Concept

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.

Author

My varied experiences throughout my career have provided me with insights in many industries, companies, and job roles. Some of the positions I have held include the following:

• Factory line worker. Working in a computer manufacturing plant (twice, two different factories).
• Corporate trainer. Training employees on good manufacturing practices, exceeding customer expectations, database design, office software applications, customer service in the call center, and life skills.
• Office administrator. In various companies (i.e., art gallery, hospital, law firm, college).
• Call center supervisor. Working within a credit and collections team.
• Office cleaner. Cleaning offices for several companies.
• Customer service representative. Working at various restaurants and service businesses.
• Recruitment specialist. Working for an HR solutions firm.
• College professor. Teaching and coordinating programs for three different colleges in Ontario.
• Project manager. Managing many projects including a ISO9000 accreditation and a Certiport Authorized Test Center.

The variety of job roles I have held and the variety of business projects I have completed have permitted me to gain knowledge and skills from many different types of businesses.  I have a keen understanding of business  practices, operations management, project management, customer service, marketing practices, tracking revenue and expenses, starting an online business, and how global business in conducted.

I hope you find this OER book interesting and helpful. I will try my best to update it from time to time.

Sincerely,

Kerri Shields

Book Versions

Below is a record of edits and changes made to this book since its initial publication. Whenever edits or updates are made in the text, a record and description of those changes will be noted here. The edition number will only change when there is a major update to the book.  The ancillary files (i.e., test bank, slides) that accompany this book always reflect the most recent version.

Chapter Features and Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Chapter Learning Outcomes — The learning outcomes listed within each chapter align with the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives for Knowledge-based goals (knowledge and comprehension) based on the activity of simply reading the chapter.  Should readers complete the exercises within the chapters and at the end of the chapters, higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy can be reached (application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation).
• Example-rich narrative
• Embedded videos with PDF transcripts
• Graphic elements that illustrate and reinforce concepts
• H5P Self-assessments (e.g., quiz, game, or other H5P content)
• Explore the Concept and End-of-Chapter Exercises
• Chapter Key Takeaways
• Additional resource links and Chapter references for additional reading
• Embedded navigation and image alt-text for screen readers
• Free online, PDF, and various other book formats
• Chapter PowerPoint slides
• Glossary of Terms
• Open license, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License permits adoption, adaptation, and sharing

eCampus Ontario

eCampusOntario is a provincially-funded non-profit organization that leads a consortium of the province’s publicly-funded colleges, universities, and indigenous institutes to develop and test online learning tools to advance the use of education technology and digital learning environments.^[1]

This textbook is part of the eCampusOntario open textbook library, which provides free learning resources in a wide range of subject areas. These open textbooks can be assigned by instructors for their classes and can be downloaded by learners to electronic devices.  These educational resources are customizable to meet a wide range of learning needs.

If you decide to adopt this book for a course or training program (or other) please report your adoption at the eCampus website. eCampusOntario is keen to report students’ savings and connect with successful OER adopters.

Accessibility Statement

Every attempt has been made to make this OER accessible to all learners and compatible with assistive and adaptive technologies. The Pressbooks content management system was chosen for its commitment to built-in accessibility. The Web version of this resource has been designed to meet accessibility requirements under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). In addition to the web version, additional files are available in a number of file formats including PDF, EPUB (for eReaders), and Course Cartridge (for LMS).

If you are having problems accessing this resource, please contact kshields@centennialcollege.ca.  Please include the following information:  The location of the problem by providing a web address or page description.  A description of the problem. The computer, software, browser, and any assistive technology you are using that can help us diagnose and solve your issue (e.g., Windows 10, Google Chrome (Version 65.0.3325.181), NVDA screen reader)

Each chapter has been evaluated using WAVE® and modified as needed to meet zero errors in accordance with WCAG AA. “WAVE®  is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. Our philosophy is to focus on issues that we know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.”^[2]

• All images that convey information include alternative text (alt text) descriptions of the image’s content or function.  Graphs and charts also include contextual or supporting details in the text surrounding the image.  Images do not rely on colour to convey information.
• All colours meet WCAG contrast requirements.
• Content is organized under headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings are used sequentially (e.g., Heading 1, Heading 2).
• Embedded videos are from YouTube and do have closed captioning available, although many YouTube videos have captions that are auto-generated and these do not always translate correctly.  To combat this issue, PDF (English) transcripts have been posted for download with each chapter video.
• Tables are used to structure information and not for layout. Tables include row and column headers. Row and column headers have the correct scope assigned. Tables include a caption. Tables avoid merged or split cells. Tables have adequate cell padding.
• All Web links describe the destination of the link and do not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more”. If a link will open or download a file (e.g., PDF), a textual reference is included in the link information (e.g., [PDF–New Tab]).
• In-text citations are embedded using the Footnote feature of Pressbooks, therefore, footnotes appear as References at the end of each chapter with Web links to the original sources.
• Font size is 12 points or higher for body text in PDF documents. Font size can be enlarged to 200 percent in Webbook or Ebook formats without needing to scroll side to side.
• An H5P element is included with each chapter as a quick review of the chapter’s content.  These are accessible based on the H5P type.  The goal for the accessible content types is WCAG 2.1 AA support, so the content types have been tested against these criteria and more by the H5P.org developers. Refer to the accessible content types list for additional information.
• PowerPoint slides have been checked with the Microsoft Accessibility checker to ensure proper colour contrast. Images contain ALT text. Fonts are 24 points or larger. PDF Transcripts are linked with each embedded Video. PDF copies of each slide deck are also provided.

Attributions

This book is compiled through combining various chapters of different OERs to obtain much of each chapter’s content, although, new content has been added throughout and many statistics, charts, references, and examples have been updated for currency. Thank you to all those who contributed to the open educational resource platforms thereby creating a wealth of information and learning tools.

References

(Note: This reference list was produced using the auto-footnote and media citation features of Pressbooks)