Quick: Name as many businesses as you can. Which ones come to mind? Perhaps it’s top revenue-generating companies such as Apple, CVS, and Costco.1 Or maybe it’s smaller, local businesses, like a favorite restaurant, CPA firm, or IT consultant.
Big or small, all of these businesses share operational similarities. But each industry has its own unique features. Earning a BS in Business Administration (BSBA) can provide skills and knowledge that you can apply to a business career. And when you choose an online BSBA program that offers business concentrations, you can prepare for a specific career field.
What Are Business Administration Concentrations?
Business administration concentrations are specialized areas of study within a broader online business degree program. When you choose a concentration in business, you will take courses in a specific subject area, allowing you to develop expertise in an area of interest.
What Are Examples of Business Concentrations?
Here are the business concentrations offered in Walden University’s BS in Business Administration (BSBA) online degree program:
Accounting
Focuses on: Learning how to manage a company’s books and records and prepare and read financial statements, while strengthening your knowledge of taxation, auditing, and managerial accounting
Includes courses covering: Financial accounting, managerial accounting, intermediate accounting
Good for: Anyone who is detail-oriented and loves working with numbers
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs at an accounting firm or in an accounting department
Finance
Focuses on: Learning how to effectively assess and guide financial operations of an organization Includes courses covering: Corporate finance, financial institutions and markets, international finance
Good for: Anyone who is forward-thinking and wants to help optimize a business’s value
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs at a bank or in a company’s financial department
Healthcare Management
Focuses on: Learning about the various functions, roles, and responsibilities associated with healthcare management
Includes courses covering: Context of healthcare delivery, health informatics, current issues in healthcare policy and practice
Good for: Anyone who wants to work in a dynamic industry and help overcome complex challenges
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs in hospital administration or clinic management
Human Resource Management
Focuses on: Learning how a proactive approach to human resources can facilitate success in talent acquisition and retention, productivity, and positive social change in the workplace
Includes courses covering: Strategic human resource management, human resource development and change, human resource management analysis and problems
Good for: Anyone who is a people person and wants to help employees meet their potential, while helping a business meet its goals
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs in a human resource department
Information Systems
Focuses on: Learning how to leverage technology to meet your organization’s strategic goals
Includes courses covering: Platform technologies and operating systems, information assurance and security, profession and practice of information technology
Good for: Anyone who likes staying on the cutting edge and wants to use modern technology to spur business success
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs at a tech company or within an IT department
Management
Focuses on: Learning about the roles and functions of managers, while examining issues and challenges inherent to the managerial role
Includes courses covering: Corporate finance, strategic human resource management, organizational behavior and management
Good for: Anyone with leadership qualities who wants to help guide decision-making
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs in management or positions on a managerial track
Marketing
Focuses on: Learning the analytic and decision-making skills needed to manage marketing resources and activities in both a domestic and global context
Includes courses covering: Marketing management, global marketing, strategic services marketing
Good for: Anyone who likes to exercise their creativity and wants to develop communication pieces or communication strategies
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to jobs in a marketing department or at an advertising or marketing firm
Small Business Management
Focuses on: Developing essential management skills to help grow your existing business or face the demands of launching a new business
Includes courses covering: Small business ventures, marketing strategies for small business, customer relationship management for small businesses
Good for: Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit who currently manages or is planning to manage a small business
Career impact: The skills you gain in this business concentration may be applicable to launching or owning a small business
Are There Tips for Choosing a Business Concentration?
Yes. Consider these suggested steps, which may help you work your way through the decision-making process:
Assess Your Job Interests
When it comes to choosing a business concentration, knowing what kind of work interests and motivates you is usually the most important consideration. If you have a passion for human resource management, the decision-making process for your BSBA concentration may end here. But if you have twin interests—like IT and accounting, for example—you’ll want to spend time considering the pros and cons of each career field. You also may want to look at job opportunities, potential salaries, and companies that may be hiring.
Consider Your Career Path
BSBA concentrations are designed to give students skills and knowledge they can apply to meeting their professional goals. Where do you want to take your career? You can choose a business concentration that helps you prepare to shift career lanes, or one that adds to your knowledge and skill base in your current job field.
Review Business Concentration Coursework
Visit your accredited university’s website to read descriptions of the courses you would take in the business concentrations that appeal to you. You may find your professional interests align more with the coursework in one business concentration than another.
Reach Out to an Enrollment Specialist
At Walden University, Enrollment Specialists can help you get information about the online degree programs, admission requirements, application process, and more. You can also learn more about online learning, which many working professionals find is a flexible way to earn a business degree or management degree.
When you enroll in Walden’s online BSBA degree program, you’ll complete all of your coursework online, which means you can work when and where it’s convenient for you. This offers the flexibility you may need to earn a degree while balancing your personal and professional activities.
In addition to the traditional course-based learning format, Walden offers the General Program of its BS in Business Administration in a competency-based format. Instead of completing courses in a set sequence, students demonstrate their competency in specific areas at a pace that works best for them. Credit is earned when they demonstrate mastery of a competency through an assessment that may come in the form of a short paper, a planning document, a work-based project, or something similar.
Walden’s online BSBA degree program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), which evaluates programs to ensure they meet educational standards and are committed to ongoing quality improvement.
From Adobe to Zoom, there are many different kinds of businesses and job opportunities. And thanks to BSBA programs that offer fresh and relevant business concentrations, you can earn the degree you want for the business field that interests you.
Walden University is an accredited institution offering a BS in Business Administration degree program online. Expand your career options and earn your degree using a convenient, flexible learning platform that fits your busy life.
Walden University’s BS in Business Administration program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). ACBSP is a leading specialized accreditation association that identifies and supports excellence in business education.
Walden University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (www.hlcommission.org), an institutional accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.