CRACK THE CUEGIS CODE (Lite)

The CUEGIS essay can be a real STUDENT

NIGHTMARE! It is one of the most challenging
parts of the IB DP syllabus for Business and
Management. It is something students struggle
the most with but once you get the click of it, it
can become a real asset to your grade in
Business and Management. This guide explains
how you should prepare for it and how to write
a pertinent and scoring CUEGIS essay.

At the beginning of my IB journey, CUEGIS was a real pain, my nightmare. It was

truly challenging and given that it was a new introduction to the syllabus there
were barely any resources available online. With a bit of hard work, I finally
managed to ‘Crack the CUEGIS Code’ and by my second year of IB I was
scoring 17+ on all of my essays.

This guide will help you understand how to write a

great introduction and what are the things that you
need to think of when preparing for your CUEGIS
essay. It also contains one of my essays that scored
19/20!
What is a CUEGIS Essay?

It is a 20-mark question, which you have to answer in Section C of the paper 2.

You will have the choice between 3 questions and each of them combines 2 of the
following concepts:
Change
Culture
Ethics
Globalization
Innovation
Strategy

The essay needs to be based on a real life business and you are not given any
material. This implies that there is a pretty big deal of research that you must
undertake.
 How to prepare for your CUEGIS essays?

So as you probably understood by now,

there is a lot of research to be
done. And the fact that you need to
remember it all may sound a bit
overwhelming but if you do it correctly
its perfectly possible.

How to research?

First you need to identify one or two companies. I chose to work on McDonalds
simply because there was a lot of information available about them online.
Nothing stops you from working on the business you chose for your IA. That is
actually pretty smart because you will already by investigating about the
business.

After you identified your business(es) you should obviously start reading articles
about them. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS DONE OVER NIGHT! You won’t
have acquired all the knowledge required let alone remember it in one day or
even a week or month. It takes time. You can start practicing questions while you
are researching, this is perfectly fine. Just make sure that you keep all the
articles; I had a file just for CUEGIS research where I kept articles (copy pasted or
downloaded).
When you find something interesting, summarise it and make a clear and direct
link to every possible concept.

For example: During my research I found out the McDonalds introduced a new type of product; the
McCoffee.
This can be link to: Marketing strategies, change in customer demand and innovation.
Keep all of those summaries and also the link of the article on which it is based
on.

Here are some questions and some points that you should think
of while researching:
 What are the marketing strategies of the business?
 What are the human resource strategies of the business?
 What are the operational strategies of the business?
 Anything iconic about the business and its significance to success or failure.
Make sure that you link it to a concept.
 How does the business manage it branches all over the world (if any)? (Link
to globalization)
 Any controversial reports about the business. (Link to Ethics)
 Innovative strategies used by the business and its impact.
 Impact of technology on the business? How they optimized their use of
technology? (Relate it to a specific concept)
 Any thing that they are very ethical about.
 CSR programs (Link to ethics)
 Types of products that they offer. (Link to marketing strategies)
 Do products in different countries differ? How does this impact on the
business? (Link to marketing strategies and globalization)

Also, every time you find a point try to research more about its impact on various
stakeholders. When you identify a point simple logic can also help you
understand the impact on stakeholders.
How to structure your essay?

The main components of a CUEGIS essay are:

1. Introduction
2. Body, which includes 2-4 points/ paragraphs
3. A conclusion

Your paragraph should be of regular length and have to be fit for purpose. This
means that if one of your ideas/ one paragraph is of 250 words, the other
paragraph cannot be of 150 words. There has to be a certain balance between
your ideas.

Writing your introduction

The introduction is very important, you need to make a good first impression to
the examiner reading your essay and you need to show them that you know your
stuff right from the start! So here is what you have to include in your
introduction:

1. An extensive and well developed definition of first concept

2. Linking phrase that links the first concept to the second concept
3. An extensive and well developed definition of second concept
4. Brief introduction to the business and the link between the business and
the concepts that were introduced
5. Last introduction sentence: “ This essay will examine the consequences of X
concept on Y concept for Z business”.
 Here’s an annotated example of an introduction for the question:

With reference to an organization of your choice, discuss the effect of

organizational ethics on innovation.

