IB Business Management A

October 10, 2019

Stakeholders and You

The stakeholders in Even small business have to deal with stakeholder conflicts when interested parties have different feelings about how the business should be run. The needs of employees and suppliers may be rather different. A careful balance will be needed and charting a course that satisfies most stakeholders can be difficult.

Think about your own business idea and add for slides to your business presentation addressing these questions:

Who are the stakeholders with an interest in your company?
What are their need/concerns? What are their motivations?
What are potential conflicts that might arise?
How might you resolve the conflict?

October 7, 2019

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have an interest in an organization. Stakeholders can be: employees, managers, shareholders, suppliers, customers, governments, special interest groups, competitors and others.

With a partner, read through your assigned segment of Chapter 4 (Stakeholders) and attempt to make the content visible by drawing simple charts and illustrations on a large scroll of paper. Together, we will attempt to visualize the stakeholder concept.

Chapter 4

October 3, 2019

Organizational Objectives Review

Businesses can benefit from setting clear objectives. Knowing what they are trying to achieve and having a strategy for how to meet objectives is of great importance. Companies must also focus on meeting social and ethical responsibilities in order to adapt to societal changes.

Check what you know about the information presented in Chapter 3 of the textbook by answering the seven questions below. Refer to the pdf of the chapter as needed.

Chapter 3

Check what you know

September 30, 2019

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility is the idea that businesses consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their decisions and activities on customers, employees, communities and the environment.

Objectives that focus on meeting social responsibilities are increasingly important for most business organizations. Companies that focus solely on maximizing value for corporate shareholders often suffer repercussions in the long-term.

Harvard Prison Divestment

Research instances of companies addressing or ignoring social corporate responsibility and then create a race-to-the end board game in which corporations have to navigate their way to their intended objectives (profit maximization, profit satisfying, growth, increasing market share, survival).

Follow the game instructions here.

September 26, 2019

Objectives, Vision Statements and Mission Statements

The success or failure of a business often depends on developing clear objectives and strategizing a plan to meet those objectives. Vision and mission statements define a business's core aims and are framed in a way that is intended to motivate employees and stimulate interest by outside groups and communicate what the organization hopes to achieve in the long term.

Return to the business idea you began developing last week and craft a set of business objectives (use the SMART criteria), a vision statement and a mission statement. Include at least three new slides in your original plan.

September 24, 2019

Organizational Objectives

Chapter 3 Key Terms

Use the pdf to read through Chapter 3 of the textbook. Write the definitions of each of the key words on notecards with the word on one side and definition on the opposite side.

Chapter 3

September 23, 2019

Types of Organizations

Chapter 2 Review

Business activity can be classified as public or private, profit and non-profit. Profit based business in the private sector can take many forms, each with advantages and disadvantages.

Check what you know about the information presented in Chapter 2 of the textbook by answering the 12 questions. Refer to the pdf of the chapter as needed.

Chapter 2

Check what you know

September 20, 2019

Small Business Revolution

September 19, 2019

Identifying Market Opportunties

One of the keys to starting a successful business is to first identify a market opportunity that will generate sufficient demand for a product or service to be profitable. Businesses are often started by individuals and come from ideas like:

Skills and hobbies
Previous experience
Small budget market research

Doing small budget research is a low cost way for an entrepreneur to find gaps in a local market that could prove profitable.

Think of a business you could start as a sole trader-- you provide the finance of the business and have full control, or a partnership-- you share the responsibilities and the capital investment.

Use the internet to do some market-based research to identify a potential market for your good or service, then create a visual presentation for a market plan for your business idea.

Your visual presentation should include the following:

a description of the business idea
the sector your business will be in
the location of your business and other companies in the area offering the same goods and services
an explanation of how you would address some of the most common problems faced by start-up business like: competition, building a customer base, lack of record keeping, lack of working capital, poor management skills, and changes in the business environment

submit presentation here

Due Friday September 20

September 17, 2019

Business Organization and Environment

CASE STUDY EXAM PRACTICE

Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow.

