01 · How topics are classified and ordered

What this resource is

This framework re-presents the Diploma Programme Business Management Higher Level course as a single, prerequisite-ordered teaching sequence — not five syllabus units taught in numerical order. It is built on three convictions: that topics should be taught in the order their dependencies require, that each should be taught to its full depth rather than its minimum, and that the connections between topics should be made explicit so that students see business management as one connected discipline rather than thirty-seven separate ones.

The intended outcome is a student taught deeply and connectedly enough to research a real organisation and reach a defensible recommendation about it — and, on Paper 3, to build a strategy for an unfamiliar social enterprise from first principles. That is only possible if the functions have been taught as one system rather than five.

Inside this document

01The design principle — how topics are classified and ordered
02The Teaching Spine — the full 37-topic flow, at a glance
03Why the Syntheses Come Last — the prerequisite feeder map
04The Sequence at a Glance — every topic with syllabus code, role and hours
05The 37 Topics in Depth — depth, interconnection and research angle for each
06Time Allocation & Pacing — reconciled to 240 hours, finishing by end of January

The design principle

Every topic is classified by the role it plays in the sequence:

Foundational — self-contained, and a prerequisite for later topics.
Developmental — extends one or more foundations.
Synthesis — teachable at depth only once several strands are mature. Ratio and efficiency analysis, budgeting, investment appraisal, break-even, the extended marketing mix, international marketing, motivation, organisational culture, employee relations, growth, multinational operations, management information systems and crisis management all sit here, and all are placed late by design.

The synthesis topics are scattered across all five units in the syllabus, yet their feeders cut straight across unit boundaries: the extended marketing mix needs cost behaviour from Unit 3 before a pricing strategy can be evaluated; break-even is filed in Unit 5 but is built from Unit 3 contribution and Unit 4 pricing; motivation depends on structure, leadership and the profit vocabulary that makes performance-related pay and share ownership schemes mean something; crisis management needs working capital, supply chains, communication and information systems all at once. That is why a vertical, unit-by-unit march fails, and why the horizontal, dependency-ordered path in the sections below succeeds.

Two further principles govern the order. Finance is taught second, not third, because costs, revenue, profit and cash are the quantitative language every remaining unit speaks — and because Paper 2 rewards technique that has had time to mature. And the HL extension topics are not bolted on: efficiency ratios sit inside the finance phase where they belong, lean production sits beside production methods, sales forecasting sits beside market research, and organisational culture and employee relations close the people phase. A student should not be able to tell, from the teaching, which material was the extension.

02 · The full 37-topic flow, at a glance

IB DEMYSTIFIEDExaminers · Moderators · Mentors

The Teaching Spine

Prerequisite-ordered flow · 37 topics · Business Management HL

Teach top to bottom — each phase is a prerequisite for the next. Colour shows each topic’s role; the pill shows the phase’s teaching hours.

PHASE A24 teaching hours

1Business Activity

2Ownership Forms

3Business Direction

4Stakeholders

▼

PHASE B57 teaching hours

5Finance & Decisions

6Costs & Revenue

7Funding

8Financial Statements

9Profitability & Liquidity

10Efficiency Ratios

11Cash & Working Capital

12Investment Appraisal

13Budgeting

▼

PHASE C41 teaching hours

14Operations

15Production Methods

16Lean & Quality

17Location

18Production Planning

19Break-even

20R&D and Innovation

▼

PHASE D43 teaching hours

21Markets & Performance

22Marketing Plan

23Market Research

24Sales Forecasting

25Extended Marketing Mix

26International Marketing

▼

PHASE E39 teaching hours

27HR Planning

28Structure

29Leadership

30Communication

31Motivation

32Organisational Culture

33Employee Relations

▼

PHASE F16 teaching hours

34Growth

35Multinationals

36Information Systems

37Crisis & Contingency

Role: Foundational Developmental Synthesis — taught late

Total taught content: 220 h · + 20 h business research project = 240 h

The full 37-topic sequence. Teach top to bottom; each phase is a prerequisite for the next.

03 · The prerequisite feeder map

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Why the Syntheses Come Last

How the applied topics build on the foundations

Each synthesis topic (right) can only be taught at depth once its feeders (left) are in place. A gold arrow means ‘is a prerequisite for’.

9. Profitability & Liquidity

8 · Financial statements — the raw figures6 · Costs & revenue — what sits above the line7 · Funding — capital employed & debt3 · Business direction — the benchmark

➤

9 · Profitability & Liquidity

A ratio is meaningless until the statement behind it is understood.

19. Break-even Performance

6 · Costs & revenue — contribution15 · Production methods — the cost structure16 · Lean operations — variable cost reduction5 · Finance & decisions — capital vs revenue

➤

19 · Break-even Performance

Filed in Unit 5, built almost entirely from Unit 3.

25. Extended Marketing Mix

21 · Markets & performance — orientation22 · Marketing plan — segment & position23 · Market research — the evidence base6 · Costs & revenue — pricing arithmetic

➤

25 · Extended Marketing Mix

Seven decisions that must cohere — and each needs evidence.

31. Motivation & Performance

27 · HR planning — turnover & training28 · Structure — span & delegation29 · Leadership — the manager’s toolkit6 · Costs & revenue — what a scheme costs

➤

31 · Motivation & Performance

Financial rewards are a cost decision as much as a people decision.

37. Crisis & Contingency

11 · Cash & working capital — survival18 · Production planning — supply chain risk30 · Communication — the crisis variable36 · Information systems — early warning

➤

37 · Crisis & Contingency

The last topic because everything feeds it.

How to read this

Right-hand boxes are the five applied topics that draw the most functions together.
Left-hand chips are the topics they depend on.
A gold arrow means ‘is a prerequisite for’.
Every feeder sits earlier in the spine, so by the time the topic is taught its feeders are done.
The whole argument for the order in one image: sequence by dependency, not by unit number.

Each synthesis topic can be taught at depth only once its feeders are in place.

