Version Notes
The book you are reading is the fourth edition of Fundamentals of Business. This book was adapted from the third edition which is available at: https://doi.org/10.21061/fundamentals-of-business3e-vtechworks.
Below is a record of changes made in updating the book from the 3rd Edition to the 4th Edition. Please see the Acknowledgments section for a listing of openly-licensed texts incorporated into sections of the book. Sources of additional content are cited within each chapter.
Overall or Major Changes
- Updated data to the most recently available throughout the book;
- Updated graphics and photos;
- Added interactive, live-data graphs for key economic indicators in Chapter 3: Economics and Business;
- Reorganized and added significant additional content to Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility;
- Renamed and substantially expanded content in Chapter 7: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development;
- Added additional content to chapters 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, and 17;
- Addition of completely new chapter — Chapter 19: Technology in Business;
Specific chapter-level changes
Chapters 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 15, and 18
- Minor edits plus changes as described above
Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility
- Moved these sections forward in the chapter
- Addressing Ethical Dilemmas
- Making Ethical Decisions
- Revisiting Johnson & Johnson
- Refusing to Rationalize
- Expanded section on Ethical Tests to Help With Decision Making
- Added
- Quote from Warren Buffett
- “Issues of Honesty and Integrity” and graphic for the two-frogs story
- Sections: Time and Pressure, Theft, and Lying and Deception
- Section: Your Actions Matter–See Something, Say Something and new subsection on Legislative Action for Organizational Change
- Section: Government Changes Helped Introduce New Business Stakeholders, including the Rise of Government Intervention in Business, The Rise of the Consumer, Intervention in Business by Academia and Mass Media
- Reorganized: ethical frameworks in a section: Frameworks for Business Ethics, which covers CSR, ESG, and CSV.
- Added Figure on Top 10 publicly traded companies fighting climate change in 2022
- Included Prevention of Sexual Harassment, and Workforce Diversity under areas of corporate responsibility subsection titled “Employees”
Chapter 5: Business in a Global Environment
- Removed case study: Economic and International Impact of US Hospitality & Tourism
Chapter 6: Forms of Business Ownership
- Replaced end-of-chapter video
Chapter 7: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development
- Renamed chapter “Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development”
- What is entrepreneurship? What does Entrepreneurial mean?
- Who is an entrepreneur?
- When does entrepreneurship occur? When does it end?
- Where does entrepreneurship occur?
- Types of entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
- How to do entrepreneurship?
- Startup Financing
- Beyond Founding
- Added sections:
- Updated end-of-chapter Key Takeaways
Chapter 8: Management and Leadership
- Added section/subsection on
- Managers and Information Technology
- Project Management
Chapter 10: Operations Management
- Added subsection: Site Selection Example
- Replaced Chick-fil-A blog post with shorter description of Southwest Airlines orientation toward customer needs
Chapter 12: Managing Human Resources
- Added definitions and subsection on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) in Action
- Added end-of-chapter video
Chapter 13: Union/Management Issues
- Added of two end-of-chapter video news interviews that provide are more current perspective of union activity
Chapter 14: Marketing: Providing Value to Customers
- Replaced dated social media examples featuring Starbucks with a chart listing Top Social Media Campaigns of 2021
- Added section: Advertisers Jump on Podcasts and Videos
Chapter 16: Hospitality and Tourism
- Updated global impact of tourism graphic to acknowledge pre-Covid-19 pandemic tourism with global tourism in 2020.
- Expanded section on Wineries, Cideries, Local Craft Beer, and Distilleries
Chapter 17: Accounting and Financial Information
- Added sections:
- Careers in Financial Management
- How do finance and the financial manager affect the firm’s overall strategy?
- Added end-of-chapter video
Chapter 19: Technology in Business
- This chapter is completely new to the fourth edition. Parts of this chapter are adapted from Chapter 13 of Lawrence J. Gitman, et. al. (2018). Introduction to Business. OpenStax. CC BY 4.0. Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-business/pages/1-introduction.
