AS Business Content
Year group: 12
When taught: September to May
AQA specification link: AQA | AS and A-level | Business | Subject content
What are we learning?
Unit 3.1: What is business?
- Understanding the nature and purpose of business
- Understanding different business forms
- Understanding that businesses operate within an external environment
Unit 3.2: Managers, leadership and decision making
- Understanding management, leadership and decision making
- Understanding management decision making
- Understanding the role and importance of stakeholders
Unit 3.3: Marketing management
- Setting marketing objectives
- Understanding markets and customers
- Making marketing decisions: segmentation, targeting, positioning
- Making marketing decisions: using the marketing mix
Unit 3.4: Operational management
- Setting operational objectives
- Analysing operational performance
- Making operational decisions to improve performance: increasing effciency and productivity
- Making operational decisions to improve performance: improving quality
- Making operational decisions to improve performance: managing inventory and supply chains
Unit 3.5: Financial management
- Setting financial objectives
- Analysing financial performance
- Making financial decisions: sources of finance
- Making financial decisions: improving cash flow and profits
Unit 3.6: Human resource management
- Setting human resource objectives
- Analysing human resource performance
- Making human resource decisions: improving organisational design and managing the human resource flow
- Making human resource decisions: improving motivation and engagement
- Making human resource decisions: improving employer employee relations
How will we be assessed on this topic?
- End of topic assessments
- Regular exam questions set as homework and in class.
- Mock exam at the end of January
- AS exam in May
What makes a strong piece of work in this topic? What are teachers hoping to see?
- Well developed business knowledge
- The ability to make clear links and connections between different business topics
- Confident use of business terminology
- Strong analytical skills with many strands of development
- The ability to construct well-balanced arguments and counter-arguments in context
- The ability to apply knowledge and understanding very effectively to given contexts in exam questions
- The ability to use detailed, specific, factual knowledge to back up points, evaluation and judgements
- The ability to draw valid and strong conclusions with good supporting evidence and explanation
- The ability to confidently consider the significance of points discussed and their impact on the business in question
Supporting document/links:
- Textbooks will be provided on loan to all students
Online:
- Business | tutor2u
- Home – BBC News
- Financial Times (ft.com)
- The Latest News from the UK and Around the World | Sky News
- A Level Business | Takingthebiz
- Bizconsesh – YouTube
To watch:
- BBC One – Panorama
- BBC Two – Newsnight
- BBC One – Dragons’ Den
- BBC One – The Apprentice
- BBC One – Question Time
- BBC Two – Inside the Factory
To read:
- The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today’s latest headlines
- News | The Independent | Today’s headlines and latest breaking news
- The Economist | Independent journalism
- Business Review – Hodder Education Magazines
- ‘Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonalds’ Ray Kroc
- ‘How I Made It: 40 Successful Entrepreneurs Reveal How They Made Their Millions’ Rachel Bridge
- ‘Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE’ Phil Knight
- ‘The Google Story’ David A. Vise
- ‘The Happy Index: Lessons in Upside-Down Management’ James Timpson