Business Essentials

This best-selling book continues to present a brief “no-nonsense ” approach to the fundamentals of business that spans the range of all functional areas— management, marketing, operations, accounting, information systems, finance, and legal studies. Topics comprehensively covered include: the contemporary business environment; the business of managing; principles of marketing; managing information; people in organizations; and financial issues. An excellent reference resource for business managers and executives; also appropriate for entrepreneurs and others involved in business relations.

Ronald J. Ebert is Emeritus Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia where he lectures in the Management Department and serves as advisor to students and student organizations. Dr. Ebert draws upon more than 30 years of teaching experience at such schools as Sinclair College, University of Washington, University of Missouri, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Romania), and Consortium International University (Italy). His consulting alliances include such firms as Mobay Corporation, j Kraft Foods, Oscar Mayer, Atlas Powder, and John Deere. He has designed and conducted management development programs for such diverse clients as the American Public Power Association, the United States Savings and Loan League, and the Central Missouri Manufacturing Training Consortium.

His experience as a practitioner has fostered an advocacy for integrating concepts f with best business practices in business education. The five business books he has written include translations in Spanish, Chinese, Malaysian, and Romanian languages. Dr. Ebert has served as the editor of the Journal of Operations Management. He is a past-president and fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. He has served as consultant and external evaluator for Quantitative Reasoning for Business Studies an introduction-to-business project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Ricky W. Griffin is Distinguished Professor of Management and holds the Blocker Chair in Business in the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M University. He also currently serves as executive associate dean. He previously served as Head of the Department of Management and as director of the Center for Human Resource Management at Texas A&M. His research interests include workplace aggression and violence, executive skills and decision making, and workplace culture. Dr. Griffin's research has been published in such journals as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Journal of Management. He has also served as editor of Journal of Management. Dr. Griffin has consulted with such organizations as Texas Instruments, Tenneco, Amoco, Compaq Computer, and Continental Airlines.

Dr. Griffin has served the Academy of Management as chair of the organizational behavior division. He has also served as president of the southwest division of the Academy of Management and on the Board of Directors of the Southern Management Association. He is a fellow of both the Academy of Management and the Southern Management Association. He is also the author of several successful textbooks, each of which is a market leader. In addition, they are widely used in dozens of countries and have been translated into numerous foreign languages, including Spanish, Polish, Malaysian, and Russian.