04 · Every topic with syllabus code, role and hours

The sequence at a glance

Every topic in teaching order, with its syllabus code, its role and its teaching hours. The suggested Year 1 / Year 2 boundary falls in the middle of Phase D and is adjustable.

#	Topic	Syllabus	Role	Hours
Phase A — The Firm and Its Purpose (24 h)
1	Understanding Business Activity	1.1	Foundational	6 h
2	Business Ownership and Organisational Forms	1.2	Foundational	7 h
3	Establishing Business Direction	1.3	Foundational	6 h
4	Business Stakeholders and Their Interests	1.4	Developmental	5 h
Phase B — The Financial Language of the Firm (57 h)
5	Finance and Business Decision-Making	3.1	Foundational	3 h
6	Analysing Costs and Revenue	3.3	Foundational	6 h
7	Funding Business Activities	3.2	Developmental	7 h
8	Preparing and Interpreting Financial Statements	3.4	Developmental	10 h
9	Assessing Profitability and Liquidity	3.5	Synthesis	7 h
10	Evaluating Business Efficiency	3.6	Synthesis	5 h
11	Managing Cash and Working Capital	3.7	Developmental	7 h
12	Assessing Investment Opportunities	3.8	Synthesis	6 h
13	Budgeting and Financial Control	3.9	Synthesis	6 h
Phase C — Operations and the Transformation of Resources (41 h)
14	Managing Business Operations	5.1	Foundational	4 h
15	Choosing Production Methods	5.2	Developmental	5 h
16	Lean Operations and Quality Control	5.3	Developmental	7 h
17	Making Location and Relocation Decisions	5.4	Developmental	5 h
18	Planning Production and Inventory	5.6	Developmental	8 h
19	Understanding Break-even Performance	5.5	Synthesis	7 h
20	Research, Development and Innovation	5.8	Developmental	5 h
Phase D — Markets and the Customer (43 h)
21	Understanding Markets and Market Performance	4.1	Foundational	6 h
22	Creating a Marketing Plan	4.2	Developmental	8 h
23	Conducting Market Research	4.4	Developmental	7 h
24	Forecasting Future Sales	4.3	Developmental	6 h
25	Developing the Extended Marketing Mix	4.5	Synthesis	10 h
26	Marketing Across International Markets	4.6	Synthesis	6 h
Phase E — People and Organisation (39 h)
27	Strategic Human Resource Planning	2.1	Developmental	6 h
28	Structuring an Organisation	2.2	Developmental	5 h
29	Leadership and Management Approaches	2.3	Developmental	5 h
30	Communication Within Organisations	2.6	Developmental	4 h
31	Motivating and Managing Employees	2.4	Synthesis	8 h
32	Organisational Culture	2.5	Synthesis	5 h
33	Employee Relations and Workplace Conflict	2.7	Synthesis	6 h
Phase F — Strategy, Growth and the Global Firm (16 h)
34	Business Growth and Organisational Development	1.5	Synthesis	6 h
35	Operating as a Multinational Business	1.6	Synthesis	5 h
36	Business Information and Management Systems	5.9	Synthesis	3 h
37	Managing Business Crises and Preparing for Disruption	5.7	Synthesis	2 h
	Total taught content			220 h

Scroll the table sideways on narrow screens.

05 · Depth, interconnection and research angle for each

The 37 topics in depth

Each topic carries its teaching depth, its interconnections with other topics, and the toolkit and research angle through which it prepares a student for the business research project and for Papers 1, 2 and 3.

Showing all 37 topics in teaching order.

Phase A — The Firm and Its Purpose

Nothing here depends on later material, so it is taught first. What a business is, what legal form it takes, what it is trying to achieve and who has a claim on it are the four questions every later topic assumes have already been answered. Stakeholders close the phase because a stakeholder conflict is the first genuinely evaluative argument a student can make, and it becomes the template for every ‘discuss the impact on…’ question in the course — including the whole of Paper 3.

1. Understanding Business Activity

1.1 · Foundational · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Start with the business as a mechanism for combining human, physical and financial resources into goods and services, and name the four business functions — human resources, finance and accounts, marketing, operations — on day one, because the remaining four units are those functions. Primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors with real firms placed in each, and sectoral change taught as something economies do over time rather than a static list. Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship distinguished by where the risk sits, not by job title. Reasons for starting up, the common steps in doing so, the problems a new venture actually faces, and the elements of a business plan — introduced here as a document the course will fill in section by section.
Connects to: The four functions are the map of the whole syllabus; the business plan is completed later by finance, marketing and operations. Sector analysis returns in location decisions, growth, multinational expansion and the innovation topic.
Toolkit & research angle: Business plan and STEEPLE analysis introduced here and reused all year. The first practice at classifying and describing a real organisation — precisely the move the research project opens with, and the first thing Paper 3 asks for.

2. Business Ownership and Organisational Forms

1.2 · Foundational · 7 h

Teach to this depth: The private and public sector distinction first, then sole traders, partnerships and companies compared on liability, control, access to finance and continuity — presented as consequences of a single variable, separate legal personality, rather than four lists to memorise. For-profit social enterprises (cooperatives, microfinance providers, public–private partnerships) and non-profit social enterprises (NGOs, charities) taught at full weight rather than as an appendix, since Paper 3 is set on an unseen social enterprise and a student who has met them only in passing will have nothing to say. Throughout, insist that students can state what a given form makes possible and what it forecloses.
Connects to: Determines which sources of finance are open — share capital needs a company — which stakeholders exist, which objectives are plausible, and which growth methods are available. Every later ‘recommend…’ question is constrained by ownership form.
Toolkit & research angle: Comparative analysis of a commercial firm and a social enterprise serving the same need; identifying the ownership form of a candidate organisation for the research project.

