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OER & ZTC: Open Educational Resources & Zero-Textbook Cost Classes

A guide for faculty about OER & ZTC at El Camino College.

Textbooks

book coverPrinciples of Management by David S. Bright et al. (2020): Openstax.

Principles of Management is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the introductory course on management. This is a traditional approach to management using the leading, planning, organizing, and controlling approach. Management is a broad business discipline, and the Principles of Management course covers many management areas such as human resource management and strategic management, as well as behavioral areas such as motivation. No one individual can be an expert in all areas of management, so an additional benefit of this text is that specialists in a variety of areas have authored individual chapters.

      Principles of Management (2015): University of Minnesota Libraries.

Principles of Management teaches management principles to tomorrow's business leaders by weaving three threads through every chapter: strategy, entrepreneurship and active leadership. All business school teachings have some orientation toward performance and strategy and are concerned with making choices that lead to high performance. 

book cover  Mastering Strategic Management (2016): University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing.

Teaching the strategic management course can be a challenge for many professors. In most business schools, strategic management is a “capstone” course that requires students to draw on insights from various functional courses they have completed (such as marketing, finance, and accounting) in order to understand how top executives make the strategic decisions that drive whether organizations succeed or fail. Although students have taken these functional courses, many students have very little experience with major organizational choices. It is this inexperience that can undermine many students' engagement in the course.

 Leading with Cultural Intelligence by Mai Moua (2012): Saylor Foundation.

The purpose of Leading With Cultural Intelligence by Mai Moua is to outline the important ideas of cultural intelligence and the steps that must be considered and then practiced to become a culturally intelligent leader. The most important aspect covered within this book is that cultural intelligence is both a strategy and a tool towards cultural competency and proficiency. This book outlines the importance of understanding culture and its impact on organizations, the strategic value of cultural intelligence, and the significance of integrating and practicing cultural intelligence in everyday business life. When all these aspects are properly integrated and applied in the leadership and management process, organizations are more innovative and adaptable to respond to cultural changes.

The Sustainable Business Case Book by Ross Gitell et al (2012): Saylor Foundation.

The Sustainable Business Case Book by Gittell, Magnusson and Merenda is one of the first of its kind. It combines the the theory of sustainability with key concepts, analytical information and contextual information with a collection of cases which provide insights, perspective and practical guidance on how sustainable businesses operate from different business functional area perspectives.

book coverThe Business Ethics Workshop by James Brusseau (2018): FlatWorld Publishing.

Ethics is about determining value; it's deciding what's worth doing and what doesn't matter so much.Business ethics is the way we decide what kind of career to pursue, what choices we make on the job,which companies we want to work with, and what kind of economic world we want to live in and thenleave behind for those coming after. There are no perfect answers to these questions, but there's adifference between thinking them through and winging it. The Business Ethics Workshop provides aframework for identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical dilemmas encountered through working life.

 Small Business Management in the 21st Century by David Cadden (2012): Saylor Foundation.

Small Business Management in the 21st Century offers a unique perspective and set of capabilities for instructors. The authors designed this book with a “less can be more” approach, and by treating small business management as a practical human activity rather than as an abstract theoretical concept. The text has a format and structure that will be familiar to you if you use other books on small business management. Yet it brings a fresh perspective by incorporating three distinctive and unique themes and an important new feature (Disaster Watch) which is embedded throughout the entire text. These themes assure that students see the material in an integrated context rather than a stream of separate and distinct topics.

Courses

Communication for Managers (MIT OpenCourseWare)

In this course, students develop and polish communication strategies and methods through discussion, examples, and practice with an emphasizes on writing and speaking skills necessary for effective leaders. The course includes several oral and written assignments which are integrated with other subjects, and with career development activities, when possible.

 

Human Resources Management (Lumen)

In this course, students are introduced to the field of human resources management and learn about the legal and social implications of managing employees. Students will learn strategies to plan, recruit, compensate, develop, and engage a company’s workforce. The course covers additional topics including unions, employee safety, corporate social responsibility, global HRM, and small business HRM.

 

Law for the Entrepreneur and Manager (MIT OpenCourseWare)

This course provides a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations face during their existence. The course starts by providing the basic building blocks of business law. We then follow a firm through its life cycle from its "breakaway" from an established firm through it going public.

 

Management Information Systems (Saylor)

Management Information Systems (MIS) is a formal discipline within business education that bridges the gap between computer science and well-known business disciplines such as finance, marketing, and management. In spite of this, most students will only take one or two MIS courses as part of their undergraduate program.

 

Principles of Management (Lumen)

Regardless of setting, there is value in practicing effective management principles. This course teaches students how to think as managers and actively manage organizations and teams using effective practices around planning, decision making, organizational structure, culture, leadership, motivation, and communication. The course begins by addressing foundational management principles, including primary functions of managers, types of management, and types of strategy, and develops toward addressing more complex topics such as ethics, control, and global business management.

 

Principles of Management (Saylor)

In this course, you will learn to recognize the characteristics of proper management by identifying what successful managers do and how they do it. Understanding how managers work is just as beneficial for the subordinate employee as it is for the manager. This course is designed to teach you the fundamentals of management as they are practiced today.

 

Retail Management (Lumen)

The course was developed to align with the Western Association of Food Chains (WAFC) learning outcomes for their Retail Management Certificate. It is intended to be a capstone course and covers various aspects of retail management and store operations including merchandising, operations, layout, store organization, site location, and customer service.