BUSI7280 Managing in a Global Context
The Complete Exam Bible · S1 2026BUSI7280 Overview
- Australian National University
- S1 2026
- 7 chapters
- Management
Managing in a Global Context is a theory-rich postgraduate survey of management — what a manager is and does (Mintzberg's roles, Katz's skills), how to decide on the best available evidence (evidence-based management), leadership, motivation (self-determination theory), decision-making and sensemaking, and the macro context of culture, global expansion, innovation and institutions.
- Assessed by Final examination 35% · Quiz 25% · International Management Report 20% · Class presentation 20%
- Key terms Effectiveness vs efficiency, Evidence-based management (EBMgt), Autonomous vs controlled motivation, Sensemaking
- How to prepare Front-load the early-weeks micro spine (foundations + evidence-based management) for the quiz, because it is early…
- Most asked What is on the BUSI7280 exam?
How BUSI7280 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Final examination | 35% | Closed book · whole course · concept identification + theory-application short answer (NAER) |
| Quiz | 25% | 60 MCQ · closed book · early-semester weeks (recognition: who-said-what, which-cluster, which-step) |
| International Management Report | 20% | Individual · apply the global frameworks to a country / firm — confirm the exact brief in your course guide |
| Class presentation | 20% | Group · in tutorial — confirm the exact format in your course guide |
What BUSI7280 covers
Seven theory blocks → one exam-ready map. Each links to its free chapter guide.
Management Foundations
Four eras · effectiveness vs efficiency · POLC · Mintzberg's 10 roles · Katz's 3 skillsBefore any leadership, motivation or strategy theory makes sense, the course fixes the ground: what management is, where the ideas came from, and what a manager's job really looks like.
- 1.1 What is management? Effectiveness vs efficiency
- The four eras of management thought (Pindur)
- POLC — the four functions and the control cycle
- Mintzberg's 10 roles in 3 clusters (3 / 3 / 4)
- Katz's 3 skills — and how the mix shifts by level
- Why managers fail — and the move into management
Evidence-Based Management
Four causes of bad practice · casual benchmarking · four evidence sources · the 6 A'sWhy do smart managers keep making bad calls?
- 2.1 What EBMgt is — and the two problems it solves
- EBMgt is a mind-set, not a tool or a dataset
- The four causes of bad practice (Pfeffer & Sutton)
- Casual benchmarking and the four benchmarking questions
- Four sources of evidence + the 6 A's, in order
- Why managers ignore evidence — and how to practise it
Leadership
Trait → behaviour → contingency · the grid · path–goal · DeRue · EI · Johari“Failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led” (Bennis).
- 3.1 Management vs leadership — not the same job
- The progression: trait → behaviour → contingency
- 3.2 Blake & McCanse grid — five styles (Team 9,9 ideal)
- 3.3 House & Mitchell path–goal — four styles to match
- 3.4 DeRue et al. integration + the four behaviour categories
- 3.5 Emotional intelligence (George): 4 aspects → 5 effectiveness elements
Motivation
Self-determination theory · autonomous vs controlled · the 3 needs · crowding-out (CET)Most folk theories of motivation ask how much drive someone has, as if it were a single dial you turn up with money.
- 4.1 Autonomous vs controlled — the master distinction
- The internalisation continuum (amotivation → intrinsic)
- Introjected vs identified — the boundary that sets the bracket
- 4.2 The three basic psychological needs
- 4.3 Cognitive evaluation theory — how rewards crowd out
- The manager's lever: autonomy-supportive vs controlling style
Decision-Making and Sensemaking
Rational · bounded · intuitive · biases · Weick's sensemaking loop · the 7 propertiesClassical management imagined a manager who knows everything and optimises. The real one works with partial information, finite attention, and a deadline.
- 5.1 Process vs content (Chon & Sitkin) — the discipline move
- Three models: rational · bounded · intuitive
- The bias menu — and the de-biasing move for each
- Sensemaking (Weick): enactment → selection → retention
- The seven properties — plausibility over accuracy; retrospective
- The four 'sense-' verbs (giving / breaking / hiding / exchanging)
Culture and the Global Context
Cultural intelligence (CQ) · Hofstede · global expansion · entry modes · first vs late moverGoing global is, for most medium-to-large firms, a strategic imperative rather than an option — and it is where the people frameworks meet the strategy frameworks.
