Business Essentials

As we gathered our thoughts for preparing this revision, we were impressed by the vast flow of new developments taking place alongside traditional, long-established business practices. In assessing the landscape of current practices, we often found ourselves returning to the question, "What's really new in business, and what's not?" New investment strategies, for example, are seriously challenging the traditional principle of investing for long-term results in today's fast-paced markets. Commenting on long-term investing in the stock market, Peter L. Bernstein recently remarked, "We've reached a funny position where long run doesn't work . . . . the long-run evidence doesn't fit circumstances as they are today. Forget investing for the long haul. The long run, right now, is irrelevant." We suspect that Mr. Bernstein isn't advocating that investors forget about long-term strategies altogether but, instead, that they study and understand alternative approaches, so they can adapt to new conditions and goals. The same holds true in all areas of business: Successful practitioners recognize that "new versus old" isn't the crucial issue so much as how to combine the best of both as circumstances change. History tells us that we can expect accelerating changes from dramatic events that will reshape the ways we live, work, and prepare for the future. The foremost business dilemma is how to provide some sort of stability--for employees, owners, suppliers, and consumers--while steering through new uncharted paths. The answer lies in businesses maintaining an adaptive organizational culture, one that expects change as a way of life and builds processes for change into its business strategy. More than ever before, leading businesses have learned how to anticipate new developments and how to respond quickly and creatively. Therefore, for our introductory business students, there is great value to be gained from understanding how business, government, and citizens, together influence the ways that business is conducted in different societies. Students need to gain a fundamental working knowledge about every aspect of business and the environment in which business prospers. And make no mistake about it, we have prosperity despite occasional, sometimes even violent, disruptions. Through it all, businesses continue to adapt; the rules of the game are constantly changing throughout the business environment and across the range of business practices. Nowadays, companies come together on short notice for collaborative projects and then, just as quickly, return to their original shapes as separate (and often competing) entities. Employees and companies share new ideas about work--about how it gets done, about who determines roles and activities in the workplace. With communications technologies having shattered the barriers of physical distance, tight-knit teams with members positioned around the world share information just as effectively as groups huddled together in the same room. In nearly every aspect of business today, from relationships with customers and suppliers to employees and stockholders, there are new ways of doing things, and a lot of them are surpassing traditional business practices, with surprising speed and often with better competitive results. Along with new ways come a host of unique ethical and legal issues to challenge the leadership, creativity and judgment of people who do business. For all of these reasons we, as authors and teachers, felt a certain urgency when it became obvious that, in revisingBusiness Essentialsfor its fifth edition, we had to capture the flavor and convey the excitement of business in all of its evolving practices.Ebert, Ronald J. is the author of 'Business Essentials', published 2003 under ISBN 9780131441583 and ISBN 0131441582.