrase, McLuhan said, ”The medium is the message.“ The title, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, situates the introductory text in a large, engrossing theoretical conversation.

The goal is to adopt a textbook that will support and complement your teaching of this course. Jack Lule’s, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, will support an engaging and interesting course experience for students that will not only show them the powerful social, political and economic forces will affect the future of media technology, but will challenge students to do their part in shaping that future.