What this resource is
This framework re-presents the Diploma Programme Business Management Standard 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 twenty-six 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 — one who chooses a research question because they understand the business problem behind it, rather than one who, never having been shown the depth, outsources it.
Inside this document
- 01The design principle — how topics are classified and ordered
- 02The Teaching Spine — the full 26-topic flow, at a glance
- 03Where the Functions Come Together — how the applied topics build on the foundations
- 04The Sequence at a Glance — every topic with syllabus code, role and hours
- 05The 26 Topics in Depth — depth, interconnection and research angle for each
- 06Time Allocation & Pacing — reconciled to 150 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 — applied topics that draw several earlier strands together, taught once those strands are secure. Ratio analysis, investment appraisal, the marketing mix, break-even, motivation, growth and multinational operations all sit here.
Standard Level has no separate strategy unit and no Paper 3 to act as a capstone. The synthesis therefore happens inside these applied topics, where several functions are brought to bear on one business decision at once. Their feeders cut straight across unit boundaries: the marketing mix needs cost behaviour from Unit 3 before a pricing strategy can be evaluated; break-even sits in Unit 5 but is unteachable without fixed and variable costs, contribution and revenue; motivation depends on organisational structure and on the profit vocabulary that makes performance-related pay and share ownership schemes mean something; growth and multinational operations need ownership forms, objectives, sources of finance and economies of scale all in place at once. The dependency-ordered path in the sections below makes sure those foundations are always there first.
One further principle governs the order: finance is taught second, not third. Costs, revenue, profit and cash are the quantitative language the rest of the course speaks. A student who meets cost-plus pricing before they have met a fixed cost, or a break-even chart before they have met contribution, is being asked to run an argument on vocabulary they do not have. Teaching Unit 3 early also gives quantitative technique the whole of Year 1 to mature, which is exactly what Paper 2 rewards.
IB DEMYSTIFIEDExaminers · Moderators · Mentors
The Teaching Spine
Prerequisite-ordered flow · 26 topics · Business Management SLTeach 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 A20 teaching hours
1Foundations of Business
2Ownership Forms
3Business Goals
4Stakeholders
▼
PHASE B37 teaching hours
5Role of Finance
6Costs & Income
7Financing a Business
8Financial Statements
9Profitability & Liquidity
10Cash Management
11Investment Decisions
▼
PHASE C44 teaching hours
12Role of Operations
13Production Methods
14Location
15Markets & Marketing
16Marketing Strategy
17Market Research
18Marketing Mix
19Break-even
▼
PHASE D29 teaching hours
20HR Planning
21Organisational Design
22Leading Employees
23Communication
24Motivation
25Expansion
26Multinationals
Role:
Foundational
Developmental
Synthesis — taught late
Total taught content: 130 h · + 20 h business research project = 150 h
The full 26-topic sequence. Teach top to bottom; each phase is a prerequisite for the next.
IB DEMYSTIFIEDExaminers · Moderators · Mentors
Where the Functions Come Together
How the applied topics build on the foundationsEach 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 & income — what sits above the line7 · Financing — capital employed & debt3 · Business goals — the benchmark to judge against
➤
9 · Profitability & Liquidity
A ratio is meaningless until the statement behind it is understood.
18. Building the Marketing Mix
15 · Markets & marketing — orientation16 · Strategy — segment, target, position17 · Market research — the evidence base6 · Costs & income — cost-plus pricing
➤
18 · Building the Marketing Mix
The mix is a set of decisions, and decisions need evidence and costs.
19. Break-even Analysis
6 · Costs & income — fixed, variable, contribution13 · Production methods — the cost structure18 · Pricing decisions — the revenue line5 · Role of finance — capital vs revenue spend
➤
19 · Break-even Analysis
Placed in Unit 5, but built entirely from Unit 3 and Unit 4 material.
24. Motivation & Performance
20 · HR planning — turnover & training21 · Organisational design — span & delegation22 · Leadership — the manager’s toolkit6 · Costs & income — what a reward scheme costs
➤
24 · Motivation & Performance
Financial rewards are a cost decision as much as a people decision.
