Cambridge International AS & A Level Business, 2/e

Business and its environment • Enterprise • The nature of business activity • The role of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs • Business plans • Business structure • Economic sectors • Business ownership • Size of business • Measurements of business size • Significance of small businesses • Business growth • Business objectives • Business objectives in the private sector and public sector • Objectives and business decisions • Stakeholders in a business • Business stakeholders • The relative importance and influence of stakeholders on business activities • Human resource management • Human resource management (HRM) • Purpose and roles of HRM • Workforce planning • Recruitment and selection • Redundancy and dismissal • Morale and welfare • Training and development • Management and workforce relations • Motivation • Motivation as a tool for management and leadership • Human needs • Motivation theories • Motivation methods in practice • Management • Management and managers • Marketing • The nature of marketing • Role of marketing and its relationship with other business activities • Demand and supply • Markets • Consumer and industrial marketing • Mass marketing and niche marketing • Market segmentation • Customer relations marketing (CRM) • Market research • The purposes of market research • Primary research and secondary research • Sampling • Market research data • The marketing mix • The elements of the marketing mix • Products • Product portfolio analysis • Pricing methods • Promotion methods • Place (channels of distribution) • Operations management • The nature of operations • The transformational process • Efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and sustainability • Capital intensive and labour intensive operations • Operations methods: job, batch, flow, mass customisation • Inventory management • Managing inventory • Just in Time (JIT) • Capacity utilisation and outsourcing • Significance and measurement of capacity utilisation • Outsourcing Contents • Finance and accounting • Business finance • The need for business finance • Working capital • Sources of finance • Business ownership and sources of finance • Internal and external sources of finance • Factors affecting sources of finance • Selecting the source of finance • Forecasting and managing cash flows • Cash flow forecasts • Costs • Cost information • Approaches to costing • Uses of cost information • Break-even analysis • Budgets • The meaning and purpose of budgets • Variances • A LEVEL • Business and its environment • External influences on business activity • External influences on business activity : Political and legal • External influences on business activity: Economic • External influences on business activity: Other • Business strategy • Developing business strategy • Corporate planning and implementation • Human resource management • Organisational structure • Relationship between business objectives and organisation structure • Types of structure • Delegation and accountability • Control, authority and trust • Centralisation and decentralisation • Line and staff • Business communication • Purposes of communication • Methods of communication • Channels of communication • Barriers to communication • The role of management in facilitating communication • Leadership • Leadership • Theories of leadership • Emotional intelligence/emotional quotient (EQ) • Human resource management strategy • Approaches to human resource management (HRM) • Marketing • Marketing analysis • Elasticity • Product development • Sales forecasting • Marketing strategy • Planning the marketing strategy • Approaches to marketing strategy • Strategies for international marketing • Operations management • Location and scale • Location • Scale of operations • Quality management • Quality control and quality assurance • Benchmarking • Operations strategy • Operational decisions • Flexibility and innovation • Enterprise resource planning (ERP) • Lean production • Operations planning • Finance and accounting • Financial statements • Statement of profit or loss • Statement of financial position • Inventory valuation • Depreciation • Analysis of published accounts • Liquidity ratios • Profitability ratios • Financial efficiency ratios • Gearing ratios • Investment ratios • Investment appraisal • The concept of investment appraisal • Basic methods • Discounted cash flow methods • Investment appraisal decisions  • Finance and accounting strategy • The use of accounting data to enable strategic decision making • The use of accounting data and ratio analysis in strategic decision making