Study Guide: 3 Business Courses, With Pictures

Answer: Profit, People, Planet.

Why: a normal business report only measures money (Profit). Week 1 argues that is incomplete, because a business also changes people’s lives (People — workers, customers, communities) and the natural world (Planet). In your essay, this concept lets you say: “If we judge by the Triple Bottom Line, profit-first is only one-third of performance.”

Answer: a negative externality (a non-market impact).

Why it is a problem, step by step: (1) treating waste costs money; (2) dumping avoids that cost, so the factory’s products look cheaper than they truly are; (3) the real cost does not disappear — the community downstream pays it through dirty water, lost fishing and clean-up. The market price is therefore lying: it hides a cost that society carries.

Answer: making profit and creating purpose (social value).

Why: at every step of the value chain — sourcing, making, shipping, selling — a firm can cut corners for margin or invest for purpose. Week 2 does not say “choose purpose only”; it asks how the two can be balanced so the business survives and contributes.

Answer: 9 boundaries. Greenwashing = presenting an environmentally friendly image that the real operation does not match.

Why it matters: greenwashing lets a company collect the reputation benefit of Side B (responsibility) while still behaving like Side A (profit only). In an essay, it is a good example that claims of responsibility must be checked against evidence — a point you will need again in Assessment 3 when you evaluate an AI’s claims about a fast-fashion company.

Answer: legal permission is not enough — if you do not genuinely consult and respect affected stakeholders, especially Indigenous communities and their heritage, you lose trust and your social licence to operate.

Why: Rio Tinto had the legal right to blast. It still faced global condemnation, investor pressure and executive resignations. The lesson generalises: stakeholders who are affected but not heard do not disappear — they respond later, with much greater force.

Answer: tiles show the 17 goals as separate, equal boxes. The wedding cake stacks them: economy on top, society in the middle, biosphere (planet) as the base that holds everything.

Why: the two pictures teach opposite instincts. Tiles suggest you can pick any goal alone. The cake says economic goals depend on social stability, which depends on a living planet — so environmental goals are not “one option among 17”, they are the foundation.

Answer: through human rights. Example (any one is fine): garment workers’ rights to safe conditions, reasonable hours, a living wage and freedom from forced labour — the same rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, applied inside a supply chain.

Why: this lens is stronger than “be nice”. Rights are not optional extras a company grants when profitable; they are minimum standards every person holds simply by being human. That is why this week feeds directly into Assessment 3’s fast-fashion question.

Side A (shareholder first): “A business is owned by its shareholders, and managers are hired to serve them; spending profits on social causes is spending someone else’s money. Profit itself is socially useful — it funds jobs, taxes, pensions and the products society wants.”

Side B (wider responsibility): “Business operates inside society and nature, not outside them, so its licence to operate depends on both. Profit built on externalities — pollution, unsafe work, destroyed heritage — simply transfers the true cost to people who never agreed to pay it.”

There is no single correct wording. What makes an answer strong: each side has a reason (not just an opinion) and the reasons use course concepts.

Example: “This essay argues that businesses should not place shareholder profit above social and environmental responsibility, because profit measured alone hides external costs and destroys the trust businesses need to survive.”

Why this shape works: it takes a clear position (markers can follow you), and it previews your two main reasons — hidden costs (Weeks 1 & 3) and trust/social licence (Weeks 4 & 8 ideas, introduced through stakeholders in Week 4).

Use the “managers spend other people’s money” argument plus the social usefulness of profit (jobs, taxes, investment). Then, at the end of the paragraph, add your reply: e.g. “…but this assumes profit is honestly earned; where profit depends on externalities, the argument weakens.” That reply sentence is what lifts the essay from summary to analysis.

Pick two concepts and go deep rather than listing all six weeks: e.g. externalities (Week 1) + Juukan Gorge (Week 4). Deep on two concepts beats shallow on six — each concept needs a definition, an example, and a sentence linking it back to the essay question.

Use your own class notes here — this paragraph cannot be written from this guide, because it must reflect the actual guest lecture. Note the speaker’s organisation, one real decision they described, and whether it supports Side A, Side B, or a balance. If you missed it, check the class recording/notes before drafting.

Do not introduce new evidence in the conclusion. Formula: restate position → name your two strongest reasons in one sentence each → one closing line about what this means for managers today.

Empathise → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test.

1. Empathise produces understanding: persona, empathy map, journey map.
2. Define produces one problem statement + root cause.
3. Ideate produces many candidate solutions, then a chosen one.
4. Prototype produces a rough, cheap version of the solution.
5. Test produces feedback — which usually sends you back to an earlier step.

Memory trick: “Every Designer Invents Playful Things.”

It names a solution, not a problem. “No app” assumes the answer before any empathising happened. A problem statement must describe a person’s unmet need: who struggles, with what, and why it matters — e.g. “Volunteer teachers in remote schools cannot get feedback on their lessons, so the same teaching mistakes repeat all year.”

Test you can apply to your own Assessment 1: if your “problem” contains a product (app, workshop, website…), rewrite it until only the human need remains.

“The programme is fine” → Says. Stopped attending → Does. Feels embarrassed → Feels. (What she thinks might be: “the trainers judge teachers who struggle.”)

