Authored By Our Own

In the past two years, BYU Marriott professors, charged with being both great teachers and exceptional scholars, have shared their expertise, research, and insight in a variety of offerings, from textbooks and ebooks to scholarly books and nonfiction tomes. Check out the impressive list of books recently authored by our own.

Designing Experiences

By Department of Experience Design and Management professor Mat Duerden
Additional authors: J. Robert Rossman

“Experiences are at the core of all of our personal and professional lives, and designing them more intentionally is a worthwhile goal for all of us,” says Duerden, who hopes that ultimately the book will increase the percentage of intentionally designed experiences in the world. “There were a lot of books about the importance of experiences, but we didn’t feel there was a book that clearly explained how to design them.” Writing the book proved “hugely beneficial for developing curriculum for my undergraduate and MBA experience design classes,” notes Duerden, who says he hopes readers of the book will gain a clear understanding of what experiences are, why they matter to all businesses, and how to design them with a systematic and approachable methodology.

Innovation Capital: How to Compete and Win Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders

By Department of Management professors Jeff Dyer and Curtis LeFrandt
Additional author: Nathan Furr

Great leaders of innovation know that creativity is not enough, and this book explores the idea of innovation capital, or the ability successful people have to not just identify a good idea but to build the vision, reputation, and networks to win the backing needed to commercialize those ideas. Turns out that this skill set is measurably more important for innovation than just being creative, the book points out. Dyer, LeFrandt, and Furr spent decades studying how people get, test, and develop great ideas, as well as interviewing innovation superstars (think Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk). They share what they’ve discovered in this book aimed to help people with innovative ideas compete for attention and resources so that they can launch innovations with impact.

Wiley CMAexcel Learning System Exam Review (ebook)

By School of Accountancy professors Monte Swain, Cassy Budd, and Steve Smith
Additional authors: Kari Joseph Olsen, Kip Holderness, and Marj Yuschak

When Swain recognized the need for a new learning solution for cost accounting education, he decided to assemble a team of colleagues to build the solution. The end result is “an online learning system to help prepare folks to take the Certified Management Accountant exam,” Swain says. The system includes approximately one-hundred eighty short modules, each one including a two-to-four-page outline and accompanied by a fifteen-to-fifty-minute video. CMAexcel is used in both the MBA and EMBA core managerial accounting courses. The BYU professors enjoyed working with a publisher that engaged the author team throughout the entire process and were energized by their co-authors, who were all excellent teachers committed to a learning solution that exceeds current expectations.

Fraud Examination

By Department of Information Systems professor Conan Albrecht and School of Accountancy professor Mark Zimbelman
Additional authors: W. Steve Albrecht and Chad O. Albrecht

Conan Albrecht and Mark Zimbelman were invited by W. Steve Albrecht, a leader in the fight against business fraud and one of the authors of the first edition of this textbook, to join the author team because of their passion for fighting fraud and their pertinent research: auditors’ detection of financial statement fraud for Zimbelman and using technology to detect fraud for Conan Albrecht. “Contributing to the text was a good way to sharpen our personal knowledge about fraud in general,” says Zimbelman. The authors hope that “students who study this book will be better equipped to do two things: (1) avoid becoming involved in a fraud, either as an accomplice or a victim, and (2) become better at preventing or detecting fraud in the world.”

Animal Scroll Saw Puzzle Patterns

By School of Accountancy professor David A. Wood

Additional author: Jessica Wood
For years, Wood and his family cut out and painted puzzles as Christmas gifts for family and friends. Initially, Wood used a pattern book he had, but eventually he began looking for new patterns. “At that time, I noticed my oldest daughter, Jessica, had a talent with drawing,” he says. “I encouraged her to design a few puzzle patterns. She did a great job on the first few patterns, so I encouraged her to draw enough patterns that we could publish a book together.” Wood says that “seeing Jessica’s excitement and willingness to keep working hard was rewarding as a father, plus we have some wonderful patterns we can cut out to make more gifts.”