3. Establishing Business Direction

1.3 · Foundational · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Vision and mission statements read critically against what the organisation actually does. Aims, objectives, strategies and tactics arranged as a hierarchy so students stop using the words interchangeably — the single most common vocabulary failure in Paper 1. Common organisational objectives and the reasons objectives change and organisations must innovate in response to internal and external shifts. Ethical objectives and corporate social responsibility treated as a strategic choice with costs, benefits and reputational consequences, and the evolving nature of CSR argued from real cases rather than asserted.
Connects to: Objectives are the benchmark against which ratio analysis, budget variances, marketing performance and growth decisions are judged; without them, later evaluation has nothing to evaluate against. Ethical objectives resurface in stakeholder conflict, operations, marketing and employee relations.
Toolkit & research angle: SWOT, the Ansoff matrix and Porter’s generic strategies are introduced here. Auditing a published mission statement against reported behaviour is a natural first analytical write-up.

4. Business Stakeholders and Their Interests

1.4 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Internal and external stakeholder groups identified precisely, then their interests and their influence stated as something each group would actually say rather than as a label. The core of the topic is mutual benefit and conflict: work through cases where two groups’ interests genuinely collide, and require students to weigh, not merely list. Establish here the habit that makes the difference at the top of the markbands — every recommendation names who gains, who loses, over what time horizon, and what would change the answer.
Connects to: Builds directly on ownership form and objectives. It is the evaluative template for the whole course: lean production, redundancy, offshoring, price rises, acquisitions and crisis response are all stakeholder-conflict problems.
Toolkit & research angle: Stakeholder mapping against a live news case; the research project’s ‘impact on stakeholders’ strand and the Paper 3 recommendation both begin here.

Phase B — The Financial Language of the Firm

The largest phase, taught second because finance is the quantitative language every remaining unit speaks. The internal order is mechanistic: establish why money is needed, then what costs and revenue are, then where funding comes from, then how the two are reported, then how the report is interpreted, then the cash the report does not show, then the appraisal of a future project, and finally the budget that controls it. The HL extension material — efficiency ratios and budgeting — is taught inside the phase rather than appended to it.

5. Finance and Business Decision-Making

3.1 · Foundational · 3 h

Teach to this depth: Why businesses need finance, framed around the distinction between capital expenditure and revenue expenditure and why confusing the two distorts every figure downstream. Finance as the enabling function for start-up, day-to-day operation, expansion and survival, with worked examples of each. Short, medium and long-term needs matched to purpose, so the matching principle is in place before sources of finance are met.
Connects to: The gateway to every other finance topic and to any question that asks whether a business can afford a proposed course of action — a new plant, a market entry, a reward scheme, a contingency reserve.
Toolkit & research angle: Classifying a real firm’s announced spending as capital or revenue; the finance section of the running business plan.

6. Analysing Costs and Revenue

3.3 · Foundational · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Fixed, variable, semi-variable, direct and indirect costs, each with an example the students generate themselves, and the point made explicitly that the same cost can be classified differently depending on the decision being taken. Total revenue and revenue streams, with multi-stream firms used to show why a single revenue figure hides more than it reveals. Then the arithmetic done properly and repeatedly: total cost, total revenue, profit and cost per unit at different output levels. Introduce contribution here rather than saving it for break-even, since contribution costing, absorption costing and make-or-buy analysis all depend on it.
Connects to: The single most reused topic in the course. It underpins the income statement, every profitability and efficiency ratio, budget variance analysis, cost-plus pricing, the choice of production method, location comparisons and the whole of break-even.
Toolkit & research angle: Contribution, make-or-buy analysis and absorption costing as toolkit techniques; descriptive statistics applied to a cost or revenue series. The topic that most rewards early, repeated numerical drilling.

7. Funding Business Activities

3.2 · Developmental · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Internal sources — personal funds, retained profit, sale of assets — then the external set: share capital, loan capital, overdrafts, trade credit, grants, subsidies, debt factoring, leasing, venture capital and business angels. Resist the list. Teach the four questions that actually decide the answer: what is the money for, how long is it needed, what does it cost, and what control is surrendered. Then have students select and justify a source for a given situation, defend it against the obvious alternative, and say what would change their mind.
Connects to: Constrained by ownership form from Phase A and by the capital-versus-revenue distinction from the previous topic; feeds the statement of financial position, the gearing ratio two topics later, working capital management and every growth decision.
Toolkit & research angle: A financing recommendation for a named firm with a stated justification and a stated rejected alternative — the exact shape of a Paper 1 or Paper 2 extended response.

8. Preparing and Interpreting Financial Statements

3.4 · Developmental · 10 h

Teach to this depth: Construct the statement of profit or loss line by line rather than presenting a completed one: sales revenue, cost of sales, gross profit, expenses, profit before interest and tax, and profit for the period, with each line explained by what it removes. Then the statement of financial position as a photograph on one date — assets, liabilities and equity — with the accounting identity made intuitive rather than asserted. Intangible assets, and the purpose and ethics of accounting practice for different stakeholder groups. Depreciation taught at HL depth: the straight-line and reducing-balance methods calculated, the resulting figures compared, and the strengths and weaknesses of each argued in terms of what they do to reported profit and asset value. Students should be able to build both statements from a jumbled list of figures under time pressure.
Connects to: Rests entirely on costs and revenue and on sources of finance; it is the raw material for every ratio in the next two topics, for budget variance analysis, and for the evidence base of stakeholder judgements about performance.
Toolkit & research angle: Building both statements from scrambled data; recalculating profit under both depreciation methods and explaining the difference to a non-accountant. Published accounts are the backbone of many strong research projects.

9. Assessing Profitability and Liquidity

3.5 · Synthesis · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Gross profit margin, profit margin and return on capital employed, then the current and acid-test ratios, each derived from the statement it comes from so the formula is understood rather than recalled. The teaching weight belongs on interpretation: a ratio means nothing alone, and only becomes evidence when compared across time, against a competitor or against the objective set in topic 3. Then strategies to improve each ratio, evaluated for side effects — cutting cost of sales may raise the margin and destroy the brand; stretching creditors may raise the current ratio and cost the firm its suppliers.
Connects to: Draws together financial statements, cost behaviour, funding and business objectives. This is the first point in the course where a student can make a genuinely evidenced judgement about how a business is doing.
Toolkit & research angle: A three-year ratio trend for one real company with a written interpretation, benchmarked against a competitor. A staple of both the research project and Paper 2.

