Business administration vs Business management: What are the differences? ? This is one of the most common questions among aspirants who want to pursue business as a degree. On the surface, both degrees look similar. Both are critical for the success and proper functioning of a business. However, if you look at them closely, they are distinct from each other and actually complementary functions of a business.

In this article, you will learn about two different functions in a business ? business management and business administration. However, before that, we will discuss the general details of both these terms. Apart from that, you will also learn about the major skills, education, and careers associated with both these business functions. Hence, to learn more, read on through to the end of the article.

Business Administration Vs Business Management: Overview

While business administration focuses on strategic planning, business management concentrates on the day-to-day management of resources and people. Both of them are lucrative careers in business and are full-fledged academic disciplines. To decide which path you want to choose, you will need to understand the core principles of both these careers.

What Is Business Administration?

An article by West Virginia University states –

?Business administration provides a broad understanding of business processes for students who would like to learn the day-to-day operations of running a business efficiently. [?] It teaches theory but also emphasizes a wide range of practical skills, including leadership, analytical thinking, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, accounting, finance, human resources, and marketing.?

If you want to have an entry-level business or if you want to pursue a career in human resources and administering other aspects of a business, you must choose business administration. Apart from theory, a career in business administration also puts a lot of emphasis on practical aspects. These include business skills, leadership, strategic planning, analytical thinking, entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, marketing, and human resource management.

There are many tasks that fall under the space of business administration. Here, these tasks help the administrator oversee the business organization. The following are the duties that fall under business administration:

• Management of employees
• Planning and deciding the growth of the company
• Overseeing the operations of the business
• Creating common goals for staff to focus on
• Ensuring and organizing effective operations in the company

As you can see, business administration is a vast field that consists of numerous positions. Whether a business is large or small, it needs to focus on business administration and experts to ensure the organization?s success.

What Is Business Management?

According to Indeed.com,

?Business management focuses on deploying the organization’s resources to maximize productivity. Individuals in business management often hold leadership roles in which they oversee the day-to-day duties of team members within their department. They can directly influence how businesses operate, develop growth strategies, and market themselves.?

Basically, if you get a degree in business management, you will learn the process of organizing and managing the resources of a company. Apart from that, these managers also manage staff, revenue, data, information, and more. Additionally, this degree puts emphasis on general management and communication skills. This is because the role of a business manager requires the individual to supervise employees and deal with large projects.

With a degree in business management, these managers become experts in decision-making for the company. Apart from that, they also focus on monitoring and designing the overall infrastructure and strategy of the business rather than dealing with daily business operations.

Business management is important since, if done effectively, it creates a work environment that helps in employee communication. As a result, it helps employees to plan, control, direct, and organize different projects and goals.

A business management expert often helps their employees to develop the necessary skills. The goal of the manager is to facilitate the collaboration of the employee with the objectives of the company. Furthermore, in most business management roles, interpersonal skills and leadership skills are extremely necessary.

Business Administration Vs Business Management: Differences

The major difference between business management and business administration is that the former is people-centric, while the latter is more technical in nature. However, both are critical for the success of a business and provide essential job skills to learners.

Business Administration

According to West Virginia University,

?Business administration is concerned with the nuts and bolts operations of running a business, while business management is about overall leadership and seeing the bigger economic picture. If you want to move into leadership within any organization, then business management may be right for you. But if you want to specialize in a particular area, then you?ll want to look at business administration.?

When students are learning business administration, they deal with typical business subjects. By understanding the general roles in a business, students will be able to select the one that suits them. For example, a student might major in business administration and choose finance as a specialty. Apart from that, a business administration student also learns more general aspects of business to find out which specific position they shall pursue.

Business Management

On the other hand, students of business management try to increase their management and leadership skills. As a result, they explore their specialties in business, which pertain to communications, human resources, management, and ethics. The job of these managers is to deal with people and manage employees as per the requirements of the company.

Hence, students look to develop their management skills and it helps them to join student organizations and academic clubs. The focus of these business management courses is to focus on interpersonal communications and career development.

Wrapping Up

Business administration vs Business management ? Hope this article was helpful for you in getting a better idea of the differences between the two terms. You can see from the article that business administration deals with expertise in a particular aspect of a business, while business management is learning how to manage people and processes of the business.

Do you have more to add to business management and business administration? Please share your ideas and opinions with us in the comments section below.

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