The learning is in the contradiction: Says ≠ Does. If you only recorded her words, you would conclude there is no problem. The map forces you to notice that behaviour and feelings tell a different story — and that gap (fear of embarrassment) is a much better Define statement than “training quality”.

(a) Legal (a regulation) — with a Political side, since government chose it. (b) Economic (incomes, ability to pay for education) — with Social effects. (c) Technological.

Why some facts fit two boxes: PESTLE is a scanning checklist, not six sealed rooms. What markers want is the classification plus the “so what”: e.g. (c) means a support solution can now be delivered by phone instead of by travelling trainers — that changes which solutions are realistic.

It breaks the course’s AI rule directly: AI may create and converse with the AI persona, and may support your English — it may not write the report. The university may also run AI-detection tools, and the report includes a required reflection on ethical AI use: submitting AI-written text while reflecting on ethical use contradicts itself.

Safe pattern for Assessment 1: use AI as the interviewee (the persona) → analyse the transcript yourself → write the report yourself → optionally use AI to polish English sentences you wrote.

Because the rubric pays for recommendations (35 marks) more than for analysis (25). A video is marked against the rubric, not against effort. Rough timing fix for a 7-minute video: ~1 minute intro, ~2.5 minutes analysis (all 5 steps, briefly), ~2.5 minutes recommendations (prototype + test results + next steps), ~1 minute conclusion.

General rule for this whole course: read the rubric before you plan, and spend your time in proportion to the marks.

A prototype is a rough, cheap, fast version made only to learn: a paper sketch of an app, a one-page draft of a training session, a role-play of a new process. A final solution is the polished, expensive, real thing.

Why prototype first: every solution contains wrong assumptions. Finding them costs almost nothing at prototype stage and a fortune after full launch. Testing a prototype is how Design Thinking turns “we think users want this” into “we watched users use this”.

Step 1 — find the trade-off rate. Full resources give 100 coffee or 60 rice. So 100 coffee “costs” 60 rice → 1 tonne of coffee costs 60 ÷ 100 = 0.6 tonnes of rice.

Step 2 — scale it. 20 tonnes of coffee × 0.6 = 12 tonnes of rice.

Answer: the opportunity cost of 20 more tonnes of coffee is 12 tonnes of rice not grown.

Why markers care: an answer that only says “the opportunity cost is rice” earns little. The number — what exactly is given up — is what turns the concept into a decision: if coffee earns more than the rice it replaces, grow coffee; if not, don’t.

Answer: price rises, quantity falls.

Step by step: (1) drought is not a price change — it is a change in production conditions, so a curve shifts, not a movement along it. (2) At every price, farmers can now offer less rice → supply shifts left. (3) Demand is unchanged. (4) The new crossing point sits higher and further left: P* up, Q* down. In words for your report: “the drought reduced supply; with demand unchanged, competition among buyers pushed the price up, and less rice was traded.”

Answer: yes — keep producing in the short run.

Step by step: (1) split the cost: $12 total = $4 fixed (unavoidable) + $8 variable (only paid if producing). (2) If it produces: each unit brings $10 and adds $8 of variable cost → it covers the variable cost and contributes $2 toward the rent. Loss per unit = $2. (3) If it shuts down: it sells nothing but still pays the $4 rent. Loss per unit = $4. (4) Losing $2 beats losing $4 → produce.

The rule to remember: in the short run, produce if price ≥ average variable cost — fixed costs are already committed, so ignore them for this decision. In the long run the rent can be escaped, so the firm would exit if price stays below total cost.

Firm B: read only B’s number in each cell (the second number). If A plays Low, B earns 5 by playing Low vs 2 by playing High → Low is better. If A plays High, B earns 8 by playing Low vs 7 by playing High → Low is better again. Low wins in both cases → Low is B’s dominant strategy, exactly like A’s.

Nash equilibrium: both play Low → (5, 5). From that cell, if either firm alone switches to High, its profit falls (5 → 2), so nobody moves. That “nobody wants to move alone” test is the definition of Nash equilibrium.

Why it is not the best joint outcome: at High/High both would earn 7 > 5. But High/High fails the Nash test: from there, each firm can jump to 8 by cutting price while the other stays High. Individual incentives destroy the collectively better outcome — the prisoners’ dilemma pattern.

Study habit shown here on purpose: always re-check which number in each cell belongs to which player (row player first, column player second). Most matrix mistakes are reading the wrong number, not wrong logic.

Real growth ≈ 9% − 4% = 5%. Nominal GDP counts both more production and higher prices. Removing inflation leaves the true increase in goods and services produced: about 5%. The headline overstates real performance by mixing price rises into “growth” — exactly why Assessment 3 wants real indicators charted over 2014–2024.

1. Government spending rises; the government borrows more to fund it.
2. In the loanable funds market, demand for loans increases → the interest rate rises.
3. At higher interest rates, private investment falls — this reduction is the crowding-out effect.
4. Total spending (AD) still rises, but by less than the government’s extra spending, because part is offset by lost private investment → AD shifts right, moderately.
5. Against SRAS, the new short-run equilibrium has higher real GDP (the policy goal — fighting the slowdown) and a higher price level (the side effect — inflation pressure).

Why this question matters: this single chain is worth up to 70 of 100 marks in Assessment 3 (fiscal policy & loanable funds 30 + crowding out 10 + AD–AS 30). Write it as a chain of causes, drawing both diagrams, and you have covered the report’s core.