- What the Business IA Is (Since 2024)
- Business IA Requirements at a Glance
- Business IA Criteria: How the 25 Marks Work
- Choosing a Good Business IA Research Question
- Choosing and Integrating Your Key Concept
- How Many Supporting Documents for a Business IA?
- Business Tools Should Support the Argument
- Business IA Structure and Format
- Conclusions and Recommendations
- Example Outline (Illustrative)
- Common Business IA Mistakes
Quick Answer
The IB Business Management IA is a business research project of up to 1,800 words on a real issue or problem facing one real organisation, examined through one key concept: change, creativity, ethics or sustainability. You base it on three to five supporting documents published within three years of submission. It is marked out of 25 across seven criteria and is worth 30% at SL and 20% at HL.
What You'll Learn
- SL and HL students complete the same business research project, first assessed in 2024
- Maximum 1,800 words on a real issue facing one real organisation
- Use one key concept as your lens: change, creativity, ethics or sustainability
- Base the project on 3 to 5 supporting documents published within three years of submission
- Marked out of 25 across criteria A to G, worth 30% of the SL grade and 20% of the HL grade
What the Business IA Is (Since 2024)
The Business Management internal assessment is an individual business research project. You investigate a real issue, problem or decision facing a particular organisation, apply business tools and theories to evidence about it, and reach a conclusion that answers your research question. One of the course's four key concepts runs through the whole project as your lens. The current guide was first assessed in 2024 and applies to everyone sitting exams in November 2026, May 2027 and May 2028. The IB has not announced a new Business Management guide for first teaching in 2026 or 2027, so students starting in August 2027 (May 2029 exams) follow it too. It replaced two separate tasks: SL students used to write a 1,500-word written commentary and HL students a 2,000-word research project with a proposal and action plan. Advice written for those tasks, especially about action plans or the old criteria, is now out of date.
Pro Tip
Your teacher marks the project and the IB then moderates a sample from your school. The guide allows about 20 hours of class time for it, so plan to do much of the research and writing in your own time.
Business IA Requirements at a Glance
These are the rules every business research project must meet, at both SL and HL.
- Length: no more than 1,800 words
- Focus: a real business issue or problem, not a hypothetical one, relating to any part of the syllabus
- Organisation: one real organisation, although you may consider industry-wide issues that affect it
- Research question: the title is framed as a question that the project answers
- Key concept: one of change, creativity, ethics or sustainability, integrated throughout
- Evidence: three to five supporting documents, primary and/or secondary, from which most of your information comes
- Dates: supporting documents published no more than three years before you submit the project to the IB
- Weighting: 30% of the final grade at SL, 20% at HL, marked out of 25
Watch Out
Moderators do not credit anything beyond 1,800 words. If your conclusion falls after the limit, criterion E is effectively lost.
Business IA Criteria: How the 25 Marks Work
The project is marked against seven criteria. Criteria A and D carry the most marks, so the key concept and the quality of your analysis matter more than anything else. Teachers mark on a best-fit basis against the published descriptors, and the IB moderates a sample.
- 1Criterion A, Integration of a key concept (5 marks): how well you identify one key concept and integrate it into the investigation of your issue, from introduction to conclusion.
- 2Criterion B, Supporting documents (4 marks): whether your three to five documents are relevant, contemporary, detailed enough and offer a range of ideas and views.
- 3Criterion C, Selection and application of tools and theories (4 marks): whether you choose business tools and theories that suit the question and apply them properly to your evidence.
- 4Criterion D, Analysis and evaluation (5 marks): how well you use data from the supporting documents to analyse the issue and evaluate it, weighing up what the evidence shows. Considering different stakeholders' views is a natural way to do this.
- 5Criterion E, Conclusions (3 marks): whether your conclusions answer the research question and follow from the evidence you presented.
- 6Criterion F, Structure (2 marks): whether the project is logically organised and easy to follow.
- 7Criterion G, Presentation (2 marks): whether the required elements are there, such as a title page, contents, headings, numbered pages, consistent referencing and a bibliography.
Choosing a Good Business IA Research Question
A good research question names the organisation, points to one specific issue or decision, and can be answered with evidence from a handful of documents. It should invite analysis and judgement, which is why many students use phrasings such as to what extent, how effective or should. Choose a topic where you can actually get evidence: a business you can contact for primary data, or one that publishes detailed reports.
- For example: to what extent has Company X's move to reusable packaging reduced its costs and waste? (sustainability)
- For example: how effective has Company X's new subscription model been in retaining customers? (change)
- For example: should Company X launch a new product line to reach younger customers? (creativity)
- For example: how has Company X's decision to change suppliers affected its reputation with customers and staff? (ethics)
Watch Out
Avoid questions about a whole industry, a hypothetical business, or anything so broad that the answer becomes a description of the company. A narrow question with good evidence beats an ambitious one you cannot support.
Choosing and Integrating Your Key Concept
Criterion A is worth 5 of the 25 marks, as much as analysis and evaluation. The concept has to shape the investigation, not appear in one paragraph near the end. Pick the concept that is genuinely at the heart of your issue, then return to it as you analyse each piece of evidence and again in your conclusion.
