IGCSE Business Studies: People in Business (Cambridge 0450)

This guide covers Topic 2 People in business, for Cambridge IGCSE Business Studies 0450, 2026 series (Version 2 — no significant changes affecting teaching from the prior version). Business Studies at 0450 is not tiered: all candidates study the same content.

Where this fits in 0450

People in business is the second of six topics in 0450, following Understanding business activity and preceding Marketing, Operations management, Financial information and decisions, and External influences on business activity. Cambridge’s own syllabus overview describes this section’s focus as the functional area of human resources: how a workforce is motivated, how a business is organised and managed, how employees are recruited, selected and trained, and how information moves effectively within and beyond the business. Where Topic 1 introduced businesses in the abstract — their purpose, classification and objectives — Topic 2 is where the syllabus turns to the people who actually run them, and the organisational choices that later topics assume are already understood, since a Marketing or Operations question can just as easily ask about who is responsible for a decision as what the decision itself should be.

Syllabus coverage

CAMBRIDGE IGCSE BUSINESS STUDIES 0450 — TOPIC 2 PEOPLE IN BUSINESS

• 2.1 Motivating employees — why people work and what motivation means; the benefits of a well-motivated workforce, including labour productivity and reduced absenteeism and labour turnover; the concept of human needs, such as Maslow’s hierarchy, and the key motivational theories of Taylor and Herzberg; methods of motivation, split between financial rewards (wage, salary, bonus, commission and profit sharing) and non-financial methods (job enrichment, job rotation, teamworking, training and opportunities for promotion); and recommending and justifying appropriate methods of motivation in given circumstances.
• 2.2 Organisation and management — drawing, interpreting and understanding simple organisational charts, including hierarchical structures such as levels of hierarchy, span of control and chain of command (for example, tall versus short structures), and the roles, responsibilities and inter-relationships of directors, managers, supervisors and other employees; the role of management, covering the functions of planning, organising, coordinating, commanding and controlling, and the importance of delegation as a balance between trust and control; leadership styles, including the features of autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire styles and recommending and justifying an appropriate style in given circumstances; and what a trade union is and the effects on employees of union membership.
• 2.3 Recruitment, selection and training of employees — recruitment and selection methods, the difference between internal and external recruitment, the main stages in recruiting and selecting employees, and recommending and justifying who to employ in given circumstances, alongside the benefits and limitations of part-time versus full-time employees; the importance of training to a business and to employees, and the benefits and limitations of induction training, on-the-job training and off-the-job training; why reducing the size of the workforce might be necessary, including the difference between dismissal and redundancy, situations such as automation or reduced product demand that might require downsizing, and recommending and justifying which employees to make redundant in given circumstances; and legal controls over employment issues — contracts, unfair dismissal, discrimination, health and safety and the legal minimum wage — and their impact on employers and employees.
• 2.4 Internal and external communication — why effective communication matters to a business and the methods used to achieve it, including the benefits and limitations of different communication methods (including those based on information technology) and recommending and justifying which method to use in given circumstances; and demonstrating awareness of communication barriers, how they arise, the problems ineffective communication causes, and how such barriers can be reduced or removed.

How to approach it

This topic rewards precision about who does what and why, so build a clear map of the organisational hierarchy — director, manager, supervisor, other employees — before trying to answer questions about delegation or leadership style, since several question types ask candidates to place a described role correctly or to explain how authority flows between levels. The “recommend and justify” wording appears four separate times across this topic’s outcomes (motivation methods, leadership style, who to employ, redundancy decisions and communication method), which signals that Cambridge examiners specifically test the skill of applying a general concept to a described business scenario rather than reciting definitions in the abstract — practise answering with the scenario’s own details (company size, product, workforce, budget) rather than a generic answer that could apply to any business. Maslow, Taylor and Herzberg are named individually in the syllabus, so candidates should be able to identify each theory’s core idea and use it correctly when explaining why a particular motivation method might or might not work for a given workforce, rather than treating “motivation theory” as one undifferentiated block. Similarly, keep financial and non-financial motivators as two clearly separate lists in revision, since exam questions often ask candidates to suggest one of each for a given scenario. For recruitment and training, the recurring exam skill is weighing benefits against limitations (internal versus external recruitment, part-time versus full-time staff, the three training types) rather than simply listing features, so practise writing balanced short answers that state a benefit and a limitation for the same option side by side. Finally, keep an eye on the overlap between this topic and Topic 1’s business-organisation content: a question about delegation or span of control can quietly assume you already know whether the business in the scenario is a sole trader, a partnership or a limited company, since ownership structure shapes how much formal hierarchy a business is likely to have in the first place — a useful reminder that Cambridge’s six topics are meant to be read as a connected whole rather than six isolated revision lists.

Official syllabus

Cambridge IGCSE Business Studies 0450 syllabus for 2026 (Version 2, December 2025) — cambridgeinternational.org.