What Will You Learn in a Business Management Degree Program?

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A degree in business management is a valuable degree indeed. In fact, it enjoys strong job growth, ranging from 13% to 22% depending on the industry. Business management professionals succeed and advance based on their ability to understand business systems, demonstrated experience in various tools and business theories, and in basic statistical and financial skill. However, employers typically seek entry-level professionals who show strong decision-making and organizational ability and an emphasis on related educational experience in a business management degree program should be emphasized on resumes and during interviews.

The requirements for management are varied, and a robust skill set will be truly attractive to a prospective employer and most useful to a person obtaining the degree in order to use the skills for a business the student already owns or intends to found.

Three Main Areas

In general, a business management degree will explore skills and theory that can loosely be categorized into three areas; financial management, operations management, and strategy management. Financial management will begin with the foundation of basic accounting principles including an understanding of capital and capital cost; costs of sales, non-fluid overhead, revenue, expenses, and profit. Deeper study will occur, however.

Accounting’s primary function is to provide information that allows business managers to make decisions, and further study on business finance will familiarize the student with planning, cash flow management, capital budgeting, short-term and long-term financing, capital structuring, and more. While accountants are primarily concerned with describing results from operations, business management professionals use financial knowledge to plan future acts and predict the results.

Operations Management

Operations management is concerned with what a company actually does, and a business management degree addresses that concept with basic organizational structure and systems management study with a heavy emphasis on human capital. Study of organizational communication is emphasized, as is development of communications in order to distribute company policy to employees and stakeholders.

To that end, some of the operations oriented classes will focus on ethics, organizational problem solving, computer systems development and organization, and overall management theory. This aspect of the business represents the day-to-day activities of the enterprise, and management of those activities is critical to the success or failure of an enterprise. With a sound financial base of knowledge and a proficient understanding of general operations management, a business professional can ensure a company can respond to problems and issues and maintain financial health.

Perhaps the most important aspect of a course of study for a business management degree is the focus on business strategy. In simplest terms, strategy is the development of high-level business objectives and goals that can include industry focus, competitive advantage development, long-term innovation and more.

Critical to successful strategy is accurate information, so a great deal of emphasis is placed on business research, macroeconomic principles, market trends, consumer trends, technology development, and social migration (both physical and behavioral.) A business management professional will distill this information into over-arching principals for business direction and develop general aims that become narrower for each level of the operation of the enterprise.