Commercial management

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The commercial business administration is a special business administration course of the trade and thus an institutional course of business administration. She mainly deals with the appearance and management of trading companies in domestic wholesale and retail as well as cross-border foreign and transit trade .

Subject of commercial management

Depending on whether statements about trading companies reflect empirically observable phenomena or whether they try to provide information on how to shape the decision-making process in trading companies, commercial science (according to Lothar Müller-Hagedorn ) differentiates between registration and decision-theoretic trading business theory . The focus is on the decision-making problems of retail companies ( Bruno Tietz ), i.e. business issues relating to retail management and retail marketing . Traditionally, however, the overall economic performance of domestic and foreign trade, the importance of these companies for the economy as well as their structural, economic and competition policy options ( foreign trade and domestic trade policy ) are also covered by the commercial operations theory, the domestic trade policy namely due to insufficient consideration of the Internal trade in the context of national economic policy . In addition, sales intermediaries ( commercial agents , commission agents , trading brokers), auxiliary trading companies and electronic trading (online trading, internet trading , e-commerce ) are also part of the business administration course.

Production factors in the context of commercial management

The in Business Administration distinct factors of production human labor , materials and equipment are for manufacturing companies. In trading companies, the elementary factor of goods takes the place of materials. Knowledge (organization) is often understood as an additional productive factor in trade. Because of its particular importance for all decision-making processes in trading, the time factor can also be viewed as a quasi- production factor or a secondary performance factor . This derives from the core tasks or render the trade off. Based on Karl Oberparleiter (1886–1968) and Rudolf Seyffert , four functions of trade ( trade functions ) can be named (functional trade term):

  • Bridging functions (room bridging, time compensation, price compensation and credit function)
  • Product functions (availability of an assortment in the corresponding quantity, quality, range width and depth)
  • Information functions (market development and advice)
  • cultural functions

Methodical approaches

The following methodological approaches can be distinguished:

  • The system-theoretical approach sees the trading company in the network of relationships between its trading partners and focuses in particular on issues of distribution management .
  • The decision- theoretic approach mainly examines decisions in the area of ​​retail management.
  • The goods-related approach focuses on the typology of goods and deals with issues relating to the classification of industries, types of operation and decisions on product ranges.
  • The transaction cost approach sees the retail business as a cost optimizer, based on transaction costs that arise, for example, when using resources or performing distribution functions.

historical development

The compiled in modern Study of commerce merchant knowledge has to ancient tradition going back. Since the invention of the printing press , the knowledge passed down orally and by hand for centuries by merchant families has been made available to a wide public and can also be used as teaching material for commercial educational institutions. The first printed representation of the double-entry bookkeeping system in Luca Pacioli's book “De Aritmetica” (1495) became famous . With the first systematic collection of commercial knowledge of his time, Le parfait négociant ... ( German  The Perfect Merchant and Trader ) by Jacques Savary in 1675 - a century before the most famous work of classical economics by Adam Smith - the scientific occupation begins with the trade, the "action science".

On May 1, 1901, the Cologne Commercial College was founded (it merged with the new University of Cologne in 1919). In 1914 the first German-language commercial science chair was established at ETH Zurich (for Johann Friedrich Schär ). In Germany, commercial management was given a broad foundation, primarily through the literary and empirical work of Rudolf Seyffert and Julius Hirsch , who both founded a special research institute for retail in 1926 in Cologne and Berlin. They gave rise to numerous business and domestic trade policy suggestions (e.g. business comparison , business advice, development and expansion of trade marketing; expert work for chambers, authorities and associations). The "Nuremberg School" of sales management, which emerged in the 1930s and was shaped by Wilhelm Vershofen , Georg Bergler and Ludwig Erhard , in particular the fundamental work of Erich Schäfer and, after the Second World War, the work of Erich Gutenberg on sales theory, played an ambivalent role in commercial management Role. On the one hand, their "consistent view" of all economic processes and institutions, from the original production to the end use of the goods, contributed to the understanding of trading companies and their importance for the economy as a whole. On the other hand, trade was "pushed into the back corner of research interest" by the advance of industry-oriented sales and marketing theory . In the work “Three Hundred Years of Commercial Science. Contributions to the history of business administration ”(1979) the Seyffert student Edmund Sundhoff reviewed the history of commercial science in his retirement year.

Training, research, teaching

The scientific Study of commerce is under various names (trade management, trade management and trade marketing ) as a self-study program or as a specialist within the marketing studies (eg. As marketing and distribution) at several universities and colleges offered. Some universities also offer commercial psychology as a branch of commercial management. The commercial management training subject at the European University of Applied Sciences in Brühl should be mentioned as a representative for the combination of scientific and practical training within the framework of the dual study program, which is maintained at universities of applied sciences . For the compulsory academic degree or examination theses ( diploma thesis , bachelor thesis, master thesis), both theoretically and empirically oriented work, i.e. H. both theoretical and literary topics as well as topics with practical commercial relevance can be assigned.

Traditionally, the chairs for commercial management (or trade and sales or marketing and trade) also conduct trade research. Trade research that is detached from teaching tasks is also carried out in some special research institutions. After a study of teaching and research facilities in retail, which was completed in June 2002, the subject of commercial management was offered at 25 scientific universities and 22 universities of applied sciences in Germany; five institutes devoted themselves exclusively or primarily to trade research. From his 30 years of teaching experience, Schenk u. a. About the design options for commercial university courses, about the design of commercial science seminars and objectified exam assessments based on standardized checklists. The Science Prize of the EHI Retail Institute, Cologne, and the Retail Promotion Prize of the Wolfgang Wirichs Foundation, Krefeld, are dedicated to promoting scientific and practical projects dealing with innovations in retail.

As part of the dual commercial training, the more practice-oriented applied commercial management is taught primarily at vocational schools, as well as at trade schools and vocational academies. The chambers of industry and commerce take the vocational school qualifications for prospective retail salespeople and salespeople in wholesale and foreign trade and offer further training courses, for example to become a commercial specialist , and courses.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Commercial management. In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Retrieved January 17, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Commercial management. In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Retrieved January 17, 2014 .
  3. ↑ More details on the stages of development of commercial management with Rudolf Seyffert: Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Geschichte der , in: Handwortbuch der Betriebswirtschaft, 3rd edition, Volume I, Stuttgart 1956, Sp. 995-1011, and Hans-Otto Schenk: Marktwirtschaftslehre des Handels , Wiesbaden 1991
  4. ^ Hans-Otto Schenk: Retail research yesterday and today . In: Handelsforschung heute, Berlin 1979, pp. 25–45, here p. 35, ISBN 3-428-04408-8
  5. ↑ Hans-Otto Schenk: Handelsforschung , in: The large lexicon for trade and sales, ed. by B. Falk, 2nd ed., Landsberg 1982, pp. 311-314
  6. ↑ Rolf Spannagel: Teaching and research on trade issues at German universities - an inventory , in: Handelsforschung 2003, ed. by Volker Trommsdorff, Cologne 2003, p. 423
  7. ^ Hans-Otto Schenk: Commercial management in university lessons. Privatissime et gratis: Subjective instructions for happiness , in: Handelsforschung 2003, ed. by Volker Trommsdorff, Cologne 2003, pp. 443–461

literature

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