A Level Business Studies

Theme 1: You will gain an understanding of how businesses identify opportunities and explore how businesses develop competitive advantages and interact with customers. You will develop an understanding of how businesses need to adapt their marketing to operate in a dynamic business environment. You will also consider people, exploring how businesses recruit, train, organise and motivate employees, as well as the role of enterprising individuals and leaders. Finally, you will investigate different types and sizes of organisation in various business sectors and environments and in local, national and global contexts.

Theme 2: You will gain an understanding of raising and managing finance and measuring the performance of a business. The theme outlines the importance of using resources efficiently within a business to ensure that goods or services can be delivered effectively and efficiently, and to a high quality. You will consider the external influences that have an impact on businesses, including developing your understanding of the economic and legal factors which can impact both positively and negatively upon a business. Once again, you will investigate different types and sizes of organisation in various business sectors and environments and in local, national and global contexts.

Theme 3: This theme bridges the gap between the role of functions and the strategy of the business. You will analyse corporate objectives and strategy against financial and non-financial performance measures and how businesses grow by organic and inorganic methods, developing an understanding of the impact of external influences and of organisational culture. The theme covers the causes and effects of change and how businesses mitigate risk and uncertainty. You will develop your quantitative skills further by enhancing your knowledge previously acquired by learning how to forecast sales, how to calculate moving averages and how to work out budget variances.

Theme 4: You will develop your understanding of the concepts introduced in Theme 1 and explore business activity in a global context. You will develop an understanding of the globally competitive environment and consider the ethical and moral dimensions of global business activities. You will explore the emerging markets of BRIC and MINT, examine the various methods that a UK business can use to achieve globalisation and will examine the growing dominance of multi-national corporations looking into topics such as tax avoidance and tax evasion.