Business Voyages

About the Book

In his tour de force, of Business Voyages, Professor Stapleton combines the values of his pioneering American family, the leadership learned from quarterbacking winning football teams, the insights gained from decades of teaching future CEOs, and practical commercial acumen into a must-read chronicle for those seeking to recover from the economic chaos gripping our nation.

William John Cox, public interest lawyer, retired prosecutor,


Business Voyages is four books in one—it is an autobiography (so that we learn something about the author), a brief guide to transactional analysis (to learn briefly about scripts, ego states and games that people play), a small business case book (to learn from others) and it is a book for entrepreneurs (inviting them to look at the available web and other resources, encouraging them to plan a business voyage and challenging them to actually go on that voyage). The entrepreneurs will smile as they go through this book and just look forward to so much that life can bring. From a business learning and teaching viewpoint this book has much to offer.

(Dr.) Bill Dimovski, Former student and now Senior Lecturer in Finance, Deakin University, Australia,
and a director of various companies engaged in construction and retail activities.

In an informative chapter called “Games Educators Play,” Richard Stapleton applies his expertise in management and mathematics to a persistent and vexing question: what weight should be given to university students’ ratings of their professors. In a signifi cant addition to the debate, Stapleton’s hard data show that neither professors nor their students are well served when student ratings are used in personnel decisions.

Judith D. Fischer, Associate Professor of Law, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law,
University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky


In the storms of a postmodern age rife with narcissism, incompetence, fanaticism, greed and desperation, Business Voyages charts a course toward a more just and dependable economic society. It provides lessons for business schools, politicians, corporate CEOs, entrepreneurs, small business owners and citizens – for all of us - to help discover and co-construct better business worlds for all people around Earth.

About the Author

Richard John Stapleton, Ph.D., CTA, shown here with his Classroom De-Gamer™, is Emeritus Professor of Management at Georgia Southern University where he taught business policy, operations management, management information systems, entrepreneurship, small business, organizational behavior, business ethics, and transactional analysis from July 1970 to May 2005. He has taught at Texas Tech University and University of Louisiana—Lafayette and as a visiting professor with Troy State University in Europe. He has degrees in economics, organizational behavior, and management science from Texas Tech and is certified in transactional analysis by the International Transactional Analysis Association. He has published 4 books, two of which were published by University Press of America, 13 cases in the Intercollegiate Case Clearing House at Harvard Business School, 47 refereed professional articles and papers in various journals and association proceedings, and newspaper and newsletter articles and editorials too numerous to count. Dr. Stapleton has supervised Small Business Institute student teams consulting with some 350 small businesses in Southeast Georgia, and he has personally consulted with various organizations and groups. He worked part-time 10 years at Stapleton Lumber Company, owned and operated by his parents, at Wolfforth, Texas during his public school and undergraduate university years. He started and published the Wolfforth-Frenship Gazette, a weekly newspaper, in 1963 after earning his undergraduate degree in 1962 at age 21. He is married to the former Debbye Coleman of Vidalia, Georgia and he has one son and grandson, Jonathan Walker Stapleton and Walker Jordan Stapleton, in Seattle, Washington.