Making Business Management a Profession
The mission of APBM is to make business management a profession – similar to law, medicine, engineering, and accounting – with the CABM and CBM Certifications, Continuing Education, Code of Professional Ethics, and Professional Standards through Best Practices Research.
APBM’s vision is to establish a standardized process to deliver in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner a superior quality higher education in business management across the globe with the CABM and CBM Certifications.
APBM’s goal or objective is to ensure that a business manager who earns the CABM or CBM Credential today will be knowledge-competent and ethical for throughout his/her career and that he/she will then extend these core knowledge competencies and ethical values to tomorrow when he/she becomes a business executive (e.g., CEO) or a corporate director. To this end, APBM represents a single and collective voice for the entire business management profession, which symbolizes self-regulation by the profession.
APBM's flagship certi
fications, the Certified Associate Business Manager (CABM) and the Certified Business Manager (CBM) , are the global standards for measuring core management competencies. APBM has created a consistently rigorous framework of evaluation across the 10 functional areas of management and, in doing so, has made a comprehensive body of knowledge in business management accessible to all individuals regardless of their professional background or education.
The CABM stands for Certified Associate Business Manager and is a professional certification based on a pre-MBA curriculum. The CABM Credential provides a solid foundation for individuals seeking an MBA degree and/or the CBM Credential.
The CABM Credential is awarded to individuals who pass the one-part, four-hour exam. While validating the mastery of business management principles, the CABM is ideal for:
- Individuals starting their careers in a business specialty (i.e., finance, accounting, IT, marketing, HR)
- Non-business majors (i.e., liberal arts, engineering, computer science) who want to pursue careers in business
- Individuals considering an MBA degree and/or the CBM Credential
The CBM stands for Certified Business Manager and is a masters-level professional certification based on an MBA curriculum. In other words, the CBM is a standardized exam based on the topics covered in the majority of MBA programs. The CBM Credential is awarded to individuals who meet the eligibility requirements and pass the 16-hour, four-part exam.
The CBM Designation can be earned:
- while you are pursuing your MBA
- after completing your MBA degree
- before earning your MBA degree
- if you choose not to earn your MBA
In other words, the CBM Credential is equally useful to individuals with or without an MBA degree.
The CBM Credential validates the mastery of business management knowledge, skills, and abilities and is developed by business practitioners to meet the needs of practicing business managers. The goal is to make the CBM curriculum relevant, useful, and practical. The CBM provides a common base of knowledge required of all business managers in all functional areas employed in all industries worldwide.
The CBM Exam consists of four parts:
- Part 1 - The Core Exam consisting of 150 multiple-choice questions
- Part 2 - The Functional Exam consisting of 150 multiple-choice questions
- Part 3 - The Integrated Exam consisting of 100 multiple-choice questions
- Part 4 - The Capstone Exam consisting of a written analysis of a Harvard Business School case