25. Business Expansion
2 · Ownership forms — what growth is legally open3 · Business goals — why grow at all7 · Financing — how growth is paid for13 · Production methods — economies of scale
➤
25 · Business Expansion
Near the end because every function has a claim on the decision.
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.
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 at the end of Phase C and is adjustable.
| # | Topic | Syllabus | Role | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phase A — The Firm and Its Purpose (20 h) | ||||
| 1 | Foundations of Business | 1.1 | Foundational | 5 h |
| 2 | Forms of Business Ownership | 1.2 | Foundational | 6 h |
| 3 | Setting Business Goals | 1.3 | Foundational | 5 h |
| 4 | People Affected by Business Decisions | 1.4 | Developmental | 4 h |
| Phase B — The Financial Language of the Firm (37 h) | ||||
| 5 | The Role of Finance | 3.1 | Foundational | 3 h |
| 6 | Understanding Business Costs and Income | 3.3 | Foundational | 5 h |
| 7 | Financing a Business | 3.2 | Developmental | 6 h |
| 8 | Understanding Financial Statements | 3.4 | Developmental | 7 h |
| 9 | Measuring Profitability and Liquidity | 3.5 | Synthesis | 6 h |
| 10 | Managing Business Cash | 3.6 | Developmental | 6 h |
| 11 | Evaluating Investment Decisions | 3.7 | Synthesis | 4 h |
| Phase C — Making and Selling (44 h) | ||||
| 12 | The Role of Operations | 5.1 | Foundational | 3 h |
| 13 | Methods of Producing Goods and Services | 5.2 | Developmental | 4 h |
| 14 | Choosing Where to Operate | 5.3 | Developmental | 4 h |
| 15 | Understanding Markets and Marketing | 4.1 | Foundational | 5 h |
| 16 | Developing a Marketing Strategy | 4.2 | Developmental | 6 h |
| 17 | Gathering Market Information | 4.3 | Developmental | 6 h |
| 18 | Building the Marketing Mix | 4.4 | Synthesis | 10 h |
| 19 | Analysing the Break-even Point | 5.4 | Synthesis | 6 h |
| Phase D — People, Growth and the Global Firm (29 h) | ||||
| 20 | Workforce and Human Resource Planning | 2.1 | Developmental | 5 h |
| 21 | Designing an Organisation | 2.2 | Developmental | 4 h |
| 22 | Managing and Leading Employees | 2.3 | Developmental | 4 h |
| 23 | Communication in Business | 2.5 | Developmental | 3 h |
| 24 | Employee Motivation and Performance | 2.4 | Synthesis | 6 h |
| 25 | Business Expansion and Development | 1.5 | Synthesis | 4 h |
| 26 | International Business Organisations | 1.6 | Synthesis | 3 h |
| Total taught content | 130 h | |||
Scroll the table sideways on narrow screens.
The 26 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 and 2.
Filter by role
Showing all 26 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.
1. Foundations of Business
- 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 and multinational expansion.
- 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.
2. Forms of Business Ownership
- 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) given genuine weight rather than a paragraph, since a social enterprise is a legitimate stimulus context in the examination. Throughout, insist that students can say 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 two real organisations with different ownership forms and the same market; identifying the ownership form of a candidate organisation for the research project.
3. Setting Business Goals
- 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 — growth, profit, market share, protecting shareholder value, ethical and environmental goals — and the reasons objectives change in response to internal and external pressure. Ethical objectives and corporate social responsibility treated as a strategic choice with costs and benefits, with the evolving nature of CSR argued from real cases rather than asserted.
- Connects to
- Objectives are the benchmark against which ratio analysis, marketing performance and growth decisions are judged; without them, later evaluation has nothing to evaluate against. Ethical objectives resurface in stakeholder conflict, marketing and operations.
- Toolkit & research angle
- SWOT and the Ansoff matrix are introduced here. Auditing a published mission statement against the organisation’s reported behaviour is a natural first analytical write-up.
