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

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 39

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

Theoretical/practical 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

There is Team Assignment and an Individual test in our grading scheme. In order to pass 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, and obtain a minimum of 7,5 points (out of 20) in the test. For the assignment, the students will be divided in teams of 5 students. Each team will choose a company to study its marketing and strategy (counts for 3/4 of the assignment''s grade) and human resource management (counts for the additional 1/4).  The team assignment due date is November 1st by email until midnight). The test will be held in January and will last about 2 hours. If you are not approved (average grade less than 9.5 and/or less than 7,5 in the test) you will have the option to take another Exam (“Exame de Recurso”) 

b. Exam ("Exame de Recurso") 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 1 - Overview. Brief notes on production, quality and inventory management.

Part 2 - Marketing: Understanding the Principles of Marketing. The four Ps: Product Development, Pricing, Promotion and Place (Distribution). The Product Life Cycle. Environmental Context. SWOT Analysis. Market Segmentation and Competitive Product Positioning. The Consumer Buying Process and the Marketing- Mix.

Part 3 – Organization: Organizational Structure. Basic Forms of Organizational Structure. Centralization and Decentralization. More complex Forms of Organizational Structure.

Part 4 – Human Resources: Understanding Employee Motivation. Theories of Motivation Compensations and Benefits. Satisfaction in the Workplace. Function analysis and person-job matching. Trainning and Development Performance Evaluation.

Part 5 – Accounting and Finance: Understanding Principles of Accounting. The Balance Sheet. Income Statements. Cash-flow. Financia Ratios.

Part 6 - Interest Rates and The Time Value of Money. Compounding and Discounting. Present Value and Accumulated Value.

Part 7 - Some notions of Project Analysis (Net Present Value, the Internal Rate of Return, etc.)