Preface
Welcome to the textbook revolution (you will have to read on to learn more about the revolution that you have joined in using this material for your class). We are happy to have you on Carpenter, Bauer, and Erdogan’s Principles of Management team! Given that Principles is likely to be one of the first management courses, if not one of the first business courses, that students take, our objective in developing this material was to provide students and instructors with a solid and comprehensive foundation on the fundamentals of management. Each of the 16 chapters is comprehensive but succinct, and action-oriented but not busy (as in busy work). Moreover, the book and supplements have been written in a direct and active style that we hope students and instructors find both readily accessible and relevant.
Delivering on Our Promise
So how are we delivering on these promises? Let’s consider the top three ways cited by instructors and students. First, your Principles book is organized around the well-established planning, organizing, leading, and controlling framework (or, simply, P-O-L-C). The first three chapters introduce you to the managerial context, while the remaining 13 chapters are mapped to one of the four P-O-L-C sections. The P-O-L-C structure provides a number of benefits. Each chapter opens with a brief discussion of how the chapter topic fits in P-O-L-C. For instructors, the use of P-O-L-C as an overarching framework helps with the organization of class material, development of the class calendar, and making choices about adding or removing readings and real-life examples. It also provides them with an invaluable reference point at the beginning and conclusion of each class session to share with students “where we’ve been, and where we’re going next.” Pedagogically, this is a simple yet powerful tool to aid and promote student learning. For students, the P-O-L-C typology provides them with an enduring framework for processing and organizing just about everything they will learn and experience, during and beyond their classroom-based education, related to the management of organizations.
Second, there are three underlying themes carried through all the chapters. These themes are strategic thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, and active management. Strategy, for instance, is explicitly concerned with the determinants of high performance. Importantly, you will find that we treat performance using the notion of the triple bottom line—the idea that economic performance allows individuals and organizations to perform positively in social and environmental ways as well. The triple bottom line is financial, social, and environmental performance.
The entrepreneurial dimension reflects an underlying and growing trend that shows that students and instructors see themselves as entrepreneurs and active change agents, not just managers. By starting fresh with an entrepreneurial/change management orientation, we provide an exciting perspective on the principles of management.
Finally, starting with the opening chapter, we incorporate an active management perspective to show how leaders and leadership are essential to personal and organizational effectiveness and effective organizational change. Moreover, the concluding section of each chapter is focused on the assessment and development of particular management skills. Students and instructors are active as leaders at an increasingly early age and are sometimes painfully aware of the leadership failings they see in public and private organizations. It is the leader and leadership that bring Principles together.
Third, your author team is bringing a truly interdisciplinary perspective to your Principles course. The book that is the foundation for how you learn about, study, and teach Principles is titled Principles of Management: A Behavioral Approach, and behavioral has very important implications for our emphasis on skills and decision making, coupled with the strategic, entrepreneurial, and leadership orientations. Your authors are award-winning teachers who couple a deep knowledge and experience about the book’s conceptual underpinnings with a sincere appreciation for experiential teaching approaches.
Thank You for Joining the Revolution
In adopting Carpenter, Bauer, and Erdogan, you are joining the revolution that is otherwise known as our partner and publisher. For this we thank you. The people at and your author team share a common vision about the future of management education that is based on powerful but fun and simple-to-use teaching and learning tools. Moreover, gives you—you the student and you the instructor—the power to choose. Our 16 chapters are written using a “modular” format with self-contained sections that can be reorganized, deleted, “added to,” and even edited at the sentence level. Using our build-a-book platform, you can easily customize your book to suit your needs and those of your students. An extensive author-prepared instructors’ manual and excellent set of PowerPoint slides provide teaching support to instructors. A test item file developed using state-of-the-art assessment techniques supports faculty in evaluating student performance.
Only with learning platforms do you have the power to choose what your Principles book looks like, when and how you access your Principles material, what you use and don’t use, when it will be changed, how much you pay for it, and what other study vehicles you leverage. These innovative study vehicles range from book podcasts, flash cards, and peer discussion groups organized in social network formats. Nowhere else on the planet can this combination of user-friendliness, user choice, and leading edge technologies be found for business education and learning.
Thank you for joining the revolution—please spread the word!
Mason, Talya, and Berrin
