A detailed look inside Apple’s Foxconn factory
A fascinating and detailed look here at working conditions at Apple’s main supplier in China. This 15 minute video raises a lot of issues which students can develop; particularly useful for any discussion around CSR, but also excellent for operations and HRM. In the video, ABC News Nightline goes behind the scenes of the FoxConn factory - the operation which makes iPads and iPhones.
read more...»BUSS4: The Seven Point Scale for Perfect Paragraphs
This is an idea I’ve developed following the recent tutor2u BUSS4 revision workshops for marking and feeding back to students when building essay skills. Like many of my A2 Business-teaching counterparts, I spent a large proportion of the Easter break marking BUSS4 mock essays. In a bid to help my students develop their paragraph writing skills, I made a note of the common areas for improvement and summarised them into seven key points for writing the ‘perfect’ paragraph:
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: Analysis: The Snoozatron
This is a ‘cracking’ little video that I used with my students to talk about analysis.
read more...»Effective evaluation for A2 business: the “halo effect”
The most important skill that candidates need to show off in their AS/A2 exams is an ability to effectively evaluate. Evaluation statements put candidates in the top mark band on most of the bigger questions.
For this reason, I’m always on the lookout for ways in which the quality of evaluation in student responses can be improved. When I was reading at the weekend I came across a new term (for me, anyway) that I thought would be worth adding to my list of tips – a so-called ‘halo effect’.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: It depends on how you use “it depends”
“It depends on”. Three little words that allow students to reach higher levels of evaluation. However, the extent to which the use of these 3 words allows a student to achieve higher levels of evaluation really depends on how they use it.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: Answer what you are asked!
I’ve blogged about this before but it is worth mentioning again as we approach what I like to call, the ‘business end’ of the academic year - exam season.
read more...»AQA AS Business (BUSS1) - The Basics for Revision
This short, simple revision presentation contains some summary thoughts about potential application, analysis and evaluation points which students might use effectively in their BUSS1 exam answers. The critical thing to remember is that all answers to BUSS1 questions need to be in context - refer to the story and circumstances of the startup business in particular.
read more...»Revision Workshop Dates for AQA BUSS1 and BUSS3 in Winter 2012
The proposed dates and venues for our highly popular one-day revision workshops for AQA A Level Business Studies - BUSS1 and BUSS3 are now available. They are as follows:
Monday 26/11/12 Portsmouth Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) - Vue Cinema Gunwharf Quays
Tuesday 27/11/12 Fulham (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Fulham Broadway
Friday 30/11/12 Stratford (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Westfield Stratford City
Monday 3/12/12 Bristol Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Cribbs Causeway
Tuesday 4/12/12 Birmingham Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Star City
Wednesday 5/12/12 Manchester Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema Lowry Salford Quays
Monday 10/12 Newcastle Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Odeon Cinema, Metro Centre
Tuesday 11/12 Leeds Bus (BUSS1, BUSS3) Vue Cinema The Light
We’ve kept the student price for each workshop at £20 (+VAT) for the seventh year running. Teacher places remain free, although please note that individual teachers may not attend on their own; the free teacher place arrangement is designed to support colleagues bringing student groups.
The booking form is now available here:
https://tutor2u.wufoo.com/forms/aqa-buss1-buss3-revision-workshops-winter-2012/
Important notice: Please only make provisional bookings if you genuinely intend, and have school/college permission, to bring students to the revision workshops. Schools and colleges that persistently cancel their provisional bookings close to the workshop dates will only be permitted to make confirmed bookings if there are spaces available.
When we went on Tour: Developing Exam Skills: Analysis
I love using analogies to explain business concepts to students and one which I used on the recent tutor2u revision conferences was comparing good analysis to a necklace.
read more...»EntrepreneurLIVE! 2012 - Dates Announced
The dates and venues for EntrepreneurLIVE! 2012 have just been announced. We’ve moved this popular event to an earlier date to better fit with the teaching of a wide range of business courses and out of the cluttered Global Enterprise Week. So for 2012 we visit London on 1 October 2012, Birmingham on 2 October 2012 and finally Manchester on 3 October 2012.
We’re busy recruiting a fantastic team of successful and inspirational entrepreneurs who will guide business students through the highs and lows of setting up and running a business. We’ve got some pretty special people lined up and we’ll announce the names here on the Business Studies Blog as soon as their diary commitments are finalised.
