general business studies
The Business Administration (short Business Administration) is a branch of business administration hires the general considerations, ie without specific industries to consider how the industrial management or the Study of commerce . It deals with topics such as the optimal company location , the legal form and decision theory . Threads of the so-called special Business Administration as the procurement , production management , sales management , accounting or finance are also dealt with so that the transition to these is fluid.
Subject and methods
Business administration deals with the economic dimension of businesses and companies. These form what is known as the object of experience , i.e. the object that business administration considers. What is to be distinguished from this is the so-called object of knowledge , i.e. those aspects of companies that are to be examined. While the social sciences consider companies from a social point of view and engineering from a technical point of view, business administration looks at the economic aspects.
Subject of experience
Business administration considers economic units that are productively active in order to meet external requirements. Households, on the other hand, cover their own needs.
- Establishments : are defined inconsistently. Sometimes it is a generic term for household and company, but mostly only those economic units are understood that cover external needs.
- Company is also a differently defined term. Often it is a company that operates in a market economy system (as a delimitation to companies in planned economies) and has profit-making intentions (in contrast to public companies that are only supposed to cover costs)
- Company is the name of a company.
- Company is the legal form of a company, for example limited liability company (GmbH), stock corporation (AG) or limited partnership (KG)
Object of knowledge
There is by no means any consensus within business administration on the subject of knowledge . While some scientists advocate a so-called unified science that considers all problems that affect companies and companies (e.g. representatives of management theory ), others call for a restriction to purely economic aspects in order to shape business administration as a so-called individual science .
It is often assumed that companies strive for (long-term) profit maximization . On the one hand, companies are founded precisely for this purpose, on the other hand, not all companies pursue this goal in reality. Occasionally, a balance between the various interest groups is also considered. In addition to company owners, these include employees , customers and the public.
Areas of responsibility
Business administration as a science has two areas of responsibility: research and teaching . Various methods have proven themselves in research, such as classification and typing, hermeneutics (interpretation of statements), deduction ( inferring from general laws to specific individual cases), induction (from a limited number of concrete cases to the general case) and the algorithmics .
A distinction is made between different research contexts:
- Descriptive context: (also descriptive context) Here objects are examined in parts properties and relations. Examples are production systems that consist of factories, assembly lines and individual machines, or the various types of financing , borrowing , issuing bonds or stocks , or using reserves .
- Discovery context: (also theoretical context) deals with the acquisition of new knowledge.
- Justification context: (also normative context) deals with the justification of statements.
- Design context: (also pragmatic context) This means the application of the knowledge to solve operational problems.
Alongside research, teaching is the other important area of any science. Business administration is taught as part of degree programs and commercial training.
Framework
The economic system is one of the framework conditions under which companies operate. In western countries this is a form of the market economy , such as Germany with the social market economy . Companies in a planned economy , on the other hand, sometimes face completely different challenges. Associations can also have a major impact on companies, for example by calling for more environmental protection. Within companies, unions can play a role. The European Union plays a major role within Europe . The respective tax system also has an influence on entrepreneurial activity .
The company rules guarantee certain minimum standards for certain interest groups, which is expressed in certain areas of law, such as consumer protection , labor law and co-determination law .
decisions
In a social market economy, the decisions made by the people in a company are of particular importance. The decision theory describes how decisions are made in practice, provides a theoretical framework for describing and makes recommendations on how they should proceed to the corporate objectives to achieve optimal. Of particular importance are the so-called constitutive decisions , which deal with particularly important, infrequent decisions that occur in particular when founding and restructuring a company. They concern the company location , the legal form and company mergers such as mergers or cartels .
Overview of subject areas
As part of general business administration, topics that overlap with the individual functional business economies are also dealt with.
literature
- Wöhe: Introduction to general business administration
- Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer (Hrsg.): General business administration
- Volume 1: Basic Questions
- Volume 2: Corporate Governance
- Volume 3: Performance Process
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer: General Business Administration . 6th edition, pp. 27f.
- ↑ Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer: General Business Administration . 6th edition, pp. 45-58.
- ↑ Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer: General Business Administration. 6th edition, pp. 66-76.
- ↑ Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer: General Business Administration . 6th edition, pp. 203-370.
- ↑ Bea, Dichtl, Schweitzer: General Business Administration . 6th edition, pp. 376f.