1. Home
  2. NOVA School of Science and Technology
  3. Materials Engineering
  4. Business Management

Business Management

Objectives

This course should make students familiar with the set of issues faced by every working person in his job assignment. More specifically, students are required to understand the basic principles and issues involved in the business world, namely in each functional area in a firm and the cross-relations among areas. This approach is built on the analysis of cases for specific real world firms. Then, teaching is conducted by means of interaction, in theory-practice lectures, where various management problems related with the different functional areas in a firm, along with many examples and exercises.

For the grading of the course under continuous evaluation method, it is actually considered compulsory to conduct a group practice work where a real world firm is analyzed in major areas. For these set of works there should be handed in a written version (and a snapshot page for the classroom mates) to be presented and discussed in class.

General characterization

Code

10423

Credits

3.0

Responsible teacher

Célia Maria Castanheira de Moura da Costa Cabral, Fernanda Antonia Josefa Llussá

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 42

Teaching language

Português

Prerequisites

There is not any prerequisite.

Bibliography

References for the course should be found in the slides provided in the course homepage in CLIP

Basic Readings:

Lisboa, João et al. "Introdução à Gestão de Organizações", Grupo Editorial Vida Económica, 2004;

Material available in CLIP page.

Additional useful textbooks: Freire, A., 1995, Estratégia, Verbo; Campos e Cunha, R., 1992, A Gestão de Recursos Humanos na Estratégia da Empresa, Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profisisonal ;Lindon, D., Lendrevie, J., Rodrigues, J. E Dionísio, P., 2000, Mercator, Publicações D. Quixote; Pires, A., 1991, Marketing, Verbo; Soares, J., Viana Fernandes, André Março e Pires Marques, 1999, Avaliação de Projectos de Investimento na Óptica Empresarial, Edições Sílabo; Geraldes, F., 2001, Manual do Empreendedor, Bertrand Editora; Libby, R., Libby, P. and Short, D., 2008, Financial accounting, McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Teaching method

Theory-practice lectures involving theory with some applications and exercises and, importantly, the analysis of cases (i.e., specific real world firms and their management problems).

 

Evaluation method

a)Team Assignment and Individual test: this grading scheme comprises  one team assignment and one test.  In order to pass in the course the student needs to have an average grade of at least 9.5 points (=0.4*assignment grade + 0.6*midterm grade), out of 20 points. It is not required any minimal grade in the assignment or midterm. For the assignment, the students will be divided in teams of 4 to 6 students. Each team will choose a company to study its marketing and strategy (counts for 30% ) and human resource management (counts for 10%).  The team assignment due date is October 20 by email until midnight) and a printed version until the following Monday. The test will be held on Dec 7 and will last about 2 hours. If you are not approved (average grade less than 9.5) you will have the option to do the “Exame de Recurso” which will count 100% for your final grade for the course given that the team assignment grade will not be considered for the grade.

b. Final Exam: The exam grade counts 100% of the final grade; the minimum pass grade is 9.5 points (out of 20 points). It covers all the course topics. 

 Important Note: improving the final grade is done through the respective exam which is going to be the only element to count for your final grade.

Subject matter

Syllabus

Part 0 - Overview. Brief notes on production, quality and inventory management.

Part 1 - Marketing: Understanding the Principles of Marketing. The four Marketing Policies: Product Development, Pricing, Promotion and Distribution. The Product Life Cycle. Environmental Context. SWOT Analysis. Market Segmentation and Competitive Product Positioning. The Consumer Buying Process and the Marketing- Mix.

Part 2 – Organization: Organizational Structure. The Chain of Command. Basic Forms of Organizational Structure. Authority and Responsability. Delegation and Accountability. Centralization and Decentralization. More complex Forms of Organizational Structure.

Part 3 – Human Resources: Understanding Employee Motivation. Theories of Motivation Compensations and Benefits. Satisfaction in the Workplace. Leadership. Staffing the Organization: Planing, function analysis and person-job matching. Trainning and Development Performance Appraisal.

Part 4 – Accounting and Finance: Understanding Principles of Accounting. The Balance Sheet. Income Statements. Cash-flow. Financial Ratios. Interest Rates and The Time Value of Money. Compounding and Discounting. Present Value and Accumulated Value. Some notions of Project Analysis (Net Present Value, the Internal Rate of Return, etc.)