IB Business. Obtaining financial data from companies can be tricky. Some companies oblige, others don´t, or they may give you some financial data but not very much. However, if you want a high mark for your HL coursework, it is … Continue reading Help, I Have No Financials!
IB Business. If you don’t choose the right company for your HL Internal Assessment, then this could hamper you from the start. I give my students the following advice:- Select a company that is quite small, ideally between 20 and 75 employees. Choose one in which a family friend or family aquantance works, or one that has a conection with your family. Do not choose the company that your parents work for. The company should be in easy travelling distance from your home. Why this advice? Smaller companies are much easier to navigate around, and to collect primary data from. … Continue reading Choosing Your Company – HL Coursework.
IB Business & IB Economics. For the first time since 1945, as from today, November the 11th, 2017, new labour laws come into force in Brazil. The new laws have been welcomed by the business community, who feel that the laws bring Brazil’s labour market into the 21st century, but many, including the Trade Unions and the poor, have protested against the changes. In economic language these types of changes are often referred to as ‘ making the labour market more flexible’. In economics it is an example of a ‘ market based supply side policy’ the aim of which … Continue reading Brazil’s Labour Laws Reformed.
I.B. BUSINESS. Unlike the HL internal assessment in IB business, which emphasises collecting primary data, the emphasis in the SL internal assessment is on collecting secondary data. Primary data is data that you collect yourself, using interviews, surveys, questionnaires etc. Secondary data is data that someone else has already collected or assembled for you. Examples are business reports, articles in the news media, information on company websites and Annual Reports. For this reason, the SL internal assessment is quicker and easier to do, because you have the data all there at your fingers tips, as it were. Here is the … Continue reading Business Internal Assessment (SL) – It’s All In the Secondary Data, Stupid!
ECONOMICS. If the price of a product falls, by how much will demand increase ? By a small amount or a large amount ? This question is a very important question in economics. The magnitude by which demand (or supply) … Continue reading Price Elasticity of Demand.
I.B. BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT. If you want to get top marks on your IB Business & Management course you have to be able to synthesize and evaluate well. It is classified as a ‘ higher order skill’ and so gains … Continue reading How To Synthsize and Evaluate.
I.B. Economics. Anyone studying economics, no matter how briefly, will soon come across the phrase, the ‘ free market’. We also talk about ‘ free marketeers’, who are economists who believe that the less the government ‘ interferes’ in markets the better. They tend to argue that when the government steps into markets and introduces, for example, a minimum wage or a price ceiling, then this results in a restriction on the ‘freedom of choice’ of the players in the market, and also causes a loss of efficiency in the market. One of the main themes of the IB Economics … Continue reading There Is No Such Thing as A ‘Free Market’.
Students often don’t know how to begin writing the main body of their business I.A. In order to help them, I give them questions whose objectives are to guide them in the right direction, and to help them to create a ‘scaffold’ around which they can base their research. Only after the students have followed these 5 stages, have collected their data and have written up their findings, do I ask them to format their IA according to the recommended format i.e. Introduction, Methodology, Main Results & Findings, Analysis & Discussion, Conclusion & Recommendations. Stage 1. Graphical portrayal of the … Continue reading Business Internal Assessment (HL) – The Main Body
Business & Management. The introduction of your business internal assessment (IA) is very important because it is the first thing that your teacher, and any coursework moderators, will read. Is important, therefore, to make a good impression from the beginning. Here is a template that I use to help students write their introduction. The advice that I give is start straight away with the business issue, problem or decision that you are investigating. A common mistake is to start your introduction giving a brief description of the company, it´s history etc. Avoid doing this. Only describe or explain your chosen … Continue reading Business Internal Assessment – The Introduction
IB Business & Management. The Coursework Research Question – The Importance of ‘Focus’. One of the first things that you will have to do when starting your business coursework is to choose a good, well focused research question (r.q.) . If you choose an inappropriate or unfocused r.q., you will be handicapped from the beginning. The word count for the HL coursework is only 2000 words (excluding the Research Question and Research Proposal) and for SL it is only 1500 ( for more general information on the business coursework see this page of my blog). These word counts are short, and … Continue reading IB Business Coursework – The Research Question