- Theme 6 · Cultural intelligence (CQ) — the four factors
- CQ ≠ EQ / social intelligence; diagnose the deficient factor
- Hofstede's six dimensions — a hypothesis generator, not a stereotype
- Theme 7 · Global expansion — the five imperatives
- The entry-mode ladder: control/value vs commitment/risk
- First-mover (3 mechanisms) vs late-mover advantages
Innovation and Institutions
Bessant's 4 Ps · institutional theory · isomorphism · organisational decline · ethics & CSRThe macro spine of the course zooms out from the manager to the field.
- Theme 8 · Innovation — the 4 Ps vs the 4-phase process
- Innovator resilience potential (six malleable components)
- Theme 9 · Institutions (North) + Scott's three pillars
- Institutional isomorphism — coercive / mimetic / normative
- Organisational decline — five stages, reversible except Dissolution
- Theme 10 · Changing management — hybrid, AI, the empathy turn
Roughly 60% of your mark is closed-book concept work — a 60-question quiz (25%) on the early weeks and a final exam (35%) on the whole course — and neither lets you bring notes. So this guide teaches every framework to exam standard and drills the one answer shape the course rewards: Name → Apply → Evaluate → Recommend (NAER).
Worked example · free
The NAER answer shape — the signature exam move, beat by beat
- +1Name the right framework(s). Three lenses apply: trait theory (who the leader is), the Blake & McCanse grid (concern-for-people × concern-for-production), and path–goal contingency (effectiveness = style × situation).
- +2Apply each construct to the scenario fact by fact. She is trait-rich (intelligence, drive, charisma) but her behaviour is Authority–Compliance (9,1) — high production, low people; and path–goal says experienced, self-directed followers need a participative style, not the directive one she runs. Mismatch.
- +1Evaluate the fit and limits. Trait theory over-predicts her success (she has the gifts, yet the team is leaving) — proof traits alone are insufficient; the grid names the behaviour gap and contingency explains why it bites here.
- +2Recommend a concrete, defensible move. Shift toward Team (9,9) and a participative / achievement-oriented style: delegate decision rights, set stretch goals, reward contribution; build self-awareness (Johari: solicit feedback) to close the blind spot the exit interviews reveal.
Key terms
- Effectiveness vs efficiency
- Effectiveness = doing the right things (pursuing and hitting the goals that matter); efficiency = doing things the right way (minimum waste, best output-to-input ratio). Great management needs both, and the words are not interchangeable — a classic confusable-pair MCQ.
- Evidence-based management (EBMgt)
- A mind-set of seeking the best available evidence from four sources — scientific literature, organisational data, practitioner expertise and stakeholder values — run through the 6 A's (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Aggregate, Apply, Assess). It replaces conventional wisdom and casual benchmarking, and is practised best by managers who appreciate how much they do not know.
- Autonomous vs controlled motivation
- The master distinction in self-determination theory. Autonomous motivation is willing and volitional (interest, personal value, intrinsic); controlled motivation is pressured (rewards, threats, guilt). Quality, not amount, predicts persistence and wellbeing — and “controlled” means the employee is under pressure, the worse state.
- Sensemaking
- Weick's account of how managers handle a novel, ambiguous, expectation-violating event: the ongoing, retrospective construction of a plausible (not necessarily accurate) story through a loop of enactment → selection → retention. The deep move is that action comes first — you act, then read meaning back out of what your action stirred up.
- Institutional isomorphism
- DiMaggio & Powell's finding that organisations in a field grow alike for legitimacy rather than efficiency, via three pressures: coercive (force / dependence / regulation), mimetic (copying under uncertainty), and normative (shared professional training). Weber's “iron cage”, where similarity not efficiency drives structure.
BUSI7280 FAQ
Is BUSI7280 hard?
It is conceptually broad rather than technical: there is no maths, but there is a large canon of frameworks (Mintzberg, Katz, the 6 A's, self-determination theory, Hofstede, North, DiMaggio & Powell, and more) that you must know cold because the quiz and exam are closed-book. The difficulty is breadth plus the discipline of applying a framework to a fresh case rather than reciting it.
How is BUSI7280 assessed?
