IB Business Management Tutoring, SL and HL
IB Business Management is examined almost entirely through cases: students apply theory and toolkit methods to an organisation they have only just met, then recommend what it should do. The difficulty lies less in the content than in the discipline of writing about that business, with its figures and its stakeholders, rather than about business in general.
Short answer
IB Business Management is offered online, one-to-one.
A private lesson runs 90 minutes and starts at USD 95 per lesson; lessons are booked singly or in packages.
IB group classes are private groups of three or more friends, who agree the start date with us.
From USD 95 per lesson
- SL and HL assessment from the IB’s own subject brief
- Live online lessons of 90 minutes
- From USD 95 per lesson
How IB Business Management is assessed
External papers set and marked by the IB, and an internal assessment marked by your teacher and moderated by the IB. Standard Level and Higher Level differ in length, weighting and, at HL, in the extra paper or component. Figures are from the IB’s own subject brief, linked below.
International Baccalaureate
IB Diploma Programme · Business Management · subject brief, first assessment 2024
| Component | SL: weight and length | HL: weight and length | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | 35% · 1 hour 30 min | 25% · 1 hour 30 min | An unseen case study built on a pre-released statement that sets out the context and background. |
| Paper 2 | 35% · 1 hour 30 min | 30% · 1 hour 45 min | Unseen stimulus material with a quantitative focus. |
| Paper 3 (HL only) | HL only | 25% · 1 hour 15 min | Unseen stimulus material about a social enterprise. |
| Internal assessment | 30% · 20 hours | 20% · 20 hours | Business research project on a real business issue facing a particular organisation, through a conceptual lens. |
Checked on 24 September 2026
Paper names are the IB’s own. Internal assessment time is the teaching time the IB allocates to it, not an exam.
The IB Business Management syllabus
Topic names are left in English, as they appear on the paper and in the mark scheme.
Unit 1: Introduction to business management
What is a business? · Types of business entities · Business objectives · Stakeholders · Growth and evolution
Units 2–3: Human resource management; Finance and accounts
Leadership and motivation · Organisational structure · Final accounts and ratio analysis · Cash flow · Investment appraisal
Units 4–5: Marketing; Operations management
Marketing mix · Market research · Production methods · Quality and lean production · Location and supply chain
Business management toolkit
SWOT, STEEPLE and Ansoff · Decision trees and force-field analysis · Critical path analysis (HL) · Descriptive statistics and circular business models
Where IB Business Management marks are usually lost
Generic answers that ignore the case
Questions name a specific organisation in a specific situation, and marks reward application to it: its size, its objectives, its stakeholders, the figures in the stimulus. Answers that define a theory correctly and then discuss business in general, or that could be pasted into any case, stay low however accurate the theory. Using the organisation’s name and details in every paragraph is a simple check.
Recommending without weighing the options
Many questions end in a decision — accept an offer or reject it, keep a product or drop it, which plan of action to follow — and expect a justified recommendation. Students who list points on both sides and then choose without explaining why, or who ignore the limits of the data, leave marks behind. A strong recommendation says what to do, why, and what could make it wrong.
Finance slips on Paper 2
With its quantitative focus, Paper 2 applies final accounts, ratios, cash flow, investment appraisal and similar tools to unseen data. Small errors — a figure in the wrong row of a cash-flow forecast, a ratio calculated upside down, a missing unit or percentage sign — cost marks directly and then weaken the analysis built on them. Correct figures that are never interpreted for the business lose marks too.
The IB Business Management internal assessment
The internal assessment is the business research project, the same task at SL and HL: a study of a real business issue or problem facing a particular organisation, examined through one of the course’s key concepts — change, creativity, ethics or sustainability — and supported by a small set of documents the student selects. A tutor can help a student find an organisation and an issue with enough accessible information, frame a research question for the teacher to approve, and see how the toolkit and the chosen concept can structure the analysis. The research and the writing remain the student’s own.
A tutor can explain the criteria, question a draft and point to what is weak. The research, the writing and every decision in it stay the student’s own, as the awarding body’s rules require.
How we teach IB Business Management
A tutor teaches Business Management by pairing every concept with a case, so that a lesson on motivation or break-even ends with the student applying it to a named organisation and recommending what it should do. The toolkit — SWOT, STEEPLE, decision trees, force-field analysis and the rest — is practised as a set of tools to reach for in exam answers, not as diagrams to memorise. When the pre-released statement for Paper 1 appears, the tutor helps the student research the context it sets and think through the issues the case might raise, without pretending to predict the questions. Finance is practised little and often until the calculations are reliable. HL students also prepare for Paper 3 on social enterprises, where the task is to recommend a plan of action.
There is no separate diagnostic, because there is no single test that stands in for two years of a school syllabus. The first lesson is the assessment: the tutor works through your recent marked work, past-paper questions from your own specification, and the units your school has already covered, and reads current level, gaps, exam technique and where school work stands. It is a normal paid lesson and it teaches as it assesses.
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