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AQA BUSS 4 - Corporate Culture Discussion

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Original post by needtosucceed=)
that sounds good :smile: what do you need to get in this exam to get the overall grade ur aiming for? :smile:


Erm well i retook unit 3 on wednesday (I got a D last time :frown:) but it went really bad, so I have a really bad feeling that I may not have improved, but still kind of hopeful that I have, but meh.

So overall if I haven't improved in Unit 3, for an A in this exam I'd need 88 UMS, which is really high :frown: but I'm just going to try my best and maybe pray a lot haha, and you never know I could get an A, but we'll see :smile:

you?
Reply 221
Original post by sofiax0
Erm well i retook unit 3 on wednesday (I got a D last time :frown:) but it went really bad, so I have a really bad feeling that I may not have improved, but still kind of hopeful that I have, but meh.

So overall if I haven't improved in Unit 3, for an A in this exam I'd need 88 UMS, which is really high :frown: but I'm just going to try my best and maybe pray a lot haha, and you never know I could get an A, but we'll see :smile:

you?

You never know you might of got A higher grade
If buss1 retake and buss3 retake havent improved i need a B in this to get a B overall

But hopefully they have improved

Im finding the research very difficult. Have you got any links to any articles? How are you doing your research?
Original post by iggyDash
You never know you might of got A higher grade
If buss1 retake and buss3 retake havent improved i need a B in this to get a B overall

But hopefully they have improved

Im finding the research very difficult. Have you got any links to any articles? How are you doing your research?


I'm sure you have improved too so :smile:

erm we'll ive done most of my research at school over the past couple months, so now (i say now, as in literally only just about to start) im just gonna make like pages with key facts etc. the best website is tutor2u, and the stuff on here is good http://tutor2u.net/buss4revision.pdf
Reply 223
Original post by LukeKnights
Researching Royal Mail, Barclays, Google & NHS. Anybody got any good info on any of them, regarding the bullet points from the stim material? Thanks, really need some halps
(just asked this in another buss4 thread but this one is more popular lawlz)


First of all, I'd advise you to do have more examples up your sleeve. Personally, I'm doing 7.

But back to your question. Royal Mail - bureaucratic culture, appointed new CEO Moya Greene to transform the company. She emphasises "modernisation" (i.e. investing in new technology) to increase productivity/efficiency. Also, valuing employees more and having customers at heart.
Good interview with Moya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuC-G_cyu6E
And article: http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/business-studies/comments/researching-the-royal-mail-a-great-case-study-in-change-management

Barclays - bonus culture of short-termism which led to a scandal. Bob Diamond, former CEO, was profit-orientated and gave out bonuses even in the times of financial crisis in 2008. Anthony Jenkins was appointed as the new CEO to rebuild the company's reputation and change its culture.
Best video clip on Barclays is this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qrq28/Panorama_Inside_Barclays_Banking_on_Bonuses/
And this is how they made profit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/11/barclays-investment-banking-tax-avoidance

I don't know about the other two.
It also would be useful to compare and contrast with strong cultures, for with I strongly recommend Southwest Airlines (http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/business-studies/comments/organisational-culture-the-business-of-business-is-people-says-herb) and John Lewis Partnership (http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/business-studies/comments/organisational-culture-how-partnership-works-at-john-lewis-partnership).

Hope I helped, best of luck :biggrin:
Reply 224
Original post by snowster
I need an example of a company with a weak culture. Can anyone help me out?


Nokia and Royal Mail.

Nokia:
Nokia struggled to compete in the mobile phone market
Bureaucratic culture leading to slow decision-making in rapidly-growing market
Stephen Elop appointed to change the culture and refocus the company
Delayering, changing organisational hierarchy
More innovation and empowerment
Joint project with Microsoft, producing Nokia Lumia which shows potential
Culture will not happen overnight so Nokia will struggle to really compete in the mobile phone market again.

Royal Mail:
Cash negative four years in a row before the transformation
Operating profit after transformation costs grew from £152 million to £440 million due to cost control and improved revenue generated by parcel volume and letter revenue growth. This means that Royal Mail's change programme is starting to deliver significant improvements in profitability largely as a result of substantial reductions in operating costs and higher mail pricing.
A 13% increase in Royal Mail’s parcels business it handled nearly 1.1billion packages last year was fuelled by a boom in internet shopping. This shows that economic conditions were important to some degree in the success of the Royal Mail.


Bureaucratic culture; bad in fast-growing market; need to respond to changes flexibly
Moya Greene employed to change the culture
Investment in technology to minimise costs and improve productivity/efficiency
Be more customer-focused
Value employees more
Focusing on fast-growing parcel market
Reply 225
I've got one question. I know that people cannot emphasise enough that PLANNING is crucial, especially in this exam. The question is - HOW do you plan?