The event will follow a similar format to the one which has proved so popular with teachers and students in the last two years. Students will get the opportunity to hear from a superb selection of entrepreneurs who will tell their story, provide insights highly relevant to every business studies course and then, most importantly, take questions from our student audience. We’ll also be running the highly popular Enterprise Pitch Challenge where student teams pitch their solution to a business challenge, competing to win some attractive cash prizes!
You can read a couple of excellent reports from students who attended Entrepreneur LIVE! 2011 here: from Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls and here from Stoke Sixth Form College who brought students to Manchester (Salford Quays)
Provisional bookings for EntrepreneurLIVE! 2012 can now be made using this online form:
Life and leadership at BA after Willie Walsh
This is an interesting article that I came across while looking for updates on how industrial relations and strike threats have been progressing at BA over the last year or so - the article was published last September so apologies if you are already familiar with it, but I think it is well worth reading. When studying leadership for BUSS4 we often use the example of Willie Walsh, and the rather deeply entrenched conflicts that became established with BASSA (the cabin crew branch of Unite). So it is interesting to see what has happened since Walsh moved on from the position of CEO of British Airways at the start of 2011 to become CEO of IAG instead.
read more...»BUSS2 Key Term Revision Quiz
Here is a 12 question BUSS2 key term revision quiz - in this one type in the answer, you will see the number of letters in the correct answer after each question. Good luck!
read more...»ResearchBuster: Acquisitions
Our ResearchBuster blog posts are designed to help students identify and integrate examples of business strategy for their synoptic essays and exams. This ResearchBuster look at some of the most significant examples of takeovers / acquisitions in recent years…
(updated 8 April 2012 with 9 new entries)
read more...»Move over Apple, Samsung, Sony & Nokia. Here Comes China’s Huawei
A great article here for students researching the competitive environment in the consumer electronics industry. Students should certainly be familiar with the strategies of Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Sony and others. But have they heard of Huawei? It looks like they might soon, if Huawei is successful in its objective of grabbing a significant share of the smartphone and tablet markets.
read more...»Essay writing: turn evidence into analysis
At the recent A2 business studies revision workshops we focused on the need for students to use independent research evidence to help develop their essay points.
One analogy we used was thinking of examples (evidence) as the seasoning in an essay hot-pot or casserole. The seasoning is there to make the meal taste great; but you also need the raw ingredients! An essay point that is developed to a good depth will always score better with the examiners than answers which are littered with too many examples.
Let’s take a look at how we can use a recent business example to help develop a point.
read more...»Revision Presentation - Business Culture
This updated revision presentation provides an overview of the concept of business culture, specifically in the context of strategic decision-making and change management.
read more...»ResearchBuster: Retrenchment
Most businesses aim to grow - but not all succeed - and many are forced to reduce the scale and scope of their business activities as a deliberate act of strategy. This is known as “retrenchment” and A2 students should have an understanding of some examples of retrenchment in action. Which firms / brands were involved? What happened? And why? Here are some suggestions that students could add to their notes:
read more...»IAG bid for BMI receives approval
International Airlines Group, IAG or BA/Iberia has secured EU approval for its purchase of BMI from Lufthansa. The purchase price is c. £172.5m. The quid quo pro is the insistence by the EU regulators that IAG gives up 14/56 of BMI’s slots at Heathrow.
read more...»BTEC First Award in Business - New 2012 Specification Teacher Resource Course
A diary date here for all colleagues teaching the new BTEC First Award in Business specification - Friday 15 June 2012. tutor2u is running a special Teacher Resource CPD course at the amazing Drayton Manor Theme Park designed for colleagues teaching the new specification from September 2012. We’ll look at the new methods of assessment and provide guidance on resourcing and organising the other new units too. We’ll also have some guest speakers from Drayton Manor - a great case study to use for BTEC First. The course programme is outlined further below.
