Im Contemporary Business

Learn the business language you need to feel confident in taking the first steps toward becoming successful business majors and successful business people with Boone and Kurtz's best-selling CONTEMPORARY BUSINESS and its accompanying Audio CD-ROM. You'll find all the most important introductory business topics, using the most current and interesting examples happening right now in the business world! With this textbook, you'll hone skills that will make you more successful as students and employees.

"Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos continues to lead a company that has gone from clever garage-based startup to global e-commerce and technology powerhouse. His journey in transforming the budding company focused simply on selling books over the internet to one of the world's most influential companies highlights two of the greatest forces that are influencing business today: globalization and technology. Innovative companies like Amazon contribute greatly to the national and global economy. A growing economy, one with increased production of goods and services over time, also yields income for its business owners and their employees. Businesses are how we make and share new wealth through things like products, services, pay for employees, and taxes that go to the government at different levels. A country depends on the wealth its businesses generate, from giants like the Walt Disney Company, to nimble, fast-growing, online startups like Airbnb, and even local mom-and-pop diners where you live. What all these companies and many others share is a creative approach to meeting society's needs and wants"--

This text is an unbound, binder-ready edition. We've listened. Boone/Kurtz, Essentials of Contemporary Business is the flexible, current, and easy-to-use resource that today’s students and teachers want. Our commitment to delivering solutions at the speed of business has produced the perfect combination of current material, illustrative examples and a storytelling narrative -- all in a brief, valued-priced package. Covering all of the major topics of the introduction to business course, Boone/Kurtz, Essentials of Contemporary Business offers shorter chapters and a visually pleasing design paired with a comprehensive suite of resources to help you make business concepts come alive. Experience a textbook program that supports your goals to stimulate curiosity, show relevance, promote creativity, and prepare students for what's ahead, in both their academic and business careers.

Business has a bad name for many people. It is easy to point to unethical and damaging behavior by companies. And it may seem straightforward to blame either indivuduals or, more generally, ruthless markets and amoral commercial society. In Honorable Business, James R. Otteson argues that business activity can be valuable in itself. The primary purpose of honorable businesses is to create value-for all parties. They look for mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial transactions, so that all sides of any exchange benefit, leading to increasing prosperity not just for one person or for one group at the expense of others but simultaneously for everyone involved. Done correctly, honorable business is a positive-sum activity that can enable flourishing for individuals and prosperity for society. Otteson connects honorable business with the political, economic, and cultural institutions that contribute to a just and humane society. He builds on Aristotle's conception of human beings as purposive creatures who are capable of constructing a plan for their lives that gives them a chance of achieving the highest good for humanity, focusing on autonomy and accountability, as well as good moral judgment. This good judgment can enable us to answer the why of what we do, not just the how. He also draws on Adam Smith's moral philosophy and political economy, and argues that Smithian institutions have played a significant role in the remarkable increase in worldwide prosperity we have seen over the last two hundred years. Otteson offers a pragmatic Code of Business Ethics, linked to a specific conception of professionalism, and defends this Code on the basis of a moral mandate to use one's limited resources of time, talent, and treasure to provide value for oneself only by simultaneously providing value to others. The result is well-articulated parameters within which business can be an acceptable-perhaps even praiseworthy-activity.