In 1995, Larry page and Segey Brin met at Stanford University. The following year they formed a partnership and began collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. In 1997, they decided to rename BackRub and came up with Google (derived from 'googol' a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros).

With $100,000 support from a backer, Google Inc was set up in 1998 in a garage in California. Later that year, PC Magazine recognized Google's search engine as one of the top 100 websites. In 2000, Google became availablein many languages including French, German, Italian and Chinese. By 2004, the Google search index contained 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images. It moved to an office in California called Googleplex with over 800 employees and offices all over the world. In the same year, Google became a public limited company offering for sale 19,605,052 shares at an opening price of $85 a share.

Over the next five years, Google refined and added to its search engines a range of products such as Google News, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Video. Today, Google is a huge multinational corporation worth around $160 billion and its share price is over $500 a share.

Questions

1. Explain the term 'partnership'.

2. Outline two benefits to Larry Page and Sergey Brin of starting Google as a partnership.

3. Explain the difficulties the partners would have encountered when they set up Google.

4. Explain the term 'public limited company' (plc).

5. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to Google following its conversion to a plc in 2004.

submit answers here

Due Thursday September 19

September 16, 2019

The Nature of Business Activity

INTRODUCTION

A business is any organization that uses resources to meet the needs of customers by providing a product or service that they demand. Business involves adding value to resources. Business uses the resources of our planet to produce goods that allow us to enjoy a higher standard of living.

WHAT DO BUSINESSES DO?

Businesses provide goods and services to consumers which are usually classified as: consumer goods, consumer services and capital goods.

Business inputs are the resources needed to produce outputs, which are the goods and services for customers with the goal of making a profit.

WHAT ARE BUSINESS INPUTS?

Business inputs are raw materials and resources used to produce goods and services.

Factors of Production

Land includes the land as well as the renewable and non-renewable resources
Labor the workforce of manual and skilled labor
Capital includes the finance needed to set up a business and its continuing operations as well as all the man-made resources used in production
Enterprise provides the managing, decision-making, and coordinating role

BUSINESS FUNCTIONS

Marketing

Finance

Human Resource Management

Operations Management

Interelationship of Functions

SECTORS OF INDUSTRY

Primary sector business activity involves firms engaged in farming, fishing, oil extraction and all other industries that extract natural resources so that they can be used and processed by other firms.

Secondary sector firms manufacture and process products from natural resources, including computers, brewing, baking, clothing and construction.

Tertiary sector firms provide services to consumers and other businesses, such as retailing, transport, insurance, banking, hotels, tourism and telecommunications

The balance of the sectors varies from country to country depending on the level of industrialization. The importance of each sector changes over time. Industrialization reveals the importance of the secondary and tertiary sectors. This is measured by employment levels and output levels.

Movement from primary to secondary sector has benefits and problems.

Benefits

Increases in Gross Domestic Product and average standards of living
Lower imports and higher exports
Expanding manufacture leads to job creation
Profitable firms pay more in taxes
Value added to output of raw materials

Problems

Movement of people to city leading to housing and social problems
Difficulty recruiting and retaining workers
Increased import costs for raw materials
Pollution leading to environmental problems
Expansion of multinational companies

In developed countries, there is movement from the secondary to the tertiary sector. This is known as deindustrialization. This leads to rising incomes and consumers spending more money on services than on more goods. Examples include growth in tourism, hotels, restaurants etc. Spending on goods rises more slowly.

Key Terms:

consumer goods

the physical goods sold to the general public. Durable goods are goods like cars and washing machines. Non-durable goods include food and drinks that can only be used once.

consumer services

non-tangible products that are sold to the general public including: hotel accommodation, insurance services, and train journeys.

capital goods

physical goods that are used by industry

primary sector business activity

firms engaged in farming, fishing, oil extraction and all other industries that extract natural resources so that they can be used and processed by other firms.

secondary sector business activity

firms manufacture and process products from natural resources, including computers, brewing, baking, clothing and construction.

tertiary sector business activity

firms provide services to consumers and other businesses, such as retailing, transport, insurance, banking, hotels, tourism and telecommunications

Check What You Know

Due Thursday September 19

“"The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed" -William Gibson