Four pieces dominated by closed-book concept work: a final exam (about 35%, whole course), a quiz (about 25%, 60 MCQ on the early weeks), an individual International Management Report (about 20%) and a group class presentation (about 20%). Together the two closed-book pieces are roughly 60% of the mark; confirm this year's exact split and dates in your own course guide.
What is on the BUSI7280 exam?
Concept-identification items plus theory-application short-answer questions built on novel cases (the teaching cases will not reappear verbatim). Expect to name and apply frameworks across the manager's job, evidence-based management, leadership, motivation, decision-making and sensemaking, culture and global expansion, and innovation and institutions — using the NAER answer shape.
Do I need maths or calculations for BUSI7280?
No. It is a conceptual management course — the work is in knowing the frameworks and applying them, not in computation. The quiz rewards fast recognition (who said what, which cluster, which step); the exam rewards reasoned application.
Is using AskSia for BUSI7280 cheating?
No. AskSia is a study reference written in our own words — we host none of your lecturer's files, and Sia teaches you the method to earn the marks; it does not complete or sit your assessments.
Questions students ask in each BUSI7280 chapter
- What's the difference between effectiveness and efficiency, and why does the quiz care?
- Effectiveness is about which goals (doing the right things); efficiency is about how cheaply (doing things the right way). The quiz loves the pair because the trap option always offers you only one. If a stem says “hit every deadline using half the budget,” the salient word is efficiency (the way); if it says “built exactly the product customers needed,” that's effectiveness (the things). Great management needs both. Chapter 01 · Management Foundations
- Isn't EBMgt just “use data and analytics”?
- No — that framing is far too narrow and is a deliberate exam trap. EBMgt is a commitment to gather and critically appraise evidence from four sources, including soft ones like practitioner expertise and stakeholder values, and to stay humble about what you don't know. An answer that reduces it to “be data-driven” caps low. Chapter 02 · Evidence-Based Management
- How do I tell trait, behaviour and contingency apart in an MCQ?
- Read the verb. “Is” / “born with” → trait; “does” / “acts” → behaviour; “depends” / “in this situation” → contingency. And don't stop at one in a short-answer question — the A+ move escalates: traits are an ingredient, behaviour explains more, and the winning behaviour depends on the situation. Chapter 03 · Leadership
- Does “controlled motivation” mean things are going well?
- No — that's the #1 SDT trap. It does not mean the manager is in control or that things are good. It means the employee is acting under pressure (external or internal) — the worse motivational state, which narrows effort and burns people out. Chapter 04 · Motivation
- What's the difference between decision-making and sensemaking?
- Decision-making asks “which option?” and presumes a defined situation; sensemaking asks “what situation am I in?” and presumes confusion. In a crisis you do sensemaking before a decision is even well-posed. The exam rewards naming which problem the scenario actually presents — reserve rational/bounded/intuitive for stems with a defined choice, and default to sensemaking for surprises. Chapter 05 · Decision-Making and Sensemaking
- How is CQ different from emotional intelligence?
- EQ and social intelligence work within one culture — reading situations whose rules you were socialised into. CQ is the cross-culture-general capability: it lets you read a situation whose rules you were never socialised into. The quiz tests this boundary, and CQ is learnable, not a fixed trait. Chapter 06 · Culture and the Global Context
- What's the difference between the 4 Ps and the innovation process?
- They answer two different questions. The 4 Ps (Product, Process, Position, Paradigm) answer “what can we innovate?” — the change-space. The 4-phase process (Search → Select → Implement → Capture) answers “how do we run innovation?” — the routine. Don't confuse the change-space with the routine; that's a stated exam trap. Chapter 07 · Innovation and Institutions
How to study for the exam
Front-load the early-weeks micro spine (foundations + evidence-based management) for the quiz, because it is early, narrow and closed-book MCQ — drill recognition: who said what, which cluster, which step, and the confusable pairs (effectiveness vs efficiency, controlled vs autonomous, first- vs late-mover).
Then broaden to the whole canon for the exam, and for every framework practise the NAER shape on a fresh case: Name the framework, Apply it construct-by-construct to the scenario's facts, Evaluate its limits and fit, Recommend a defensible action — and link a second theme where you can.
Because 60% of the mark is closed-book and un-cram-able in the room, owning the frameworks before you walk in is the whole game.
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