- Change: the issue involves the organisation adapting, for example a new pricing model, a restructure or a response to new competition
- Creativity: the issue involves new ideas, products, processes or marketing, and whether they work
- Ethics: the issue involves right and wrong in business decisions, such as working conditions, sourcing, honesty with customers or treatment of stakeholders
- Sustainability: the issue involves environmental, social or financial sustainability, such as cutting waste, reducing emissions or securing the business's long-term survival
Pro Tip
A quick test: delete every sentence that mentions your key concept. If the project still reads the same, the concept is not integrated.
How Many Supporting Documents for a Business IA?
You need between three and five supporting documents, and most of the information in your project should come from them. They must be published no more than three years before you submit. Choose documents that are relevant, have enough depth to analyse and, together, give a range of ideas and views. Attach the documents themselves, and highlight the parts you use so your teacher and the moderator can see where your evidence comes from.
- Primary: results of a survey you ran, or a transcript of an interview with a manager or owner
- Secondary: annual reports, financial accounts, company press releases and website content
- Secondary: news articles, industry reports and government statistics about the market
- Mix internal sources (what the organisation says) with external ones (what others say) so you can compare views
- Use fewer, richer documents rather than five thin ones: depth matters more than the count
Watch Out
Background reading is not the same as a supporting document. Other sources can support context and appear in your bibliography, but your analysis should rest on your three to five documents.
Business Tools Should Support the Argument
Criterion C rewards tools and theories that fit your question and are applied to real data. The business management toolkit gives you tools such as SWOT and STEEPLE analysis, the Ansoff matrix, the BCG matrix, decision trees, descriptive statistics and circular business models. Syllabus content such as ratio analysis, break-even, investment appraisal, motivation theories and the marketing mix can also be used.
- 1Choose two or three tools that genuinely help answer your question
- 2Feed each tool with evidence from your supporting documents, not general knowledge
- 3Explain what each tool shows and why it matters for the research question
- 4Compare what different tools and documents suggest, and note where they disagree
- 5Link every finding back to your key concept and towards your conclusion
Pro Tip
A SWOT analysis with no evidence behind it is decoration. One well-supported financial calculation or stakeholder analysis is worth more than four empty frameworks.
Business IA Structure and Format
The guide does not impose fixed headings, but a clear structure helps with criteria F and G. A common split is about 250 words for the introduction, about 1,300 for the main body and about 250 for the conclusion. Not counted in the 1,800 words: acknowledgements, the contents page, tables of statistical data, diagrams or figures, equations, formulae and calculations, citations, references, the bibliography and the supporting documents. Definitions and quotations do count.
- 1Title page: your research question, the key concept and the word count
- 2Contents page with numbered pages
- 3Introduction: the organisation, the issue, the research question, the key concept and why you chose your supporting documents
- 4Main body: analysis organised by theme or sub-question, applying tools to evidence from the documents and weaving in the key concept
- 5Evaluation within the analysis: the reliability and limits of your evidence and competing stakeholder views
- 6Conclusion: a direct answer to the research question, with no new information
- 7Bibliography, followed by the supporting documents with the relevant parts highlighted
Conclusions and Recommendations
Criterion E rewards conclusions that answer your research question and are consistent with the evidence you presented. If your question asks what the organisation should do, your conclusion is in effect a recommendation, so make it specific and justified. If your question asks how effective a past decision was, give a clear judgement rather than a summary.
- Answer the research question in the first sentence of the conclusion
- Use only evidence you have already presented: no new facts or data
- Say how strong your conclusion is, given the limits of your documents
- Where relevant, note what further evidence would make the answer more certain
Example Outline (Illustrative)
This is an illustrative plan, not a real student's project. Imagine a student investigating to what extent a local café chain's switch to reusable cups has been worthwhile, using sustainability as the key concept.
- 1Supporting documents: the chain's sustainability statement, a local news report on the scheme, the student's survey of 60 customers, an interview transcript with the operations manager and a published industry report on packaging costs
- 2Introduction: the business, the switch, the research question and why sustainability is the lens
- 3Analysis 1: cost and revenue effects using figures from the interview and industry report
- 4Analysis 2: customer response from the survey, analysed with descriptive statistics
- 5Analysis 3: a STEEPLE view of the external pressures behind the change
- 6Evaluation: environmental benefits against financial costs, the views of customers, staff and owners, and the limits of a small survey
- 7Conclusion: a judgement on whether the switch has been worthwhile, linked to environmental and financial sustainability
Common Business IA Mistakes
These issues regularly cost marks in the business research project. An IB Business Management tutor can explain what makes a research question workable and how to judge whether supporting documents are suitable, so you can choose your own with confidence.
- Writing about a whole industry or a hypothetical business instead of one real organisation
- Mentioning the key concept in the introduction and conclusion only
- Using supporting documents older than three years before submission
- Choosing documents that all say the same thing, so there is no range of views to evaluate
- Using tools mechanically, with no data from the documents behind them
- Spending hundreds of words describing the company's history
- Going over 1,800 words so the conclusion is not credited
- Following advice written for the old SL commentary or HL research project