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A2 Business (9609) Study Notes

• Section 1: External Influences
  • Topic 1: Lectures 1-2, Privatization, advantages, and disadvantages. Nationalization (opposite of privatization). Labor protection laws (labor law), advantages and disadvantages. Consumer protection laws, advantages and disadvantages. Business competition laws, advantages and disadvantages.
  • Topic 2: Lectures 3-4, Economic growth (definition, positive and negative influences on business). Economic recession (definition, positive and negative influences on business). Inflation (definition, positive and negative influences on business). Deflation (definition, positive and negative influences on business).
  • Topic 3: Lectures 5-9, Corporate social responsibility (CSR), advantages, and disadvantages, including social audits. Pressure groups and their influence. Social and demographic changes. Technology (advantages and disadvantages). International trade/ globalisation, advantages and disadvantages. Multinationals, advantages and disadvantages to businesses and host countries. Fiscal policy (taxes) and its advantages and disadvantages, including both direct and indirect taxes. Monetary policy (interest rates) and its advantages and disadvantages. Supply-side policies.
• Section 2: Business Strategy
  • Topic 1: Lectures 1-2, Organizational structure (hierarchical, functional, team-based), advantages, and disadvantages.
  • Topic 2: Lectures 3-4, Business communications (methods, barriers, how to improve), advantages and disadvantages of each method.
  • Topic 3: Lectures 5-6, Leadership theories (great man, trait, behavioral, contingency, and transactional), importance of emotional intelligence in leadership.
  • Topic 4: Lectures 7-8, Human Resource Management (HRM), different approaches (hard, soft) advantages and disadvantages of each approach, methods to improve employee performance, including management by objectives (MBO), enterprise resource planning (ERP), innovation and technology in HRM.
• Section 3: Marketing Analysis
  • Topic 1: Lectures 1-2, Elasticity of Demand: Price, Income, Promotional.
• Topic 2: Lectures 3-4, Sales Forecasting: Trend analysis (moving averages) and seasonal variation along with how to forecast future sales.
• Topic 3: Lectures 5-6, Marketing Strategy: Developing a marketing plan, its individual elements from deciding the mission and objectives to establishing a marketing budget.
• Topic 4: Lectures 7-8, International Marketing: Methods of entering international markets (exporting, franchising, joint ventures, licensing, and direct investment) factors to consider in international markets.
• Section 4: Operations Management
  • Topic 1: Lectures 1-2 Site selection and scale of operations (determining factors).
  • Topic 2: Lectures 3-4, Technology in production (CAD & CAM).
  • Topic 3: Lectures 5-6, Quality management (quality control and quality assurance), Methods to ensuring quality.
  • Topic 4: Lectures 7-8, Lean production (techniques such as Kaizen, quality circles, simultaneous engineering, and cell production).
  • Topic 5: Lectures 9-10, Project Management (network analysis, Gantt charts/ critical path analysis), advantages and disadvantages.
• Section 5: Financial Analysis
  • Topic 1: Lectures 1-2, Financial statements (income statement, balance sheet), calculation of profits and losses, how to make adjustments in case of changes to the statements.
  • Topic 2: Lectures 3-4, Ratio analysis (liquidity, profitability, gearing, financial efficiency ratios), how to interpret and evaluate ratios and their implications.
  • Topic 3: Lectures 5-7, Investment appraisal (techniques such as payback, average rate of return, discounted payback, discounted ARR, and net present value (NPV)), advantages and disadvantages for each.