Innovation is the process of translating ideas into something that

creates value. In business, it involves deliberate application of 1. First
information, imagination and initiative thinking that further definition
satisfy the needs and expectations of customers and therefore
give the firm competitive advantages. Innovation can be applied
to not just products but to all aspects of business activities.
During innovation process a business has to consider many
factors, one of which is ethics. Ethics are the set of values and
2. Linking principles that a firm uses to decide whether decisions or actions
phrase are right or wrong. Ethical considerations have to be taken into
account when a business makes decisions but it is also involved 3. Second
in everyday practices. McDonalds is one of the biggest fast food definition
4. Brief franchise in the world. Its success is heavily due to constant
introduction innovative strategy to retain customers interest globally. This
to the essay will discuss how organizational ethics of McDonalds has
business and affected its innovative strategies.
link to
5. Last
concepts
summarizing
phrase

So as you can see the introduction contains both definitions and a clear link is
made between both of them. The introduction also introduces the business
briefly and makes a clear link between the 2 concepts that are to be explored and
the business.
 Example of a top-level essay!

With reference to an organization of your choice discuss the effect of ethics

on organizational strategies.

Ethics is the set of values and principles that a firm uses to decide whether
decisions or actions are right or wrong. Ethical considerations have to be taken
into account when a business makes decisions but it is also involved in everyday
practices, it is therefore directly linked to the business organizational strategy.
Strategy refers to the significant long-term planning decisions that organizations
make in order to meet the needs and wants of customers and other stakeholder.
The organizational strategy regroups marketing, finances, operation and human
resource strategies of a business. McDonalds is the global market leader of the
fast food industry. It has a complex organizational strategy, which enabled it to
remain market leader throughout the years. This essay will analyse the effect of
ethics on human resource strategy, operational and marketing strategies of
McDonalds.

One of McDonalds unique selling proposition is the rapidity of its service and the
quality of its customer relations. Employees working over the counter are
trained to always be friendly to McDonalds customers. Employees are
supervised and often undergo appraisal to ensure quality of service. Employees
are expected to always smile and to remain enthusiastic and polite to customers.
A recent survey has shown that over 90% of customers prefer McDonalds
customer service rather than that of KFC, however this is a form of emotional
laboring. The suppression of emotions combined to very long working hours has
been proven to be extremely detrimental to mental health. In a recent interview
with a former McDonalds employee, the latter has described the horror of
emotional laboring and how it led her to addiction to Marijuana. Hence, in an
attempt to improve customer service McDonalds employs unethical human
resource strategies.
Given the nature of its products, McDonalds has very short re-order period. This
is to ensure that ingredients are fresh. To enable the good functioning of
operation management, McDonalds buys all of its raw ingredients locally so as to
decrease costs of transportation. This decision is not only beneficial to the
environment given the smaller carbon footprint but McDonalds usually
purchases its products from small or medium size businesses. This is extremely
beneficial to local businesses that provide the raw material to McDonalds. They
benefit from an important contract decreasing the need and costs of promotion
and distribution. However, small businesses often become dependent upon such
contracts as they benefit from less risk bearing economies of scale. This can be
extremely problematic if McDonalds withdraws the contract. For example in
Mauritius, McDonalds was previously purchasing some of its raw ingredients
from a sole trader ‘Solom Nevin’. In 2013, McDonalds withdrew the contract
from Mr. Nevin as they found a medium size business that had cheaper prices.
This was very problematic for the sole trader as he did not have other big
contracts like this one.

In terms of marketing, the promotional campaign of McDonalds has lead to some

debates. In the US, McDonalds’ main target market are children and teenagers.
Consequently they make use of heavy promotional campaigns tailored to attract
youngsters. For instance the development of McDonalds App and the increase in
e-marketing via social media has raised some concern. Pressure groups felt that
the business was taking advantage of children’s vulnerability to media in order
to encourage them to buy their products. Consequently McDonalds promotes
unhealthy eating and contributes the increasing level of child obesity, which is
already of 18% in the US. McDonalds thus has a direct impact on the health og it
young regular consumers. However, the franchise has recently began
introducing fruits to their ‘Happy meals’ (meals specifically designed for
children) in an attempt to promote healthy eating habits amongst youngsters
Children might think that their favourite restaurant branch promotes healthy
eating and may therefore be more likely to adopt good eating habits.
Nevertheless, McDonalds products are high in saturated fat, salt and remain vert
unhealthy. And the fact that they target children who are extremely vulnerable
to media makes the organizational strategy somehow unethical.

In conclusion, McDonalds attempts to remain ethical in most of their practices,

for instance by ordering their raw ingredients fro local forms and by adding
fruits to Happy Meals. However in an attempt to improve efficiency, to increase
sales turnover and profits they are often guilty of unethical practices for instance
in terms of treatment of employees. But McDonalds constantly improves and
modifies their organizational strategy and try to remain as ethical as possible,
their success in doing so contributes to the fact that they are able to maintain
their position as market leaders.

Criteria Points
A Knowledge 4/4
B Application 4/4
C analysis 4/4
D Organization 4/4
E Stakeholders 3/4
Total 19/20

A little bit of extra…

A little bit of extra...

How to tackle Paper 2

The most difficult aspect of business and management papers really is the time!

It is SO IMPORTANT that you practice as many papers as possible within the

time limits.

Paper 2 Overview:
You don’t necessarily have to sit down for
Length: 2h15min
2h15min and do a whole paper, but say if you Questions
practice one question, try to do within the Section A: Numerical questions [10 marks]
time limit that you would have for one You have to choose 1 question out of the 2
questions given
question in the exam.
Section B: Extensive [20 marks] [20 marks]
You have to choose 2 questions out of the 3
questions given

Section C: CUEGIS [20 marks]

You have to choose 1 essay question out of the 3
questions given

Timing for paper 2

1. 5 min Reading time: Go through all the questions and select that ones
that you feel the most comfortable with.
2. Section A: 25 min
3. Section B: 30 min (Question 1) + 30 min (Question 2)= 60 min
4. Section C: 45 min

Section A:
 Section A:

 Short answer questions relating to the topic of finance

 You will be asked to either calculate ratios, make a financial forecast,
profit and loss account, balance sheet, decision tree, etc.. So make sure
that you are familiar with those financial tools.
 Choose the question with the tool that you are most familiar with
 Make sure that you know all those financial tools very well! You need to
spend a lot of time making them so that in the exam you can do that
rapidly!
 This section is to be done rapidly and is very scoring if you prepare well.

Tips to answer Questions in section B:

 Read and analyse the QUESTIONS before going through the case study
 Underline the command term and the key words of each question
 When you have thoroughly understood the questions, go through the case
study looking for the answers to the question. Underline the important
aspects of the case study and write down to which question it will relate.
 Make a quick plan relating to what you extracted from the case study
before writing your answers for questions b, c and d.
 Do you want to crack the
FULL CUEGIS Code?
Do you want to Nail every CUEGIS essay? Score 17+ on all of
them? Go ahead and get the full version of this guide!
The full version walks you through every single detail of
the CUEGIS essay! It looks at:

 Each and every criteria and how to score

maximum points in each of them

 It gives you a lot more details about how to

research and prepare for CUEGIS

 It gives you a set of well-developed definitions for

all the main CUEGIS concepts and you will also have
access to a set of online flashcards to help you
study them.

 It looks at every single part of the essay. By now

you should already know how to write an introduction,
the full guide will explain how to structure each of your
points in your essay and how to write a brilliant
conclusion.
  It analyses one of my really bad essays (yes I use to be
terrible at CUEGIS before I cracked the code!), you
will understand the common mistakes done
by candidates so that you do not have to repeat
them!

 The guide contains 10 excellent essays that were

written by myself and that all scored 17+ points.
The first essay was the one I wrote for my mock
examinations, it is properly annotated so that you
understand its strength.

 Additionally, the full version contains AN AWESOME

BONUS! My business and management IA that
scored 24/25

So go ahead! Purchase the full version so that YOU

can also obtain top scores on your CUEGIS Essays! It will be
of monumental help to your overall Business and
Management grade!