4. People Affected by Business Decisions
- Teach to this depth
- Internal and external stakeholder groups identified precisely, then their interests 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 and over what time horizon.
- Connects to
- Builds directly on ownership form and objectives. It is the evaluative template for the whole course: cost-cutting in operations, redundancy in HR, price rises in marketing and growth by acquisition are all stakeholder-conflict problems.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Stakeholder mapping against a live news case; the research project’s ‘impact on stakeholders’ strand begins here.
Phase B — The Financial Language of the Firm
Finance is taught second because it is the quantitative language every remaining unit speaks. The order inside the phase 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 that the report does not show, and finally the appraisal of a future project. Taught here, quantitative technique has the rest of the course to mature — which is exactly what Paper 2 asks for.
5. The Role of Finance
- 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 that 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 — location, growth, a new product, a reward scheme.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Classifying a real firm’s announced spending as capital or revenue; the finance section of the running business plan.
6. Understanding Business Costs and Income
- 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.
- Connects to
- The single most reused topic in the course. It underpins the income statement, every profitability ratio, cost-plus pricing, the choice of production method, location comparisons and the whole of break-even analysis.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Cost classification for a real small business; descriptive statistics applied to a cost or revenue series. This is the topic that most rewards early, repeated numerical drilling.
7. Financing a Business
- 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, and defend it against the obvious alternative.
- 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, gearing intuition, cash management and every growth decision.
- Toolkit & research angle
- A financing recommendation for a named small firm with a stated justification and a stated rejected alternative — the exact shape of a Paper 1 or Paper 2 extended response.
8. Understanding Financial Statements
- Teach to this depth
- Construct the income statement 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. Cover intangible assets and the purpose of accounts to different stakeholder groups, and be explicit about what a set of accounts cannot tell you. Students should be able to build both statements from a jumbled list of figures, which is how Paper 2 tests it.
- Connects to
- Rests entirely on costs and revenue and on sources of finance; it is the raw material for every ratio in the next topic and the evidence base for stakeholder judgements about performance.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Building both statements from scrambled data under time pressure; reading a real published set of accounts and stating what it shows and what it hides.
9. Measuring Profitability and Liquidity
- 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 possible strategies to improve each ratio, evaluated for side effects — cutting cost of sales may raise the margin and destroy the brand.
- Connects to
- Draws together financial statements, cost behaviour, sources of finance 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; the analytical core of many strong research projects.
10. Managing Business Cash
- 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. Cash-flow forecasts constructed and then interrogated — students should be able to spot the month the overdraft is needed and say why. Strategies for dealing with cash-flow problems grouped as reducing outflows, improving inflows and seeking additional finance, each evaluated for its cost and its effect on suppliers and customers.
- Connects to
- Applies costs, revenue and sources of finance; explains the liquidity ratios just met; and is the reason investment appraisal deals in cash flows rather than profits.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Building and stress-testing a forecast by changing one assumption at a time — a genuinely quantitative skill and a common Paper 2 task.
11. Evaluating Investment Decisions
- Teach to this depth
- Payback period and average rate of return calculated cleanly, then compared as decision rules with their assumptions exposed: payback ignores everything after the cut-off, ARR ignores timing. Students should choose between two projects, justify the choice, and then state the qualitative factors — objectives, stakeholders, competitor response, ethics — that could reverse it. That final move is what separates a mark in the top band from an arithmetic answer.
- Connects to
- Needs cash flow, cost behaviour and sources of finance; it is the tool later used to judge a new location, a new production method or an expansion project.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Appraising two real capital projects side by side; decision trees as the complementary toolkit technique for a choice under uncertainty.
Phase C — Making and Selling
Operations comes before marketing because you cannot decide a price without knowing what the thing costs to make, and marketing then supplies the demand side. The phase ends with the marketing mix and break-even, the two topics that most obviously fuse Units 3, 4 and 5 — the mix because pricing is a cost decision as well as a positioning decision, break-even because it is filed under operations but built almost entirely from finance and marketing material.
12. The Role of Operations
- Teach to this depth
- Operations as the transformation of inputs into outputs, with the transformation 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, and the sustainability dimension — ecological, social and economic — taught as an operational constraint rather than 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, location and break-even.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Mapping the transformation process of a local business; circular business models as the toolkit lens on sustainable operations.
13. Methods of Producing Goods and Services
- Teach to this depth
- Job, batch, mass and cellular production compared on unit cost, flexibility, capital requirement, skill requirement and quality consistency — a comparison table 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. Economies of scale are introduced here in their operational form, because that is where they physically happen, and are picked up again in the growth topic.
- Connects to
- Determines the fixed-to-variable cost split, which drives break-even; feeds location decisions, capacity questions and the economies-of-scale argument in expansion.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Matching production method to two contrasting real firms in the same industry and justifying each; cost structure comparison using topic 6 arithmetic.
14. Choosing Where to Operate
- 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: 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; feeds the multinational topic at the end of the course, where the same decision is made across borders.
- Toolkit & research angle
- A weighted location comparison for a real expansion, with the weighting itself defended; SWOT applied to a relocation proposal.
15. Understanding Markets and Marketing
- 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. Market share calculated and, more importantly, interpreted — share is a relative measure, and 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.
- Connects to
- Rests on business objectives from Phase A and on revenue from Phase B; it is the platform for strategy, research and the mix.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Market share and market growth calculations from published industry data, with a written interpretation rather than a bare figure.
16. Developing a Marketing Strategy
- 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. Position maps drawn from real price and quality data 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.
- Connects to
- Needs the market vocabulary of the previous topic and the objectives of Phase A; it defines who the market research will sample and what the mix must deliver.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Position map and Ansoff matrix applied to a real product range; the strategy section of the running business plan.
17. Gathering Market Information
- 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, and results presented and interpreted rather than merely collected.
- Connects to
- Serves the segmentation and positioning decisions just made, and supplies the evidence base for 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 single most directly transferable topic for the internal assessment.
18. Building the Marketing Mix
- 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, each evaluated against the position chosen in topic 16 and the costs established in topic 6. Promotion: above and below the line, the promotional mix, digital and social channels, and guerrilla methods. Place: channel choice and its effect on margin, control and reach. Then people, processes and physical evidence as the extension that makes the model work for services. The discipline throughout: no element is judged alone — the mix must be internally consistent and consistent with the position.
- Connects to
- Draws on market orientation, positioning, research evidence and cost behaviour at once. Pricing links straight back to Unit 3 and straight forward into break-even; the life cycle links to cash flow and investment appraisal.
- Toolkit & research angle
- BCG matrix on a real portfolio; a full mix proposal for one product with each element justified from the research gathered in the previous topic.
19. Analysing the Break-even Point
- Teach to this depth
- Contribution per unit and total contribution established first, because break-even is only division once contribution is understood. 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. Finish with the limitations: linear assumptions, single product, static prices, and the fact that the chart says nothing about whether the output can actually be sold.
- Connects to
- Filed under operations but built from Unit 3 cost behaviour and Unit 4 pricing, with the cost structure set by the production method chosen in topic 13. It is the clearest single illustration of why this framework does not teach unit by unit.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Break-even for a real small business under two pricing scenarios, with the margin of safety interpreted as a risk statement. Reliably examined quantitatively in Paper 2.
Phase D — People, Growth and the Global Firm
People are taught once there is a business for them to run. Human resource planning, structure, leadership and communication are the machinery; motivation is the synthesis that needs all four plus the cost vocabulary from Phase B, since a reward scheme is a financial decision as well as a psychological one. Growth and multinational operations close the course because every function has a claim on them — and because, taught here, they can be taught as strategy rather than as a list of methods.
20. Workforce and Human Resource Planning
- 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. Changing work patterns including remote and flexible working; dismissal and redundancy handled 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 — training and turnover are quantifiable — and links to the offshoring decisions met in topic 14. It sets up structure, leadership and motivation.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Turnover and training cost analysis for a real organisation; force field thinking applied to a proposed workplace change.
21. Designing an Organisation
- 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. Flexible and project-based structures as responses to changing conditions, and the effect of structure on the speed and accuracy of information.
- Connects to
- Follows workforce planning and precedes communication and motivation, both of which are shaped by structure. Structural change is also a standard consequence of the growth met at the end of the phase.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Redrawing a real organisation’s chart after a proposed restructure and stating the consequences for cost, speed and morale.
22. Managing and Leading Employees
- 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 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 and communication directly.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Analysing a named leader’s decisions during a real crisis and evaluating the style against the outcome.
23. Communication in Business
- 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 topic, and the effect of cultural difference and communication technology on what actually gets understood.
- Connects to
- A direct consequence of organisational design; a precondition for motivation, for managing change, and for anything the operations and marketing functions have to coordinate.
- Toolkit & research angle
- Diagnosing a real communication failure and proposing a structural rather than a cosmetic fix.
24. Employee Motivation and Performance
- 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. Then training and development as a motivational as well as a productive investment, and the effect of culture on which rewards land at all.
- Connects to
- The synthesis of the people phase: it needs workforce planning, structure and leadership, and it needs the cost and profit vocabulary of Phase B before a reward scheme can be evaluated as a business decision.
- 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 17.
25. Business Expansion and Development
- 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. The recurring discipline: growth is judged against the objectives set in topic 3 and its effects traced through the stakeholder map from topic 4.
- Connects to
- Requires ownership forms, objectives, stakeholders, sources of finance, production methods and organisational structure — 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; Ansoff matrix and SWOT applied to a growth proposal.
26. International Business Organisations
- 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. 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 of the course is to take one multinational and read it through every function studied: how it finances itself, how it locates and produces, how it markets across cultures, and how it manages a workforce it cannot see.
- Connects to
- The final synthesis. Growth, location, ownership, finance, marketing and human resources all bear on it at once — which is why, placed last, it can be taught as strategy rather than as a list of definitions.
- Toolkit & research angle
- A full-course case study on one multinational, analysed through all four functions; STEEPLE analysis of a proposed market entry.
Time allocation & two-year pacing
The IB recommends 150 teaching hours for Standard Level Business Management, of which 20 hours are allocated to the internally assessed business research project. That leaves 130 hours of taught content. The allocations in the sequence table above distribute those 130 hours across all 26 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 | 27 h |
| 2 — Human resource management | 5 | 22 h |
| 3 — Finance and accounts | 7 | 37 h |
| 4 — Marketing | 4 | 27 h |
| 5 — Operations management | 4 | 17 h |
| Taught content subtotal | 26 | 130 h |
| Business research project (internal assessment) | — | 20 h |
| SL course total | 26 | 150 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 26 topics are present and the 130 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 and the sheer size of the marketing mix.
The two-year pacing plan
Built on roughly two-and-a-half to three 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 150-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 (role of finance → financial statements) · course induction and the business plan as a running document | 41 | 41 |
| Spring term | Finish Phase B (ratios, cash management, investment appraisal) · begin Phase C (operations, production methods, location, markets) | 32 | 73 |
| Summer term | Finish Phase C — marketing strategy, market research, the marketing mix and break-even · research project scoping and organisation selection | 34 | 107 |
| YEAR 2 (to end January) | |||
| Autumn term | Phase D — workforce planning, structure, leadership, communication and motivation · business research project written and submitted | 36 | 143 |
| To end of January | Phase D completed — business expansion and multinational operations, taught as whole-course synthesis | 7 | 150 |
| FEBRUARY – APRIL | Dedicated revision: past papers, Paper 1 case-study drills and Paper 2 quantitative drills, and timed mocks (additional to the 150 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 analysis, cash-flow forecasting, market research and sampling, and the marketing mix, so they choose a question from a position of knowledge and have the tools to answer it. It also leaves the whole of Phase D free of assessment pressure.
Revision time (February–April) is deliberately additional to the 150 teaching hours, in line with the subject guide’s reminder that adequate time must be set aside for examination revision.