Business Management
Code
10423
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia
Department
Departamento de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
Credits
3.0
Teacher in charge
Célia Maria Castanheira de Moura da Costa Cabral
Weekly hours
3
Total hours
42
Teaching language
Português
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.
Prerequisites
There is no prerequisite.
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.)
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;
Sousa, Antonio de. "Introdução à Gestão: uma abordagem sistémica", Editora Verbo, 1990;
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 and 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
1. Assignments and tests: this grading scheme comprises one group practical assignments and one final test. To pass the course the student needs at least an average of 9.5 points (=0.4*assignments´ grade+0.6*test grade), out of 20 points. Group assignments (of 5 to 6 students) will be presented in class.
2. Exam: in this case, the exam grade counts 100% of the final grade; the minimum pass grade is 9.5 points (out of 20 points).
Finally, improving the final grade is done through the respective exam.