The Ultimate MBA Book

Get the Edge in Business; Master Strategy, Marketing, and Finance; Enjoy a Business School Education in a Book

Alan Finn, Stephen Berry, Eric Davies, Roger Mason, Roger Mason Ltd

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781473689497
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Finance
• Index: Business

If you want to be the best, you have to have the right skillset. From finance and strategy to leadership and marketing, THE ULTIMATE MBA BOOK is a dynamic collection of tools, techniques, and strategies for success. Discover the main themes and key ideas you need and bring it all together with practical exercises. This is your complete MBA course. ABOUT THE SERIES
ULTIMATE books are for managers, leaders, and business executives who want to succeed at work. From marketing and sales to management and finance, each title gives comprehensive coverage of the essential business skills you need to get ahead in your career. Written in straightforward English, each book is designed to help you quickly master the subject, with fun quizzes embedded so that you can check how you're doing.

PART 1

Your MBA Masterclass

Introduction

This part of the book is aimed principally at aspiring and junior managers, most probably working in offices for large corporations, who want to develop their careers, get ahead of the crowd and rise above their peers. They need to learn more broad-based workplace skills across disciplines other than their own but don’t have the time or the money to study for a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. It may also be useful for those who already have an MBA, earned some years ago, but who want a refresher.

This very practical ‘seven-chapter MBA’ does not assume prior knowledge and distils the most practical business insights from MBA studies into easy-to-digest bite-sized chunks. Ambitious people on the corporate ladder see achieving an MBA as a way to get ahead and to demonstrate their ambition – in short, to rise head and shoulders above the ranks of the other junior managers in their organizations.

Creating visions for growth and spearheading their implementation gets you noticed by top management looking for vigorous new blood to lead the organizations of the future. But it is difficult to create all-embracing, organization-wide visions for growth if you don’t really understand how the other departments – departments other than yours – work together.

A secondary but important benefit that I hope you will take from this part is self-confidence. Leadership is often demonstrated by a personal aura of understated self-confidence, a sure-footed capability to lead. You will find new abilities that will enable you to take forward the part of the overall organization for which you have responsibility, achieving new business improvements and successes along the way.

CHAPTER 1

Global business pressures and change

This area of business and management studies is fundamental to an understanding of management practice today and its likely paths into the future. It is a foundation on which to build a solid understanding of where the business discipline has been and how it is likely to develop, given today’s fundamental societal pressures and the forces now acting upon the world and business.

Major pressures

The following list describes just some of the major pressures, in no particular order, and their effects on world business today. The effects of such changes and new pressures have always driven legislation to govern how organizations are run throughout business history.

• The world’s financial economy – as we recover from the economic downturn that began in 2007/8 and new legislation is imposed on banks and the international banking system

• Geopolitical changes – for example, the emergence of China and India as global powers; Russia’s renewed ambitions for geographical expansion in Eastern Europe and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and conflict in the Middle East

• Communications – the increasing power and pervasiveness of computing (e.g. the emergence of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and ‘big data’ and their effects on future patterns of employment)

• Changes to the nature of security, crime, conflict and policing – for example, the increasing use of robotics and drones in ‘remotely controlled warfare’; the emergence of cyber warfare and cyber espionage; and the rising importance of cyber security

• The evolution of transportation – of people, emergency and aid services, raw materials and finished goods

• Environmental change – and its effects on global demographics (e.g. civil-engineering projects in China such as dams and large canals that lead to the relocation of populations and businesses; and the retreating ice cap in the Arctic, opening up shorter sea routes and allowing more cost-effective mineral extraction in the region).

Let’s look at each of these major pressures in turn.

The world’s financial economy

Currently, strengthening growth is seen in the West in the USA and in the UK, although continental Europe still h...