Managerial Accounting for Undergraduates

By School of Accountancy professor Scott Hobson
Additional authors: Theodore Christensen, James Wallace, and Jason Matthews

When Christensen approached Hobson about writing an introductory managerial accounting textbook, Hobson saw an opportunity to provide a resource with a balance between manufacturing and service industries that would be more relevant to today’s students. The first edition was published in 2017, and the author team worked on next-edition revisions for more than a year. “I have enjoyed the opportunity to incorporate examples from my twenty-year professional career in the problems, examples, and cases included in the textbook,” says Hobson. In a unique approach, the book highlights the application of managerial principles within two companies throughout each chapter. Hobson hopes the textbook helps students “understand the importance of managerial accounting in every aspect of a business and recognize the important role management accountants play in making good business decisions.”

McGraw Hill’s Taxation of Business Entities and McGraw Hill’s Taxation of Individuals

By School of Accountancy professors Brian Spilker, John Barrick, and Ron Worsham
Additional authors: Benjamin Ayers, John Robinson, Edmund Outslay, and Connie Weaver

Three BYU Marriott professors worked on these two taxation books, which are regularly updated to reflect changes in the tax system. Spilker has spent the past fifteen years editing and coauthoring these books, with the objective of offering textbooks that “provide concepts but enough detail so students can appreciate the complexities of tax without being overwhelmed,” he says. The benefit of writing the books is that the authors have gained diverse tax knowledge. An added bonus is learning how other authors on the team think about tax. The team’s work and commitment has been well worth the effort; Taxation of Business Entities and Taxation of Individuals recently became the most-used tax textbook for undergraduates.

Personal Finance: Another Perspective

(ebook; a series of eight manuals, updated annually)
By Department of Finance professor Bryan Sudweeks

At the heart of his ebook is the idea that personal finance is simply part of living the gospel of Jesus Christ, says Sudweeks, who spent eight years putting together the first edition of the publication and now updates it annually. “There are lots of finance books with good information, but they don’t teach how to change behavior. I teach that as we bring Christ more into our lives and finances, He will give us strength to change personal finance from an ‘unfortunate necessity’ to ‘an important shared spiritual experience.’” Because Sudweeks wanted to write a book that would help everyone, not just students, he made it available free of charge online at personalfinance.byu.edu.

Engagement MAGIC: Five Keys for Engaging People, Leaders, and Organizations

By Department of Management professor Tracy Maylett

Motivated by the desire to identify, through objective research and data, what causes people to love the work they do, Maylett began working on data collection for this book in 2016. “Our research team gathered more than 34 million employee survey responses from over seventy countries,” he says. “I loved the responses people provided to the statement, ‘Tell me about a good day at work.’ Seldom does the answer have anything to do with pay, benefits, or the prestige of a position title.” Maylett notes that the concept of “engaging” applies to all areas of life and involves five elements, represented by the acronym MAGIC: meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection.

International Business

By Department of Management professors Shad Morris and James Oldroyd

When Morris and Oldroyd were approached about writing a new International Business textbook, they said yes—on one condition. “We told them we would be interested if they were willing to take on a disruption model—offering a shorter, simpler, and more affordable product that has little resemblance to the traditional books in the market,” says Morris. When Wiley and Sons agreed, the two professors set out to provide engaging, concise material that captures the interest of students while allowing instructors to share their valuable experiences in the classroom. More than a decade in the making, the new textbook is designed to “help students develop a love and passion for all things international and, by doing so, expand their ability to empathize with others who come from different backgrounds,” say the authors.

Managing Supply Chain and Operations: An Integrative Approach

By Department of Marketing and Global Supply Chain professors Tom Foster, Scott Sampson, Cindy Wallin Blair, and Scott Webb

This book is rooted in a curricular model for global supply chain management that Foster had presented at a number of conferences. “The publisher approached me about writing a book,” says Foster, whose book Managing Quality was the no. 2 quality-related book in terms of sales at the time. Foster assembled his BYU Marriott author team, with each professor bringing specific expertise to the sections they wrote. Supply chain is a merger of operations, logistics, purchasing, quality, and services, and the authors felt that most textbooks treated these subjects as subdisciplines rather than a coordinated subject. This textbook, which includes more than seventy videos to supplement the content, offers a valuable overview of all the primary supply chain functions, along with the tools to make strategic decisions throughout the supply chain.

Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases

By Department of Management professors Jeff Dyer, Paul Godfrey, Robert Jensen, and David Bryce

This group of BYU Marriott professors set out to write a textbook for anyone who wants to know how key strategic management principles are understood and work in the real world. The team felt that available textbooks often included overly long chapters and lacked interactive video and learning tools; some even missed valuable topics such as innovative strategies and disruptive business models. “This textbook was written to engage students with strategy theories, concepts, and tools in a way that no other strategy textbook has been able to do,” the authors note. “And it does so by including interesting and easily accessible chapters and video animations that students of strategy will not just tolerate but enjoy.”

Beyond Team Building: How to Build High Performing Teams and the Culture to Support Them

By Department of Management professors Gibb Dyer and Jeff Dyer

The original Team Building book was written by Bill Dyer, former dean of BYU Marriott and the father of Gibb and Jeff Dyer. “After our dad passed away, Jeff and I decided we’d continue his legacy,” says Gibb, who uses the book regularly in his MBA and undergraduate classes on organization development and change. The brothers, who had worked on earlier editions of the book, agree that the most enjoyable part of working on this book was collaborating. “My father was an expert on teams and did a great job of leading our family team,” says Jeff. “It made a huge difference in our lives.” The book is designed to help readers create a high-performing team-building organization—including a family—by focusing on the five Cs: context, composition, competencies, change management, and collaborative leadership.

The Zookeeper’s Secret: Finding Your Calling in Life

By Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics professor Jeffery A. Thompson
Additional author: Stuart Bunderson

“I have been researching ‘work as a calling’ for years,” Thompson explains, “but about ten years ago, I was invited to give a BYU devotional and talked about the spiritual insights that came from my research. The response to that talk was overwhelming, and I realized that I had a lot I wanted to say about the spiritual aspects of finding meaningful work.” Because most of his prior writing had been academic, Thompson particularly enjoyed writing in a more conversational tone and speaking to an audience who shares his faith. “I would like readers to be able to demystify the idea of finding a calling so that it doesn’t feel inaccessible,” he says. “Everyone can pursue a calling in life, and it doesn’t depend on finding a dream job.”

The Family Edge: How Your Biggest Competitive Advantage in Business Isn’t What You’ve Been Taught . . . It’s Your Family

By Department of Management professor Gibb Dyer

Early on, Dyer recognized that certain racial groups in the United States seemed to be more successful at entrepreneurial ventures than others. “As I did research on this topic, I discovered that Asian Americans had more of what I call ‘family capital’ than other groups,” he explains. Building on that research, Dyer determined to write a book designed to help readers understand the importance of family capital and learn how to build family capital through family culture, family activities, building trust, and creating mechanisms to transfer family capital to the next generation. “Families with family capital typically function better, do better economically, and have a sense of well-being,” he says.

International Marketing

By Department of Marketing and Global Supply Chain professor R. Bruce Money
Additional authors: Philip R. Cateora, Mary C. Gilly, and John L. Graham

This textbook has been around since 1973, with Money joining the author team five years ago to help provide regular updates. “My dissertation, almost every article I’ve written, and practically every class I’ve taught has been related to international marketing and global business in some way,” he says, noting that thanks to the internet, there’s really no such thing as nonglobal marketing. “The most enjoyable part about working on the book was gathering in one place twenty-five-plus years of what mattered so much to me throughout my career.” When he updated the chapter on how products abroad are adapted to local tastes and preferences, he took pictures of his own collections of peach-grape- and mango-orange-flavored Oreos from China and of melon- and apple-flavored Kit Kat candy bars from Japan.

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Article written by Kellene Ricks Adams
Photography by Bradley Slade