Preface
Understanding Business serves as a comprehensive introduction to the dynamic world of business. Designed with first-year college and university students in mind—particularly those new to the subject—this textbook provides a solid starting point for learners aspiring to build a career in business.
The book explores the core functions of business operations, demonstrating how various departments collaborate to drive sales, manage financial resources, innovate products and services, engage customers, and make strategic decisions. It also covers vital themes such as ethical business practices, corporate social responsibility, teamwork, risk management, and personal financial literacy. In addition, readers are introduced to the principles of entrepreneurship and the critical roles that managers and leaders play in organizational success.
With a focus on Canadian economic and banking systems, the text offers localized insights while maintaining a global perspective through examples drawn from Canada, the U.S., and beyond.
This open educational resource (OER), edited by Anela Tomac, is based on Business Fundamentals by Kerri Shields. Both Understanding Business and Business Fundamentals trace their origins to the 2018 Canadian edition of Virginia Tech’s Fundamentals of Business.
In response to the evolving business landscape, Kerri Shields enhanced the original content by integrating material from additional OERs, updating statistics, and expanding coverage in areas such as entrepreneurship, marketing, management, personal finance, sustainability, and ethics. She also introduced new chapters on business success and risk management.
Building on this foundation, Anela Tomac reorganized and restructured the table of contents and further developed the resource to meet the needs of today’s introductory business courses, incorporating career spotlight vignettes, sustainability and entrepreneurial initiatives, and short case studies with discussion questions to enrich student engagement and learning. Anela included more Canadian examples and made additional changes for conciseness, currency, and clarity. Some substantive chapter changes and chapter features unique to Understanding Business are summarized in Table 0.1.
| Chapter | Title | Revisions |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Habits for Business Success and Teamwork | Included a section on teamwork. Added a team charter as an example. Removed the section on personal finances, pet peeves, and cultural norms. |
| 2 | Business Concepts | Added examples of SWOT and PESTEL analyses. |
| 3 | Economics and Banking | An example of scarcity was added to illustrate the concept. Removed the section on M-3 money. |
| 4 | Global Business | Added content on cross-cultural literacy and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory, and illustrated it with a comparison of Canadian and Filipino cultures. |
| 5 | Ethics and Social Responsibility | The Principles for Responsible Management (PRME) and Conestoga College’s commitment to PRME are showcased in section 5.1: CSR and the UN’s SDGs. |
| 6 | Entrepreneurship and Business Structure | Added an example of a business plan for a hypothetical product. Showcased the Conestoga Entrepreneurship Collective in section 6.9: Support for Entrepreneurs. Included the real-life entrepreneurial journey of a Kitchener-based new Canadian. |
| 7 | Management and Leadership | Added a SWOT analysis for lululemon and an example of managerial skills. |
| 8 | Marketing Management | Used the example of Tim Hortons to illustrate the 4Ps of marketing. |
| 9 | Human Resources Management | Removed the sections on employment law and unions. Condensed the section on training. |
| 10 | Financial Management and Accounting | Condensed the section on financing. Removed the section on breakeven analysis. |
| 11 | Operations Management | No substantive changes. |
| 12 | Information and Risk Management | No substantive changes. |
| 13 | Managing Personal Finances | No substantive changes. |
Key Features of this OER
Structure
This OER is divided into thirteen chapters. Each chapter begins with an overview of the content to be covered and lists the objectives the student will achieve after reading the chapter. Each learning objective is linked to a section within the chapter, thereby ensuring that a student attains all the learning outcomes after reading the chapter.
Real-world Scenarios and Realistic Cases
The narrative provides several examples of real business scenarios, including examples of sustainable businesses, entrepreneurial pathways, supply chain issues, information breaches, and ethical lapses. Current graphs and tables connect learning to the real world.
Career Spotlights
Most chapters end with engaging end-of-chapter vignettes that feature successful business people, many of whom are Conestoga alumni. Their profiles and quotes give students insights into their career trajectories.
Examples
Examples are embedded throughout the content. Some useful examples include samples of a team charter, business plan, SWOT analysis, and PESTEL analysis, among others.
Short scenario-based cases
Although the case scenarios are hypothetical, they are based on realistic examples and present students with a business problem, followed by a brief overview of the situation. Discussion questions can be used for classroom debate or can be assigned by the instructor for individual reflection or group work.
Emphasis on Readability
We used tools that increase readability and speed review of the material, including headings and subheadings, bolded key terms within the text that are hyperlinked to definitions, end-of-chapter key takeaway summaries, and a glossary of terms.
Review and Practice
Each chapter ends with key takeaways that reinforce learning by summarizing the most critical points from each section.
The multiple-choice questions are programmed as interactive activities that provide students with a self-test opportunity at the end of the chapter. They also offer students feedback in real-time to confirm their understanding of the concepts presented in each section.
The “End-of-Chapter Exercises” test students’ understanding of the concepts presented in each chapter and encourage students to expand their understanding by researching various concepts on the Internet and presenting their findings to the group.
Engaging “Chapter in Review” PDFs are available for students to download for offline review.
Instructor Ancillaries
A Test Bank and Case Study Solutions are available for this OER. Note that requesting faculty must be vetted before Open Learning at Conestoga College can distribute these ancillaries. Ancillaries are for teaching purposes and should not be shared publically.
To obtain the instructor ancillaries for this OER, please send an email to Open Learning at Conestoga College.
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