CSEC Principles of Business  /  The nature of business  /  Functional areas and stakeholders

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Functional areas and stakeholders

A growing business splits its work into functional areas (departments): production, marketing, finance, human resources, and research and development. Everyone affected by the business is a stakeholder. Paper 1 asks what the human resource department does almost every year.

By the end of this page you can

  • Describe what each functional area of a business does
  • Name the stakeholders in a business
  • Explain the role each stakeholder plays
  • Say what a trade union and a chamber of commerce are for

Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.

A busy open-plan office: rows of desks with computers, files and phones, and staff at work in each section.

Photo: VeronicaTherese, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, resized, JPEG q72.

One business, many jobs: each group of desks does a different part of the work.

How often it shows up in past papers

All papers20 of 23 papers
Last 55 of 5 · 2023–2026

Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Principles of Business Paper 1s. The last-5 row shows how often it came up in the five most recent papers.

Inside this topic

  1. Inside the businessLocked
  2. Who has a stakeLocked
  3. Key termsLocked
  4. Test yourselfmarkedLocked
  5. Practise for real · 32 past questionsLocked