A-level Business Studies

What you will learn

1. Unit 1 - What is Business?
   • Different types of business
   • Mission statements
   • Business and the external environment
   • Environmental issues and fair trade
   • Cost and demand

2. Unit 2 - Managers, Leadership and Decision Making
   • Difference between managers and leaders
   • Types of management and leadership styles
   • Influences on the styles of management and leaders
   • The types of decisions a business makes
   • Stakeholders

3. Unit 3 - Decision Making to Improve Marketing Performance
   • The purpose of marketing
   • Marketing objectives
   • Ethical and environmental marketing object objectives
   • Types of market research
   • Qualitative market research
   • Quantitative market research
   • Market mapping
   • Understanding extrapolation
   • Interpretation of price and income elasticities of demand
   • Segmentation, targeting and positioning
   • The marketing mix
   • The promotional mix
   • The product life cycle
   • Types of distribution channel
   • Digital marketing and E-commerce

4. Unit 4 - Decision Making to Improve Operational Performance
   • Setting operational objectives
   • Analysing operational performance
   • Increasing efficiency and productivity
   • Managing quality
   • Managing inventory and supply chains

5. Unit 5 - Decision Making to Improve Financial Performance
   • Types of financial objective
   • Return on investment
   • The distinction between cash flow and profit
   • Gross profit, operating profit, and profit for the year
   • Types of budget
   • Value of budgeting
   • How to analyse profitability
   • Different sources of finance
   • Improving cash flow and profits

6. Unit 6 - Decision Making to Improve Human Resource Performance
   • Human resource objectives
   • Maintaining good employer and employee relations
   • Internal and external influences on HR objectives and decisions
   • Organisational structures and influences
   • Recruitment
   • Human resource / workforce planning
   • Importance of effective recruitment and selection
   • Training
   • Redeployment
   • Redundancy
   • Theories of motivation
   • Methods of employee representation

7. Unit 7 - Analysing the Strategic Position of a Business
   • Mission corporate objectives and strategy
   • The distinction between strategy and tactics
   • SWOT Analyses
   • The value of a SWOT Analysis
   • Analysing balance sheets
   • Classifying business expenditure
   • Profitability and performance ratios
   • Financial performance indicators
   • Political and legal change
   • Economic change and Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
   • Social and technological change
   • Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting
   • Competitive environment

8. Unit 8 - Choosing Strategic Direction
   • The factors influencing which markets to compete in and which products to offer
   • Ansoff’s Matrix
   • Competitive advantage

9. Unit 9 - Strategic Methods: How to Pursue Strategies
   • The differences between organic and external growth
   • Issues involved with managing growth
   • The experience curve
   • Greiner’s Model of Growth
   • Assessing innovation
   • Assessing internationalisation
   • The pressures to adopt digital technology
   • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

10. Unit 10 - Managing Strategic Change

    Causes of and pressures for change

    The value of change

    The value of a flexible organisation

    Organic structures vs mechanistic structures

    Managing information and knowledge

    Kotter and Schlesinger’s Four Reasons for Resistance to Change

    The importance of organisational culture

    The influences on organisational culture

    Managing strategic implementation

    Planned vs emergent strategy

    The value of strategic planning

    The value of contingency planning

11. Preparing for the examinations

    Paper 1

    Paper 2

    Paper 3