10. Evaluating Business Efficiency

3.6 · Synthesis · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Inventory turnover, debtor days, creditor days and the gearing ratio, each calculated and then read as a statement about how the business is actually run — how long stock sits, how long customers take to pay, how long the firm makes suppliers wait, and how much of the capital structure is borrowed. Teach them as a set rather than four formulas: debtor days and creditor days together describe the working capital squeeze, and gearing describes the risk that squeeze is carried on. Then improvement strategies with their consequences named, including the ones that improve one ratio at another’s expense.
Connects to: An HL extension that is unteachable without the statements and the liquidity ratios that precede it. Inventory turnover connects directly forward to just-in-time and stock control in Phase C; gearing connects back to the funding decision in topic 7.
Toolkit & research angle: A full efficiency profile of a real firm with a diagnosis of where its working capital is trapped — often the most original analytical angle available in a research project.

11. Managing Cash and Working Capital

3.7 · Developmental · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Open with the distinction that carries the topic: profit is not cash, and a profitable business can fail. The working capital cycle traced as a real sequence of days, using the debtor and creditor figures from the previous topic. Cash-flow forecasts constructed and then interrogated — students should be able to spot the month the overdraft is needed and say why. The relationship between investment, profit and cash flow made explicit. Strategies for dealing with cash-flow problems grouped as reducing outflows, improving inflows and seeking additional finance, each evaluated for cost and for its effect on suppliers and customers.
Connects to: Applies costs, revenue, funding and efficiency ratios; explains the liquidity ratios already met; is the reason investment appraisal deals in cash flows; and is the first thing that fails in the crisis topic that closes the course.
Toolkit & research angle: Building and stress-testing a forecast by changing one assumption at a time — a genuinely quantitative skill and a recurring Paper 2 task.

12. Assessing Investment Opportunities

3.8 · Synthesis · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Payback period and average rate of return calculated cleanly, then net present value with discount tables used properly and the reason for discounting explained rather than assumed — money now is not money later, and the discount rate encodes both opportunity cost and risk. The three methods compared as decision rules with their assumptions exposed: payback ignores everything after the cut-off, ARR ignores timing, NPV depends entirely on a rate someone chose. Students should rank two projects, justify the ranking, and then state the qualitative factors that could reverse it.
Connects to: Needs cash flow, cost behaviour and funding; it is the tool later used to judge a new location, a lean investment, an R&D programme, a market entry or an acquisition.
Toolkit & research angle: Appraising two real capital projects with all three methods and reconciling the disagreement between them; decision trees as the complementary technique for choices under uncertainty.

13. Budgeting and Financial Control

3.9 · Synthesis · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Why organisations budget at all — planning, coordination, control and motivation — before any figures appear. Cost centres and profit centres distinguished, with their roles and their behavioural consequences: what gets measured changes how managers behave. Budgets constructed, then variances calculated and, crucially, classified as favourable or adverse and then explained — a favourable cost variance caused by skipping maintenance is not good news. The role of budgets and variances in strategic planning, and the limits of the whole apparatus in a volatile environment.
Connects to: The control counterpart to the statements and ratios that precede it, and a synthesis of cost behaviour, cash management and objectives. Variance analysis returns implicitly in operations, marketing and crisis planning.
Toolkit & research angle: A variance analysis with written explanations of each significant difference; budgeting as the quantitative spine of a research project on cost control.

Phase C — Operations and the Transformation of Resources

Operations comes before marketing because you cannot decide a price without knowing what the thing costs to make. The phase runs from the transformation process itself through method, quality, place and planning, and closes with break-even — filed in Unit 5 but built almost entirely from Phase B — and with research and development, which sits here because innovation is an operational capability before it is a marketing story.

14. Managing Business Operations

5.1 · Foundational · 4 h

Teach to this depth: Operations as the transformation of inputs into outputs, with the process drawn for both a manufacturer and a service provider so students stop equating operations with factories. Its relationship to the other three functions made concrete: operations turns marketing’s promise into a delivered product, spends what finance raises, and organises what human resources recruits. Efficiency and productivity distinguished from output. Then operations strategies for ecological, social and economic sustainability, taught as genuine constraints with cost implications rather than as a slogan.
Connects to: Sits on the four-functions map from topic 1 and on cost behaviour from topic 6; it is the foundation for production methods, lean operations, location, planning and break-even.
Toolkit & research angle: Mapping the transformation process of a real business; circular business models as the toolkit lens on sustainable operations — and a strong Paper 3 angle.

15. Choosing Production Methods

5.2 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Job, batch, mass and cellular production compared on unit cost, flexibility, capital requirement, skill requirement and quality consistency — a comparison the students build themselves and then use. Then the real work of the topic: choosing the appropriate method for a given situation and defending the choice against the market it serves and the finance available. Economies of scale are introduced here in their operational form, because that is where they physically happen, and picked up again in the growth topic.
Connects to: Determines the fixed-to-variable cost split, which drives break-even and gearing tolerance; feeds lean production, location, capacity utilisation and the economies-of-scale argument in growth.
Toolkit & research angle: Matching production method to two contrasting real firms in one industry and justifying each; cost structure comparison using topic 6 arithmetic.

16. Lean Operations and Quality Control

5.3 · Developmental · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Lean production taught as a philosophy with a cost consequence, not a vocabulary test: less waste, greater efficiency, and the reason each named method delivers it — continuous improvement, just-in-time, kanban and andon. Cradle-to-cradle design and manufacturing as the sustainability extension of the same logic. Then quality control distinguished from quality assurance by where responsibility sits, followed by quality circles, benchmarking and total quality management, with the organisational culture change each requires acknowledged honestly. The impact of lean and TQM on cost, quality, flexibility and staff, and the role of national and international quality standards.
Connects to: Builds on production methods and on the inventory turnover ratio from Phase B; just-in-time is a working capital strategy as much as an operational one, and it is the single largest source of supply-chain fragility in the crisis topic.
Toolkit & research angle: Costing a proposed lean intervention against the waste it removes; benchmarking a real firm against a named competitor on a stated quality measure.

17. Making Location and Relocation Decisions

5.4 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Quantitative location factors — land, labour and transport costs, proximity to market and to materials, government incentives — separated from qualitative ones, and both weighed in a single decision rather than listed. Then reorganising production nationally and internationally: outsourcing and subcontracting, offshoring and insourcing, each with its cost saving stated and its risk to quality, lead time, reputation and employees stated alongside. Relocation treated as a stakeholder problem as much as a cost problem.
Connects to: Applies cost classification and investment appraisal; connects forward to international marketing and to the multinational topic, where the same decision is made across borders and cultures.
Toolkit & research angle: A weighted location comparison for a real expansion with the weighting itself defended; SWOT and force field analysis applied to a relocation proposal.

18. Planning Production and Inventory

5.6 · Developmental · 8 h

Teach to this depth: The supply chain traced end to end as a sequence of dependencies, not a diagram. Just-in-time contrasted with just-in-case on cost, risk and resilience — the trade-off, not the winner. Stock control charts constructed and read: lead time, buffer stock, re-order level and re-order quantity, with the chart redrawn after a supplier delay so students see what buffer stock is actually for. Then the quantitative core: capacity utilisation rate, productivity rate, cost to buy and cost to make, each calculated and each used to reach a decision. Make-or-buy taught as a judgement that has a qualitative half.
Connects to: Applies lean thinking, contribution from topic 6 and inventory turnover from topic 10. It is the most quantitatively demanding operations topic and a reliable Paper 2 source; it also supplies the supply-chain half of the crisis topic.
Toolkit & research angle: Critical path analysis and Gantt charts belong here; a full make-or-buy appraisal for a real component, with the qualitative factors argued as carefully as the arithmetic.

19. Understanding Break-even Performance

5.5 · Synthesis · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Contribution per unit and total contribution recalled from topic 6, because break-even is only division once contribution is secure. The chart constructed by hand at least once, then read: break-even quantity, profit or loss at a given output, margin of safety, target profit output, target profit and target price. Then the real skill — recalculating after a change in price, in fixed cost or in variable cost, and explaining in words what the change did and why, using both graphical and quantitative methods. Finish with the limitations: linear assumptions, single product, static prices, and the fact that the chart says nothing about whether the output can be sold.
Connects to: Filed under operations but built from Unit 3 cost behaviour, with the cost structure set by the production method in topic 15 and the revenue line set by the pricing decisions still to come in Phase D. The clearest single illustration of why this framework does not teach unit by unit.
Toolkit & research angle: Break-even for a real business under two pricing scenarios, with the margin of safety interpreted as a risk statement. Reliably examined quantitatively in Paper 2.

20. Research, Development and Innovation

5.8 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Why research and development matters, and the harder point: developing goods and services that address needs customers have not yet articulated. Product, process, positioning and paradigm innovation distinguished with real examples of each, and adaptive creativity separated from innovative creativity. Then the conditions that make innovation happen or fail — pace of change in the industry, organisational culture, tolerance of failure, and the ethical limits on what should be developed. Treat R&D spending as an investment appraisal problem with an unusually uncertain payoff.
Connects to: Sits on operations and on investment appraisal; feeds the product life cycle and extension strategies in the marketing mix, and the culture topic in Phase E, since innovation is a cultural property before it is a budget line.
Toolkit & research angle: Classifying a firm’s recent launches by innovation type; appraising an R&D programme with NPV and stating honestly what the numbers cannot capture.

Phase D — Markets and the Customer

Marketing follows operations because pricing decisions require cost structures, and follows finance because forecasting and mix evaluation are quantitative. Inside the phase the order is evidential: understand the market, decide who you are selling to, gather the evidence, forecast the demand, and only then build the mix. International marketing closes the phase, since it is every earlier decision taken again under cultural and regulatory constraint.

21. Understanding Markets and Market Performance

4.1 · Foundational · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Marketing as the function that connects the organisation to its customers, and its relationship with the other three functions made explicit. The marketing of goods against the marketing of services, and market orientation against product orientation, argued through firms that have shifted from one to the other. Commercial marketing distinguished from social marketing — directly relevant to Paper 3. Market share and market growth calculated and, more importantly, interpreted: a rising share in a shrinking market is not the same story as a rising share in a growing one. Marketing objectives for both for-profit and non-profit organisations, and how strategies evolve as customer preferences shift.
Connects to: Rests on business objectives from Phase A and on revenue analysis from Phase B; it is the platform for planning, research, forecasting and the mix.
Toolkit & research angle: Market share and growth calculations from published industry data with a written interpretation; descriptive statistics applied to market data.

22. Creating a Marketing Plan

4.2 · Developmental · 8 h

Teach to this depth: The elements and role of a marketing plan, then the sequence that carries the topic: segment, target, position. Segmentation bases applied to real markets; target markets distinguished from market segments, which students routinely conflate; niche against mass market with the risk profile of each stated; consumer profiles built from real data. Position maps drawn from actual price and quality figures rather than invented. Then the unique selling proposition and differentiation, with the test applied honestly — a claimed USP that competitors also make is not a USP. Finish by judging whether a given mix would achieve the stated marketing objectives.
Connects to: Needs the market vocabulary of the previous topic and the objectives of Phase A; it defines who the research will sample, what the forecast is forecasting, and what the mix must deliver.
Toolkit & research angle: Position map, Ansoff matrix and Porter’s generic strategies applied to a real product range; the strategy section of the running business plan.

23. Conducting Market Research

4.4 · Developmental · 7 h

Teach to this depth: Why organisations research and what a research question has to look like to be answerable. Primary methods — surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation — and secondary methods — market analyses, academic journals, government publications, media articles — each with cost, speed and reliability weighed. Qualitative against quantitative data, and the ethics of market research treated seriously. Then sampling: quota, random, stratified, cluster, snowballing and convenience, taught through what each does to representativeness. Results presented, analysed and interpreted rather than merely collected, with the limitations stated by the student rather than the teacher.
Connects to: Serves the segmentation and positioning decisions just made and supplies the evidence base for forecasting and the mix. It is also the methodological backbone of the research project itself.
Toolkit & research angle: Design, run and critique a small primary study with a stated sampling method and an honest account of its limitations; descriptive statistics applied to the results. The most directly transferable topic in the course for the internal assessment.

24. Forecasting Future Sales

4.3 · Developmental · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Why a forecast is worth making — it drives production planning, cash-flow forecasts, staffing and budgets, all of which the students have already met, so the topic can be motivated rather than asserted. Up to four-part moving averages calculated from given data; trend, seasonal, cyclical and random variation separated and each explained by something real in the business. Extrapolation performed and then criticised, since the assumption that the past continues is exactly the assumption that fails. The benefits and limitations of forecasting argued with a case where a forecast was confidently wrong.
Connects to: An HL extension that feeds straight back into Phase B and Phase C: the sales figure at the top of a cash-flow forecast, a budget and a production plan is a forecast, and its error propagates through all three.
Toolkit & research angle: Simple linear regression, scatter diagrams and lines of best fit belong here; forecasting a real firm’s next-period sales from published data and then checking the outcome.

25. Developing the Extended Marketing Mix

4.5 · Synthesis · 10 h

Teach to this depth: The largest single topic in the course, and it earns the hours. Product: the life cycle read against the mix, extension strategies, the relationship between the life cycle and investment, profit and cash flow, portfolio analysis with the BCG matrix, branding as awareness, development, loyalty and value, and packaging. Price: cost-plus, penetration, skimming, psychological, loss leader, price discrimination, price leadership and predatory pricing at SL depth, plus the HL pricing methods, each evaluated against the position chosen in topic 22 and the costs established in topic 6. Promotion: above and below the line, the promotional mix, the effect of changing technology including viral and social channels, and guerrilla marketing. Place: channel choice and its effect on margin, control and reach. Then people, processes and physical evidence taught properly rather than as three afterthoughts, with the employee–customer relationship, delivery processes and tangible evidence each argued through a service business and through cultural variation. The discipline throughout: no element is judged alone — the seven must cohere with each other and with the position.
Connects to: Draws on market orientation, positioning, research evidence, forecast demand and cost behaviour at once. Pricing links straight back to break-even; the life cycle links to cash flow, investment appraisal and the R&D topic.
Toolkit & research angle: BCG matrix on a real portfolio; a full seven-P proposal for one service business with each element justified from the research gathered two topics earlier.

26. Marketing Across International Markets

4.6 · Synthesis · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Methods of entry — export, licensing, franchising, joint venture, direct investment — ranked by commitment, control and risk rather than listed. The opportunities and threats of entry argued with real successes and real withdrawals, and the strategic and operational implications traced through every function: what international entry does to the supply chain, to cash flow, to staffing and to the brand. Cultural difference treated analytically rather than anecdotally, and the implications of globalisation for standardisation against adaptation of the mix.
Connects to: The mix taken abroad, so it needs all of Phase D, plus location and supply-chain material from Phase C and investment appraisal from Phase B. It is the direct precursor to the multinational topic in Phase F.
Toolkit & research angle: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions applied to a real market-entry decision; STEEPLE analysis of a target country; evaluating a firm’s decision to standardise or adapt.

Phase E — People and Organisation

People are taught once there is a business for them to run. Workforce planning, structure, leadership and communication are the machinery; motivation, culture and employee relations are the three syntheses that need all four plus the cost vocabulary from Phase B, since a reward scheme, a culture change and a strike are all financial events as well as human ones. Culture is placed after motivation deliberately — it is the explanation for why the same incentive works in one organisation and fails in another.

27. Strategic Human Resource Planning

2.1 · Developmental · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Workforce planning as forecasting demand for and supply of labour, with the internal and external factors that shift either side — demographic change, labour mobility, new communication technologies. Labour turnover calculated and interpreted, since a high figure is a symptom and the topic is diagnosis. Recruitment steps; training types — induction, mentoring, on the job, off the job, cognitive, behavioural — with cost and effectiveness weighed; appraisal types — formative, summative, 360-degree, self-appraisal — with their purposes distinguished. Changing work patterns including remote and flexible working; dismissal and redundancy with their legal and ethical dimensions; outsourcing, offshoring and reshoring as human resource strategies. Then resistance to change and the strategies that reduce it.
Connects to: Uses cost analysis directly — turnover, training and redundancy are all quantifiable — and links to the offshoring decisions met in topic 17. It sets up structure, leadership, motivation and the conflict topic that closes the phase.
Toolkit & research angle: Turnover and training cost analysis for a real organisation; force field analysis applied to a proposed workplace change.

28. Structuring an Organisation

2.2 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: The vocabulary taught as a connected system rather than eight definitions: delegation, span of control, levels of hierarchy, chain of command, bureaucracy, centralisation, decentralisation and de-layering, with the trade-off between span and hierarchy derived so students can predict what widening one does to the other. Chart types — flat, tall, hierarchical, by product, by function, by region — drawn and then judged for fit against a given strategy. Project-based and shamrock-style structures as responses to changing conditions, and the effect of structure and of communication technology on the speed and accuracy of information.
Connects to: Follows workforce planning and precedes communication, motivation and culture, all three of which are shaped by structure. Structural change is also a standard consequence of the growth met in Phase F.
Toolkit & research angle: Redrawing a real organisation’s chart after a proposed restructure and stating the consequences for cost, speed and morale.

29. Leadership and Management Approaches

2.3 · Developmental · 5 h

Teach to this depth: The key functions of management, then management contrasted with leadership on a basis students can defend rather than a slogan. Autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, laissez-faire and situational styles, each matched to circumstances in which it genuinely works — a crisis, a skilled autonomous team, a merger, a turnaround — so that ‘it depends’ becomes an argument rather than an evasion. How leaders actually influence behaviour, and how ethical considerations and cultural differences shape which style is acceptable and effective in a given organisation.
Connects to: Sits on organisational structure — span of control largely determines what style is even possible — and feeds motivation, culture, communication and conflict resolution directly.
Toolkit & research angle: Analysing a named leader’s decisions during a real crisis and evaluating the style against the outcome; Hofstede’s dimensions as the cross-cultural lens.

30. Communication Within Organisations

2.6 · Developmental · 4 h

Teach to this depth: Formal and informal channels, and the direction of flow — vertical, horizontal, and the informal network that runs alongside both. Methods compared on speed, cost, record and richness, and matched to purpose rather than ranked. Barriers to effective communication traced to their causes, including structural ones from the previous topics, and the effect of cultural difference and communication technology on what actually gets understood rather than merely sent.
Connects to: A direct consequence of organisational design; a precondition for motivation, for managing change, for employee relations, and — decisively — for the crisis topic, where communication is one of the four factors that determine whether the crisis is survived.
Toolkit & research angle: Diagnosing a real communication failure and proposing a structural rather than a cosmetic fix.

31. Motivating and Managing Employees

2.4 · Synthesis · 8 h

Teach to this depth: Taylor, Maslow, Herzberg, Adams and Pink taught as competing explanations rather than a chronology, with each applied to the same workplace scenario so students see where they agree and where they contradict. The causes of poor motivation diagnosed from evidence — turnover, absenteeism, output, quality. Financial rewards — salary, wages at time and piece rates, commission, profit-related pay, performance-related pay, share ownership schemes and fringe benefits — costed, not just named. Non-financial rewards — job enrichment, rotation, enlargement, empowerment, purpose and teamwork — matched to the theory that predicts they will work. Appraisal and training treated as motivational instruments as well as developmental ones, and the effect of culture on which rewards land at all.
Connects to: The first synthesis of the people phase: it needs workforce planning, structure and leadership, and it needs the cost, profit and budgeting vocabulary of Phase B before a reward scheme can be evaluated as a business decision. Cellular manufacturing from Phase C is a motivation intervention as much as a production method.
Toolkit & research angle: Costing a proposed reward scheme against the turnover saving it is meant to deliver; a survey-based motivation study using the sampling methods from topic 23.

32. Organisational Culture

2.5 · Synthesis · 5 h

Teach to this depth: Culture defined as the shared assumptions that decide what gets done when no one is watching, then its elements — values, stories, symbols, rituals, structures of power — identified in real organisations. Types of culture compared, and the two-way relationship taught explicitly: individuals shape the culture and the culture shapes individuals. The centre of gravity is cultural clash: what happens when organisations grow, when they merge, and when leadership style changes, with real merger failures used as evidence rather than illustration.
Connects to: An HL extension placed after motivation on purpose — culture explains why an incentive that works in one firm fails in another. It also explains why lean production and TQM succeed in some organisations and stall in others, and it is the hidden variable in every acquisition evaluated in Phase F.
Toolkit & research angle: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions applied to a real cross-border merger; a cultural audit of one organisation from published sources and employee reviews.

33. Employee Relations and Workplace Conflict

2.7 · Synthesis · 6 h

Teach to this depth: The role and responsibility of employee and employer representatives. Then the methods available to each side — for employees, collective bargaining, go-slows, work-to-rule, overtime bans and strike action; for employers, collective bargaining, threats of redundancy, changes of contract, closure and lock-outs — with the cost of each to both parties made concrete. Sources of workplace conflict traced to their causes, and the resolution approaches — conciliation and arbitration, employee participation and industrial democracy, no-strike and single-union agreements — evaluated rather than listed. Throughout, the influence of innovation, ethics and cultural difference on what employer–employee relations look like in practice.
Connects to: The closing synthesis of the people phase: it needs planning, structure, leadership, communication, motivation and culture, and it needs the financial vocabulary to cost a dispute. Change resistance from topic 27 and cultural clash from topic 32 are its two commonest causes.
Toolkit & research angle: Costing a real industrial dispute to both sides; force field analysis of a proposed change that provoked resistance.

Phase F — Strategy, Growth and the Global Firm

The applied conclusion of the course, placed last by design. Growth needs ownership, objectives, finance, operations and structure; multinational operations need growth and international marketing; information systems need something to inform; and crisis management is the final capstone, because a crisis tests every function at once. Taught here, these four can be taught as strategy rather than as definitions.

34. Business Growth and Organisational Development

1.5 · Synthesis · 6 h

Teach to this depth: Economies and diseconomies of scale explained through the production methods met in Phase C rather than as an abstract curve, and the merits of staying small argued as seriously as the merits of growing. Internal against external growth. Then the external methods — mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, joint ventures, strategic alliances and franchising — each evaluated on cost, speed, risk, control and cultural fit, with a real case attached and the culture topic from Phase E brought to bear on why so many acquisitions disappoint. The recurring discipline: growth is judged against the objectives set in topic 3, financed from the sources in topic 7, appraised with the methods in topic 12, and its effects traced through the stakeholder map from topic 4.
Connects to: Requires ownership forms, objectives, stakeholders, funding, investment appraisal, production methods, structure and culture — which is precisely why it cannot be taught in the opening weeks, where the syllabus numbering places it.
Toolkit & research angle: Evaluating a real recent acquisition against the acquirer’s stated objectives and its subsequent ratios; Ansoff matrix and SWOT applied to a growth proposal.

