B200 TUTORIAL WEEK ONE

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B200TUTORIAL WEEK ONE
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Summary

• To develop your understanding of the business
  world, this course explains how businesses work,
  are structured, are influenced by their
  environments, and how they try to control
  competitive market pressures. Understanding their
  complexities and uncertainties is not easy, so
  the course discusses different approaches and
  ways of seeing organisations and markets. It does
  not just present information and theories but
  enables you to evaluate and use them, improving
  your capacity for rigorous assessment. Finally,
  the course defines and develops three groups of
  related business skills study and presentation
  IT and numeracy.

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Course Content
This course will help you to develop your
knowledge of the world of business in four key
areas environments, markets, processes and
organisations improving your understanding of
how they work and are interrelated. By
considering and assessing different approaches to
and explanations of the development of modern
businesses, it should enable you to analyse the
four elements and how they change. Exploring the
main components and processes of business
activity and comparing the key approaches and
models used in the international context, the
course will give you a foundation from which to
go on to other business courses.
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Learning OutcomesBy the end of B200 you should
be able to

• understand how and why business organisations
  work and are structured
• know how their key processes are designed and
  work
• see how they are positioned in, and influenced
  by, their environments
• understand how they operate within, and are
  affected by, market forces
• be able to engage with some of the complexities
  and uncertainties in the way businesses behave,
  and be conversant with some of the theories about
  that behaviour
• have analytic, numeric, IT and presentation
  skills appropriate for business studies.

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Understanding business Environments Our study of
the training-shoe industry showed clearly that
businesses are highly complex. This module
defines and analyses the main forces that make up
the business environment and assesses their
effects on business behaviour. A study guide,
together with the course reader, examines
different ways in which the current state of the
business world is interpreted. You do not need
to read the whole of the environments reader
your tutor will advise you which sections to read
and study on a weekly basis.
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By the end of the Environments module you should
be able to

• recognise key phenomena in business environments
• use appropriate models and concepts to analyse
  them
• recognise and interpret the values underlying
  different analyses of business environments
• understand the complex relationship between the
  behaviour of businesses and their environments
• identify some of the methods businesses adopt for
  dealing with their environment.

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Chapter 1 - Globalisation by Giddens

• Giddens offers a definition of globalisation as
  an overwhelming cultural phenomenon which
  provides both driving force and direction to most
  of the changes we are observing in the
  contemporary world.
• The role of businesses in this theory is as a
  processor through which the dominant images of
  globalisation become reality in their products
  and practices. The point he is making indirectly
  is that a growing belief that globalisation is
  happening is making it happen via business
  responses to it in a sort of perpetual circle.

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The sceptics?

• Giddens accepts that there is another school of
  thought which disputes the whole phenomenon of
  globalisation he refers to them as sceptics.
• It is important to accept that as a B200 student
  you must not accept theories unquestioningly
  you must think how they might be critiqued!

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The radicals?

• Giddens agrees with a view (note this is only
  one point of view) of the radicals who state
  that the consequences of globalisation can be
  felt everywhere. They see the era of the Nation
  State as being over. They cite examples such as
  increased world trade and the global electronic
  economy where fast transfers of money are
  possible.

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Giddens Own View

• Giddens takes the view that seeing the phenomenon
  of globalisation solely in economic terms is a
  mistake. He sees it as a complex set of processes
  with push and pull effects. There are more
  driving forces at play than just economic ones.

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Chapter 2 Identifying Environmental Issues by
Armson et al.

• The authors offer a range of models of the
  environment. These will be important models
  during your study of B200. These models are
  simply different interpretations of the same
  world (different ways of showing the same or
  similar things). Some of them emphasise the flow
  of resources around the environment (like the
  transformation model), others emphasise the
  people in it (like Mintzbergs physiognomy),
  while others see the environment as principally
  defined by its structure (like the STEP analysis
  model). Different people view the business world
  differently, and business decision-makers need to
  maintain a breadth of vision.

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STEP analysis

• Turn to page 12 of the environments text book.
• Your tutor will talk you through Table 2.1

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The Transformation model

• Turn to page13 of the environments book
• Your tutor will talk you through the
  transformation model.
• Try applying the transformation process to a
  McDonalds restaurant.

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Mintzbergs physiognomy

• Turn to page 14 of the environments reader
• Your tutor will talk you through figure 2.2

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SWOT analysis

• Mentioned in your study guide on page 10 but not
  in the reader, you will have seen reference to
  SWOT analysis.
• Your tutor will talk you through SWOT analysis.
• Try applying a SWOT analysis to the situation of
  a new shop opening in a shopping mall near you.

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Activities

• Activity 1 (page 10 of the Study Guide)
• Activity 2 (page 13 of the Study Guide)

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READING TO BE COMPLETED BY NEXT WEEK

• Please read pages 5 - 14 of the Study Guide to
  refresh your study of Chapters one and two.
• Please read Chapters 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 of the
  Text book before the next tutorial (NB you do not
  need to read Chapters 3 and 7 these are optional
  readings).