Ultimate Questions: A Stakeholder Guide to the Business of Your Life

The accumulated wisdom of a beloved business professor's signature course Who are we, and who am I? Why are we here, and why am I here? What is the good life, and what is my good life? For years, business ethics professor Andrew Wicks pursued these lines of inquiry in his perennially popular course Ultimate Questions and Creating Value for Stakeholders. Now his book distills the intellectual explorations and hard conversations he and his students navigated together in the classroom into an accessible form available to readers everywhere. Ultimate Questions is grounded in stakeholder theory: the idea that business leaders need to consider the humanity and complexity of all stakeholders— employees, community members, suppliers, and more— to thrive in ways that go beyond profit. It takes as a given that money is not the only goal of life or work and, like the course, encourages constant curiosity and a spirit of exploration.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Chapter 1: Who Are We and Who Am I? Chapter 2: Why Are We Here and Why Am I Here? Chapter 3: What Is the Good Life, and What Is My Good Life? Chapter 4: How Should I Get Along with Others? Conclusion Appendix 1: Guide to Having Hard Conversations Appendix 2: Resources Notes

About the Author :
Andrew C. Wicks is the Ruffin Professor of Business Administration and the Richard M. Waitzer Bicentennial Professor of Ethics at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. Alexander S. Bleiberg is a graduate student at the Institute for Clinical Social Work. John K. Nolan is a graduate student at the University of Aberdeen.

Review :
In a world focused on video, engagement and "likes," it's good to pause and ask some deep questions. Who are we and who am I? Why are we here and why am I here? These are some of the questions posed in Ultimate Questions by Darden Professor Andrew Wicks. But there's poignant added context. Wicks wrote this book as he encountered his own mortality, by facing a neurodegenerative disease that he has been living with for almost a decade. In this lens, Wicks shares the deep questions you can ask yourself to inquire into your own psyche. He also offers case studies from his students about how they addressed these questions so you can see examples of very different approaches. And finally he offers some reflection exercises you can use to guide your own inquiry, including "reflected best self" and "the why exercise" to help you mine for core values. As Wicks says: "We can use these ultimate questions to make sure we are awake and aware, so that we can more fully embrace the odyssey of our journey through life." That's the opportunity he calls you into in this book. --Forbes