Do you guys have any structure for your plan and how much detail do you include? Plus, how long should we spend on it?
Reply 226
May sound a stupid question but what's the word opposite to a 'toxic' culture? Would it be positive?
Reply 227
I just realised I am completely clueless for section B, unless leadership comes up
Original post by snowster
I need an example of a company with a weak culture. Can anyone help me out?

kodak, sony and nokia
The tutor2u top 10 are really good to use helped me alot . There great for section A and pretty good for B but not the best, that takes a bit more
Reply 230
I finally have time to get prepared for this exam, havent done anything for it so far. How would you recomend i prepare in the next 4 days ?
Reply 231
Original post by bundlez
I finally have time to get prepared for this exam, havent done anything for it so far. How would you recomend i prepare in the next 4 days ?

Tbh, I think 4 days is a good amount of time. Just research your companies thoroughly and revise the content of buss4.
Reply 232
Anyone else worried about this exam?!
Original post by ksingh
Anyone else worried about this exam?!


I am, LOADS. I feel like the only one! I've wrote revision cards for unit 4, and typed up businesses relating to the different bullet points of organisational culture, I haven't even started essay practice or actually remembering figures and what not. We've got 4 days, we can do this...
Reply 234
Original post by ksingh
Tbh, I think 4 days is a good amount of time. Just research your companies thoroughly and revise the content of buss4.


How do you research companies ?
Reply 235
Original post by bundlez
How do you research companies ?

Well we were told by our teacher to start bringing in news stories and from there we began to link them into buss4. However, If you look on the tutor2u website they should have good examples on there.
Can someone tell me WHY Nokia failed? I know they missed out on innovative opportunities, but what was the main reason in reference to their culture? Excluding their employees through centralisation etc?
Reply 237
Original post by laurenculver24
Can someone tell me WHY Nokia failed? I know they missed out on innovative opportunities, but what was the main reason in reference to their culture? Excluding their employees through centralisation etc?


Yes. I mean the arrogance at Nokia let them down. They dominated the whole market and they thought they knew everything. I guess you can put it down to poor leadership too.
Reply 238
Can anyone give me an example of what a good conclusion should look like???

it seems my teacher thinks im doing so bad at it that I gain no marks in my conclusions...
Reply 239
Original post by yaboy
Can anyone give me an example of what a good conclusion should look like???

it seems my teacher thinks im doing so bad at it that I gain no marks in my conclusions...


Well in conclusion you are giving judgements and a reason for your judgement.
Feels like you're a judge in a court; you have heard both side of the story and now you need to make a decision and of course you can't just give someone a penalty without any convincing reason.


One way to conclude is to say:


Overall I believe that point 1 is much more significant than point 2 because.........
However it could be possible that they are interlinked and one causes another.......

You could also talk about what each factors depend upon.
You could say:
On balance I believe that point 1 depends upon external factors such as the economic climate or competitors action and then give an example that you know to back up your point.

The easiest for me is probably short run vs long run. In business you need to consider between short run implications and log run implications.

For example:
Lowering prices will help to increase the revenue of firm A (point made) as consumers fundamentally look for a good price (2nd point made). However this depends upon the price elasticity of demand (evaluation). Price elasticity of demand is the responsiveness of demand to change in price (knowledge). If price is inelastic then a fall in prices will actually lead to a fall in revenue however if elastic then a fall in prices will lead to a gain in revenue (analysed).
Even if (evaluation) prices are elastic and firm A does lower the price for its product, they may only see the benefit in the short run as in the long run competitiors are likely react to the fall in prices and adjust their prices too hence no benefits will be gained by them in the long run. A lot of this will depend (evaluation) upon the market structure that the firm is operating. If firm A is operating in an Oligopoly market, where firms are interdependent, then they are less likely to leave the prices alone as a price war is not favourable in such market structure.
Also it is to bare in mind that consumers may place great value on quality rather than price (evaluation). This can perhaps be seen in the mobile phone industry; taking Apple and Blackberry as an example. Although Blackberry seems to be a lot more cheaper than an iPhone but due to its unique selling point and high quality Apple has been able to build a strong customer base and have much greater market share than Blackberry.


On balance, based on the evidence I believe that firm A should NOT lower it's prices (judgement made) because they seem to be operating in an oligopoly market where a price war means that they will be the real losers in the long run due to prices being "sticky". I believe they should invest heavily in marketing in order to increase their market share (recommendation made) because this is the best solution to build a strong customer base in such markets to increase their competetivness. However a lot will depend (evaluation) upon how much other competitors are investing in marketing too. If they are investing as much and their marketing is as effective as firm's A strategy then relative competitiveness will remain the same.



I hope you get the idea of what I'm doing. I'm not an expert at this but I think that is a good conclusion.
Don't be scared to bring in other topical areas from BUSS 1-3. For example you could have said well yh they could invest in marketing but can the finance function support this strategy? Or from BUSS2 you could have said yes marketing could increase but what if they're already close to full capacity and therefore even if demand increases they won't be able to meet demand so will that really increase market share? Or even some BUSS1 topics such a market research in order to understand what the consumers need....... You could have also said things that are not in the book. With poor economic conditions in the EU and UK maybe a fall in revenue may not be such a massive concern and even question the question. Is market share really the best way to measure competitiveness of the firm and how they are performing?

I hope this makes sense. Conclusion is your judgement, there is no right or wrong answer as long as your judgement is logical and is backed up with logical analysis, theories and real world examples.


Good luck!

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