Summary
Professor Gael McDonald is President and CEO of RMIT Vietnam, part of RMIT University Melbourne, Australia’s largest institution of higher education. Before joining RMIT Vietnam in 2014, Professor McDonald served as Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University and Secretary of the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) (McDonald , 2022). In her book Business Ethics: A Contemporary Approach, McDonald seeks to educate the target audience on ethical business issues.
Gael Macdonald has published extensively in academic and professional journals and has advised the private sector. In 2003, Gael appeared on Unlimited Magazine’s list of the 150 Most Powerful Women in Business in New Zealand (Huang, 2020). Professor McDonald is a past President of the Australian New Zealand Academy of Management and has twice served on the Business and Economics Group of the New Zealand Results Based Research Foundation (Cooksey & McDonald, 2019). A distinctive feature of the author’s writing is its focus on examples. MacDonald begins each chapter with a description of one or another case or situation that will somehow be connected with the problem considered below. The writer often uses bullet points, which is an integral part of any business writing (Ono & Ichii, 2019). It allows one to focus only on the information necessary for perception, so reading the book is not hampered by unnecessary language constructs.
Audience, Genre, Purpose
Educational literature, as the author states, helps students become familiar with ethical issues and decision-making in various contemporary contexts. This book aims to develop students’ understanding of the many ways in which ethical considerations can come into play in commercial areas (McDonald, 2014). Business Ethics: A contemporary approach shows how the theory works, helping students prepare for their careers.
The book’s title reflects the content’s focus: the author tries to demonstrate contemporary situations that can happen in the business environment. In the beginning, one can already see the distinguishing feature of the book’s content by Gael Macdonald. Even in the introduction, the author gives an example before briefly describing the book’s content. Business Ethics consists of 4 sections and 12 chapters, which the author states have a strict word limit (McDonald, 2014). McDonald has developed an approach in which the chapter contains as much as possible that is necessary for students to receive basic information.
Content and Organization
McDonald’s book presents various case studies that show real business situations that match the chapter’s content. Given the extensive theoretical underpinnings and the ever-changing landscape of current ethical issues, it helps readers immerse themselves in the real dynamic business environment. The author chose the writing style so that it would be clear not only to an expert in business ethics but also to those who are getting acquainted with this area for the first time (McDonald, 2014).
Thus, this book is an auxiliary material for both students and, for example, teachers. The convenience of the book’s content is that the chapters are not interdependent. They correspond to different topics of ethical problems and can be considered independent parts (McDonald, 2014). In addition to the book, McDonald offers a website to practice the information one has learned (McDonald, 2014). Thus, Business Ethics includes both theoretical and practical foundations.
Evaluation and Publisher
Business Ethics: A contemporary approach by Gael MacDonald demonstrates an interesting approach to presenting information on a topic defined by the author. The book helps to immerse oneself in the field of business and understand the basics and possible ethical problems and their solutions. The practical component is of particular value, which students can use to consolidate the new information. The author’s style differs from purely scientific writing; she tries to capture the reader’s attention and immerse him in a particular situation to assimilate the book’s content better. Although Macdonald sometimes seems to speak in too simple terms, which can be confusing or add to professional incomprehension, the theoretical background presented in the book is still useful information. The book was published in 2014 by Cambridge University Press and had both electronic and print versions.
References
Cooksey, R., & McDonald, G. (2019). Surviving and thriving in postgraduate research. Springer Singapore.
Huang, P. H. (2020). Put more women in charge and other leadership lessons from COVID-19. SSRN Electronic Journal. Web.
McDonald , G. (2022). Professor emeritus – RMIT University. LinkedIn. Web.
McDonald, G. (2014). Business ethics: A contemporary approach. Cambridge University Press.
Ono, A., & Ichii, R. (2019). Business students’ reflection on reflective writing assessments. Journal of International Education in Business, 12(2), 247–260. Web.