Management (Cambridge (CIE) A Level Business): Exam Questions

Seaside Hotel (SH)

SH is a large hotel located in a tourist area of country H. SH has 120 rooms and employs 42 workers during the peak (busiest) season which is from April to September. Table 2.1 shows employee data for SH’s peak season.

Table 2.1: Employee data for SH’s peak season

SH makes half of the cleaners and customer service employees redundant at the end of the peak season.

To break even, the hotel must sell 72 rooms per night. The hotel offers good views of the sea and it is very busy in the peak season when the weather is hot. Table 2.2 shows SH’s sales of rooms.

Table 2.2: SH’s sales of rooms 2021–2022

SH does not have a restaurant. It has a joint venture with a restaurant close to the hotel where SH’s customers receive a discount on their food and drink. The hotel advertises the restaurant on social media and the restaurant advertises the hotel on its menu.

Tia is one of the managers of SH. She has an autocratic leadership style and is responsible for the cleaners and marketing employees.

The directors of SH aim to increase the value added to the service that SH provides.

Harvest Lane (HL)

Harvest Lane (HL) freezes and packs vegetables in country R. It employs 420 people, many of whom live in the small town where the factory is located.

HL is run by Anneke, whose grandfather founded the business. She provides a subsidised canteen, free transport to the factory, and paid training. Anneke decides shift patterns, holiday periods and pay rates herself, explaining her decisions to workers at a meeting each quarter but never asking them to vote.

Labour turnover at HL is 4%, against a national average of 17% in food processing.

HL has recently won a large supermarket contract requiring weekend production. Anneke has announced a new Saturday shift without consulting staff. Several younger employees have said they would have preferred a choice of shift.

Compass Point (CP)

Compass Point (CP) is a market research agency in country B. It employs 95 researchers who design surveys and interpret data for clients in retail and banking.

CP's managing director, Idris, holds a weekly meeting at which any researcher can propose changes to how projects are run. Decisions on new software, project deadlines and which clients to take on are put to a vote.

Two years ago researchers voted to adopt a new data analysis package. Since then the average time to complete a project has fallen from 26 days to 19.

However, CP recently lost a large banking client after taking eleven days to agree internally whether to accept an urgent piece of work.

Northgate (NG)

Northgate (NG) runs a customer service centre in country V for a telecoms company. It employs 600 people who answer calls from mobile phone customers.

Eighteen months ago NG was struggling. Staff were leaving quickly, callers waited a long time, and the telecoms company threatened to move the contract elsewhere.

A new centre manager, Priya, made three changes. She introduced a training programme so that staff could answer billing and technical questions rather than transferring calls. She gave team leaders authority to resolve complaints up to $200 without approval. She also replaced a system that ranked staff publicly by the number of calls taken with one that measured how many problems were solved first time.

Table 1.1: NG selected data