35. Operating as a Multinational Business

1.6 · Synthesis · 5 h

Teach to this depth: The defining characteristics of a multinational company and the reasons firms operate across borders — market access, cost, resources, regulation, risk spreading — each tested against a real example rather than accepted. Then the impact on host countries argued in both directions with evidence: employment, technology transfer and tax revenue against profit repatriation, labour and environmental standards, and cultural effects. The closing move is to take one multinational and read it through every function studied: how it finances itself, how it locates, produces and controls quality, how it markets across cultures, and how it manages a workforce it cannot see.
Connects to: Growth, location, ownership, funding, international marketing, culture and human resources all bear on it at once — which is why, placed here, it can be taught as strategy rather than as a list of definitions.
Toolkit & research angle: A whole-course case study on one multinational analysed through all four functions; STEEPLE and Hofstede applied to a proposed market entry.

36. Business Information and Management Systems

5.9 · Synthesis · 3 h

Teach to this depth: Management information systems as the machinery that turns operational data into managerial decisions, taught by returning to decisions the students have already made: the stock control chart, the cash-flow forecast, the sales forecast, the budget variance and the ratio trend were all information systems outputs. Data mining, digital Taylorism, cybersecurity and data loss, artificial intelligence and big data treated with their business consequences and their ethical costs stated together — surveillance of employees, privacy of customers, and the question of what a decision made by a system is worth when no one can explain it.
Connects to: Only teachable at the end, because it is the abstraction over everything already met: finance, operations, marketing and human resources each supply it with data and each consume its output. It is also the early-warning system in the crisis topic that follows.
Toolkit & research angle: Auditing what data a real organisation collects, what it decides with it, and what it should not be collecting at all — a distinctive and highly examinable Paper 3 angle.

37. Managing Business Crises and Preparing for Disruption

5.7 · Synthesis · 2 h

Teach to this depth: Crisis management distinguished from contingency planning by timing — one is response, the other is preparation — and the four factors that decide whether a crisis is survived taught as a working checklist: transparency, communication, speed and control, each illustrated by a real case handled well and one handled badly. Then contingency planning appraised honestly on cost, time, risk reduction and safety, so students can argue both that a plan is worth having and that an organisation can over-plan. The final exercise of the course is to take one real crisis and trace it through every function: what happened to cash, to the supply chain, to the workforce, to the brand.
Connects to: The closing synthesis. Working capital, just-in-time supply chains, communication, culture, information systems and stakeholder management all bear on it at once. Placed last, it can be taught as strategy under uncertainty rather than as two definitions.
Toolkit & research angle: A full post-mortem of a recent corporate crisis across all four functions; decision trees and contingency costing for a named risk. The natural rehearsal for Paper 3.

06 · Reconciled to 240 hours, finishing by end of January

Time allocation & two-year pacing

The IB recommends 240 teaching hours for Higher Level Business Management, of which 20 hours are allocated to the internally assessed business research project. That leaves 220 hours of taught content. The allocations in the sequence table above distribute those 220 hours across all 37 topics; below they are reconciled unit by unit and paced so that teaching is complete by the end of January in Year 2.

Reconciliation to the five syllabus units

IB syllabus unit	Topics	Allocated here
1 — Introduction to business management	6	35 h
2 — Human resource management	7	39 h
3 — Finance and accounts	9	57 h
4 — Marketing	6	43 h
5 — Operations management	9	46 h
Taught content subtotal	37	220 h
Business research project (internal assessment)	—	20 h
HL course total	37	240 h

Because this framework re-sequences topics across unit boundaries, a phase’s hours will not match a unit’s. The reconciliation above proves that nothing has been added or lost: all 37 topics are present and the 220 taught hours are fully accounted for. The guide’s own per-unit hours are advisory, and teachers are explicitly free to distribute time between units differently — the weighting here reflects the quantitative demand of Unit 3, the size of Unit 5 at Higher Level, and the fact that the extended marketing mix is the largest single topic in the course.

The two-year pacing plan

Built on roughly four to four-and-a-half teaching hours per week across the two years, with the business management toolkit integrated into the topics rather than taught separately. The cumulative column tracks progress toward the 240-hour total; the gold rows fall outside the teaching budget.

Period	Focus	Hours	Cumul.
YEAR 1
Autumn term	Phase A — The Firm and Its Purpose · begin Phase B (finance and decisions → financial statements) · course induction and the business plan as a running document	50	50
Spring term	Finish Phase B (ratios, efficiency, working capital, investment appraisal, budgeting) · begin Phase C (operations, production methods, lean and quality, location)	52	102
Summer term	Finish Phase C (production planning, break-even, R&D) · begin Phase D (markets, marketing plan, market research) · research project scoping and organisation selection	53	155
YEAR 2 (to end January)
Autumn term	Finish Phase D (sales forecasting, the extended mix, international marketing) · Phase E — People and Organisation · business research project written and submitted	69	224
To end of January	Phase F — growth, multinationals, information systems and crisis management, taught as whole-course synthesis and as direct Paper 3 preparation	16	240
FEBRUARY – APRIL	Dedicated revision: past papers, Paper 1 case-study drills, Paper 2 quantitative drills and Paper 3 social-enterprise practice, and timed mocks (additional to the 240 teaching hours)	—	—
MAY	IB examinations	—	—

A note on the research project. The 20 hours are not a separate course. Roughly 6 hours fall at the end of Year 1 — choosing an organisation, framing a researchable question and settling the primary and secondary sources — with the remaining 14 hours in the first term of Year 2 for research, analysis and writing. Placing the scoping there is deliberate: by that point students have met ratio and efficiency analysis, cash-flow forecasting, budgeting, break-even, market research and sampling, so they choose a question from a position of knowledge and already hold the tools to answer it. It also leaves Phase F clear of assessment pressure, which matters because Phase F is where Paper 3 is really prepared.

Revision time (February–April) is deliberately additional to the 240 teaching hours, in line with the subject guide’s reminder that adequate time must be set aside for examination revision.