Places are strictly limited and we’re already experiencing heavy demand for places.. Please complete this provisional booking form to grab some places before they all go…
read more...»OCR A2 Business Unit F297 - Smallbone, Little and Spence Ltd
Tom White has now completed his superb revision toolkit on the OCR A2 Business Studies pre-release case study - Smallbone, Little and Spence Ltd. Details of the contents below. The Toolkit can be ordered here. or by downloading and completing this printable order form.
read more...»“Strategy is Choice” - Takeovers are Just One Option
In my previous life in mergers and acquisitions, I was fortunate to work alongside Dr John Wells (before he moved back to Harvard Business School) as we negotiated takeovers, investments, strategic partnerships and the like for a quoted travel company.
It was a chaotic period (right in the middle of the dot-com boom) and we probably had more misses than hits. However I always remember that period for a three-word phrase that became our mantra as we evaluated the best options for the Board.
The phrase was simply “strategy is choice”. Simple, and extremely powerful for students who need to write about external growth strategy.
read more...»BUSS2 and BUSS4 Comes to the Olympics!
We’re now entering the third week of our AQA BUSS2 and BUSS4 revision workshops and we’ve been delighted to meet many thousands of students and teachers who are preparing for these two exams in May & June 2012. After a short break for Easter, we then reprise the BUSS2 and BUSS4 workshops at a new venue for tutor2u - the stunning Vue Cinema at Westfield Stratford - right next door to the London Olympic Park! This is the most advanced cinema in Europe and situated right in the heart of a stunning new shopping and leisure centre. It should be amazing.
read more...»When we went on tour - Football and Competitiveness
Ive just returned from a busy week delivering the Tutor2u BUSS2 revision conferences (along with many others) and I am looking forward to next week when we visit Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds. However, I thought I would quickly blog about an amazing discussion I had with the students at the Bristol conference.
read more...»Women & Leadership
Here is a really interesting article on the qualities women offer as leaders and why research by two contributors to Harvard Business Review suggests they make better leaders than their male counterparts.
read more...»UK manufacturing - GlaxoSmithKline invests in 1,000 new jobs
The relationship between business and the government - one important element of this is government support for business investment through fiscal policy (taxation), regulation and legislation. Yesterday Glaxo announced that they were investing £500mn in a new factory in Cumbria which will provide 1,000 much needed jobs. And this extract from the BBC article about this shows how government has helped to bring this about:
Glaxo said it was motivated specifically by Chancellor George Osborne’s confirmation in the Budget on Wednesday that the government would introduce so-called patent boxes.
These allow corporations to pay a lower rate of tax on profits generated from UK-owned intellectual property.
“The introduction of the patent box has transformed the way in which we view the UK as a location for new investments, ensuring that the medicines of the future will not only be discovered, but can also continue to be made here in Britain,” said Glaxo chief executive Sir Andrew Witty.
“Consequently, we can confirm that we will build GSK’s first new UK factory for almost 40 years.”
A useful little piece of evidence to use if writing BUSS4 essays on this topic.
BUSS4 2012 - Keeping in Touch using the #BUSS4 Hashtag
We’re now into our AQA BUSS2 and BUSS4 revision workshop tour and it’s really encouraging how many students and teachers are including Twitter as part of the their revision and teaching support package. The BUSS4 hashtag (#buss4) is well worth following so that you can see new resources being shared by the AQA business community. It’s also a great way for students to ask short questions or request help as they embark on their research activities. Here is the link to the hashtag and also to our tutor2u twitter account which features BUSS4 postings on a daily basis.
read more...»Business Cafe - March 2012
The latest edition of Business Cafe, our case-study digital magazine for Level 2 and Level 3 business studies courses, is now available to subscribers. An outline of each new case study is provided below.
read more...»OCR AS Business Studies F292 Tipton Sweets Limited
Tom White’s superb revision toolkit for OCR AS Business Studies Unit F292 - on the 2012 case study Tipton Sweets Limited - has just been published. We will ship all pre-orders in the next 24 hours. The toolkit, which provides comprehensive analysis of the Tipton Sweets pre-release case study - can be ordered here. or by downloading and sending us this order form.
Lesson Video on Patent Protection - the Battle for Smartphone Advantage
Don’t try this at home - but watch this expert open up his smartphone to illustrate the use of patents and patent protection…
read more...»Introducing the tutor2u Twelve for 2012
After a relatively successful series of picks last year, we’ve now come up with our suggestions for twelve firms to follow for A2 business students wanting to deepen their understanding of real businesses as they prepare for their final exam papers this summer.
read more...»
