Sue Shaffer Learning Commons and Library: Guides: Business Guide: BA101 Topics

R. Edward Freeman, Academic Director of Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics and a Professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, gives advice to other scholars on how to best teach business or corporate ethics.

What Is an Economy?

An economy is a complex system of interrelated production, consumption, and exchange activities, which ultimately determine how resources are allocated among participants. The production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services combine to fulfill the needs of those living and operating within the economy.

Work Cited

Kenton, Will. "Economy: What It Is, Types of Economies, Economic Indicators." Investopedia, 20 Aug. 2024, www.investopedia.com/terms/e/
economy.asp.

Suggested Resources

Economics and Theory (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
Offers instant access to full-text academic journals and magazines—with a strong emphasis on titles covered in the EconLit bibliographic index. Content is useful for starting a business, marketing a product, developing policy, analyzing trends, constructing economic models, investing for the future, researching rates, and more.
Business (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text coverage of all business disciplines including accounting, economics, finance, marketing, management, and strategy, as well as business theory and practice. Users will understand the activities of companies and industries worldwide through nearly 4,000 leading business and trade publications, updated daily.

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

In order to be successful in your endeavors it's important to know who your stakeholders are. How can one do that if they don't know what the term means? R. Edward Freeman defined the term in his seminal 1984 text, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, as being "any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization's objectives."

Once you are able to accurately identify your stakeholders you're able start applying other stakeholder management techniques to your work. For more on this topic check out some of the selected resources below.

Suggested Resources

Stakeholders by Andrew L. Friedman; Samantha Miles
Call Number: Read Online
ISBN: 9780199269860
Publication Date: 2006-06-15
There is extensive discussion of the concept of "the stakeholder" in fields such as Management, Corporate Governance, Accounting and Finance, Strategy, Sociology, and Politics, and in wider public policy debate. Yet the concept is unclear, and research around it often muddled. This book provides an analysis, classification, and critique of stakeholder theory.

Salem Press Encyclopedia: Stakeholder Theory
Stacy, Robert N.
Stakeholder theory states that organizations are collections of several different parties, each with its own goals and objectives. While the goals of some parties may be in competition with the others, each party has an interest in the organization succeeding. The key to the organization’s success depends on bringing these disparate objectives and parties together to create the maximum benefit for all involved...
Where Do Stakeholders Come From?
Alvarez, Sharon A.;Sachs, Sybille
Stakeholders self-identify with a firm when they believe they affect and are themselves affected by the actions of a firm. When a firm is already operating and engaging in actions that are more or less consistent with its business model, stakeholders can evaluate whether they are affected or whether they affect the firm. However, how do stakeholders self-identify in the earliest stages of an entrepreneurial endeavor when a firm has yet to exist and the outcomes of products and services and their effects on stakeholders are unknown? In these early, uncertain stages, human cooperation is needed for new ideas, language to describe these ideas, products and services, and entrepreneurial endeavors emerge. Using the theory of common ground helps scholars examine how everyday human conversations, cooperation, and social interactions can motivate a subset of individuals to self-identify as stakeholders in relation to ideas, language, future products and services, and even the endeavor before outcomes can be known. These endeavors, the negotiated construction of language and mutual coherence, exist because of an emerging stakeholder collective identity. Finally, the paper proposes that how an endeavor is organized is the manifestation of the unique path-dependent processes the stakeholders have gone through.

What are Ethics?

Ethics are the principles, standards, and norms of conduct governing individual and firm behavior.

What are Business Ethics?

Business ethics are moral values and principles espoused by members of the business community as a guide to fair and honest business practices.

Suggested Resources

Business Ethics by David Wasieleski (Editor); James Weber (Editor)
Call Number: Read Online
ISBN: 9781789736847
Publication Date: 2019-06-07
The Business and Society (BAS) 360 book series is an annual publication targeting cutting-edge developments in the broad business and society field, such as stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility and citizenship, business ethics, sustainability, corporate governance and others. Each volume will feature a comprehensive discussion and review of the current 'state' of the research and theoretical developments in a specific business and society area. As business and society is an inherently multi-disciplinary scholarly area, the book series will draw from work in areas outside of business and management, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, economics and other related fields, as well as the natural sciences, education and other professional areas of study. This volume focuses on research drawn from work grounded in 'Business Ethics.' Scholars known in this discipline contribute to a 360-degree evaluation of the theory, including cross-discipline research, empirical explorations, cross-cultural studies, literature critiques and meta-analysis projects. The book should appeal to a wide range of readers; from emerging and senior business school educators researching and teaching in the business and society field, to doctoral and masters level students across the business, social sciences and natural sciences seeking to learn about this multi-discipline and sustained field of management study. Business executives and managers could benefit from reading how the business and society field began, the path it has taken and the new, emerging directions that scholars envision for the field.

What is Globalization?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines globalization as "the action, process, or fact of making global; the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale, widely considered to be at the expense of national identity."

Why is Globalization Important?

So, why is globalization important? Well, it's literally what makes the world go round. It "encourages each country to specialize in what it produces best using the least amount of resources" (PIIE). This is what "makes production more efficient, promotes economic growth, and lowers prices of goods and services, making them more affordable especially for lower-income households" (PIIE).

Works Cited

"Globalization, N." Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, doi.org/10.1093/OED/1404426084.

"What Is Globalization? And How Has the Global Economy Shaped the United States?" Peterson Institute for International Economics, 16 Aug. 2024, www.piie.com/microsites/globalization/what-is-globalization.

"What Is Globalization? Business: Explained." YouTube, uploaded by HBS Online, 6 Mar. 2023, youtu.be/U20vo-PA3-k?si=-twOGnP-XYCkRg1O.

Countries & Cultures

Different countries & cultures have different ways of interacting with one another on all levels (such as spiritual, economic, and global). It is helpful to know what different customs surround business practices in different regions of the world. Check out the resources listed for materials related to different areas.

Suggested Resources

Global Road Warrior This link opens in a new window
Learn about countries, their culture, and their customs. Find recipes, business etiquette, languages spoken, country demographics and statistics, ethnic groups, stereotypes, society and culture, and lots more.

The World Factbok
The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.

Terminology

If you're struggling to understand key concepts in (or as they relate to) business and industry, finding a good business dictionary or glossary can be a game changer. The database Business Insights has an excellent glossary available to use. It's located on the home page of the database as well as in the header of each page within.

What Is an Economy?

Suggested Resources

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

Suggested Resources

What are Ethics?

What are Business Ethics?

Suggested Resources

What is Globalization?

Why is Globalization Important?

Countries & Cultures

Suggested Resources

Terminology

Glossary on the homepage:

Glossary in the page header: