For instructors
Teaching The Governed Enterprise
A course-fit guide for faculty evaluating The Governed Enterprise: An AI Governance Playbook for Consumer Goods as a supplementary text. Where it fits, what it covers chapter by chapter, and how to request an evaluation copy.
What it is
OverviewThe first AI governance playbook written specifically for consumer goods, from food and beverage to cosmetics, pet food, and household products, and the compliance issues each one faces. General AI governance texts explain frameworks built for banks, insurers, and general enterprise. This one is written for the brand owner, the co-manufacturer, the quality organization, and the operating executive.
The book treats compliance as an operating problem, owned by the people who run the plant, the supply chain, and the systems behind them. It opens at 2:00 AM with an agentic procurement system that has committed $847,000 to a fraudulent vendor and the questions a Chief Risk Officer asks that no one can answer, then moves to a 6:00 AM call where a co-manufacturer's AI quality system has been auto-approving batches for three weeks and a consumer has found metal fragments. The second scenario carries the brand owner's recall, the retailer notifications, and a GFSI recertification audit at risk. That is the register the book works in throughout.
Appendix A states the category scope in the book's own voice: food and beverage, personal care and cosmetics, household products, pet food and nutrition, and over-the-counter health. It instructs the reader to translate food examples into their own regulatory vocabulary, and works two substitutions in full, a guaranteed analysis error at a pet food company and an active ingredient documentation gap at an OTC manufacturer.
The book is written as a supplementary text and reads at the level of decisions, evidence, and accountability. It asks who owns a system, what proof exists that it worked, and what happens at six in the morning when it did not. Students need no prior AI coursework and no technical background, and the book sits alongside a primary textbook on food safety, operations, or information systems rather than replacing one.
Where it fits
8 course typesFood safety and quality management
Ownership, data governance, and co-manufacturer oversight sit as a layer over the HACCP, FSMA, and GFSI material students already carry, followed by threats, risk assessment, and incident response. The question the module answers is what changes when a system decides rather than reports.
Food science and technology capstone
The manufacturing and quality chapter turns on the distinction between a modeled value and an analyzed value, which students can carry into any documentation system they meet later. Paired with the consolidated action list in Appendix A, it gives an applied project its framework.
Supply chain and operations
Third-party oversight, agentic systems in the supply chain, and risk assessment. The supply chain chapter works as a standalone case. It opens with 23 purchase orders issued between 11 PM and 3 AM, all to one supplier, each below the $50,000 per-transaction threshold the replenishment agent was authorized to use, totaling $1,043,000, with no fraud and no malicious intent involved.
Agribusiness and food industry management
The opening foundations, the culture and change chapters, and the closing regulatory, maturity, and competitive arguments. This is the strategic frame rather than the operating detail, which suits a cohort that will manage the function rather than run it.
Personal care and cosmetic science, regulatory affairs track
Marketing and claim substantiation alongside risk assessment, which is where an AI copy tool meets a regulatory review that has not happened yet. The regulatory chapter supplies the frame, including where a wellness claim sits between FTC substantiation and an FDA drug claim.
MBA technology, ethics, or AI strategy elective
The foundations, the oversight chapters, and the closing argument that governed organizations win. Ownership and policy design are the two that most reliably produce disagreement in a seminar, since they ask who owns a system spanning procurement, quality, and finance, and what makes a policy enforceable against something that is not a person.
Information systems, IT audit, and risk
Threats, operational security, risk assessment, monitoring, and incident response map onto the control vocabulary students meet in ISACA and NIST material. The monitoring and auditing chapter separates having a documented override process from being able to demonstrate one, which is the distinction an audit course is built around.
Professional and executive certificate programs
"For the Executive with Five Minutes," the Introduction, and Appendix A. That sequence is continuous, needs no assembly, and gives a working professional the argument and the action list without the intervening chapters.
Why it is assignable
StructureEvery chapter closes with a Next Steps block. Each one is a set of specific actions rather than a summary, which gives a ready basis for an assignment at the end of any chapter.
Appendix A consolidates all twenty-three of those blocks into one working guide, beginning at printed page 341 and preserving each chapter's subheading and lead phrase. A core subset is marked and described as the minimum viable governance foundation and the first ninety days. That marked subset is the natural scope for a semester project.
Appendix B is a glossary, which lets students from mixed backgrounds work from shared definitions. It carries full entries for the regulatory and technical vocabulary the book uses across all five product categories. A bibliography follows, giving students a route from the book into primary sources.
Named companies in the book are drawn from public reporting and cited. Other scenarios are composites that demonstrate a governance principle.
Chapter map
23 chaptersEach title links to its full description on the chapter reference page. Select a course type to light the chapters that fit it.
Part I. Foundations
Part II. Structural Requirements
Part III. Governing Specific Use Cases
Part IV. Cybersecurity and the AI Threat
Part VII. Looking Forward
Teaching materials and evaluation copies
A teaching packet is available to faculty on request. It carries a paste-ready syllabus insert, four worked module designs from a two-week unit to a semester-long supplementary spine, discussion questions organized by part, and eight assignment prompts labeled by level, effort, and format. Three prompts come with rubric sketches. Two put students inside a generative AI tool and then ask them to audit their own output against the book's substantiation and documentation standards. An incident tabletop comes with a facilitator sheet, timed information releases, and debrief questions.
Evaluation copies are available in print or digital form. Write to robin.horstmann@rbcarthagepress.com with a mailing address and the course you are considering it for. There is nothing attached to the request.
Adoption details
3 editions| Paperback | 979-8-9960620-0-3 · $29.99 |
|---|---|
| Hardcover | 979-8-9960620-2-7 · $39.99 |
| Ebook | 979-8-9960620-1-0 · $12.99 |
| Publisher | R&B Carthage Press |
| Published | August 4, 2026 |
| Extent | 470 pages, black and white throughout |
| Trade terms | A campus bookstore can order the print editions through Ingram on standard trade terms with returns accepted. |
Editorial reviews
4 outlets"For any CPG executive whose company is already using AI without a governance framework, The Governed Enterprise is not optional reading."
Readers' Favorite, 5 Stars
"An operating manual for leaders who need to turn AI governance into everyday practice."
Literary Titan, 5 Stars
"A rigorous, executive-focused guide that belongs on every boardroom bookshelf."
BookView Review, Recommended (Top Rating)
"Essential reading for leaders navigating AI's growing operational and regulatory risks."
The Prairies Book Review
About the author
Robin HorstmannRobin Horstmann is a technology leader in consumer packaged goods, currently implementing agentic AI for accounting and manufacturing and building the foundations it runs on.
Her background is in the systems a company depends on: ERP implementation and recovery, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing execution systems (MES), and warehouse and transportation management (WMS and TMS). That work has run inside consumer goods for twenty years, which is why the controls get built with the system rather than bolted on after it.
The categories behind it are packaged food, pet food, wellness products, licensed apparel, and home textiles. Those five categories answer to four regulatory regimes. Pet food answers to AAFCO. Packaged food answers to FDA under FSMA. Wellness sits between FTC substantiation and an FDA drug claim. Licensed apparel carries contractual and intellectual property obligations food does not. That range is why The Governed Enterprise treats compliance as an operating problem rather than a legal appendix.
She wrote the book because it did not exist. While earning the IAPP's Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional credential, she went looking for a governance reference written for consumer goods and found only frameworks built for banks, insurers, and general enterprise. She wrote the playbook afterward. Her certifications cover AI governance (AIGP), AI security (AAISM), risk and IT controls (CRISC), information security (CISM), data privacy (CDPSE), and delivery (PMP).
She maintains the AI Governance Regulatory Record at robinhorstmann.com, a tracked account of the laws, rules, and court rulings reaching consumer goods companies that use AI, reviewed on a stated cadence.