Happy New Year and welcome to the January 2025 Newsletter!

Some of the updates to the InThinking Business Management website during the past month include:

• A new ATL Activity has been added here to help HL students understand the topic of price elasticity of demand (PED) as part of Unit 4.5 - scroll down to "ATL Activity 3 (Thinking and Communication skills) - Exploring price elasticity of demand".

• A new Paper 2, Section B, exam practice question for HL students plus a full mark scheme has been added here. This question assesses the topics of multinational companies, organizational structures, motivation and demotivation (HL extension), international marketing (HL only), and management information systems (HL only). This resource has been created in collaboration with Samik Das, Housemaster and Teacher of IB DP Business Management and Economics at The Doon School, India. Many thanks to Samik for his time, expertise, and generosity in getting this resource completed for the InThinking Business Management community. Additional Paper 2 exam practice questions can be found here.

• A new set of exam questions for Unit 1.6 (Multinational companies) based on the recent joint venture between China's Chery and Catalonia's Ebro EV-Motors has been added here. The JV marks Chery as the first Chinese car manufacturer to establish a production plant in Europe.

• In December, management guru Professor Charles Handy, who gave us the “gods of management” and “shamrock organization”, passed away aged 92. He was an alumnus of Bromsgrove School in the UK, a highly reputable IB World School since 2009. Read this short tribute to Handy in the InThinking blog here.

InThinking Think-In courses

For teachers interested in upcoming Think-In courses (virtual training and upskilling webinars hosted by InThinking), please note the following events are now live for registration. As with all InThinking resources, our Think-In courses are dynamic, creative, and personal. These Think-In courses last 3 hours, from 2pm to 5:15pm Spain time, with a short 15-minutes break.

Date	Think-In upskilling course	Registration link
13th Jan 2025	DP Keys to Success: Paper 3 in Business Management (focus on social enterprises)	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1587
15th Jan 2025	DP Keys to Success: Paper 2 DP Business Management (quantitative techniques)	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1588
17th Jan 2025	DP Keys to Success: The IA in the DP Business Management	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1589
7th March 2025	DP Focus On: The Paper 1 pre-release statement (M25), Group 1	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1686
10th March 2025	DP Focus On: The Paper 1 pre-release statement (M25), Group 2	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1687
9th April 2025	DP Focus On: The new Extended Essay in Economics (first exams M27), Group 1	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1690
14th April 2025	DP Focus On: The new Extended Essay in Economics (first exams M27), Group 2	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1691
25th April 2025	DP Focus On: The new Extended Essay in Business Management (first exams M27), Group 1	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1688
30th April 2025	DP Focus On: The new Extended Essay in Business Management (first exams M27), Group 2	https://inthinking.net/think-ins/1689

In addition to the Think-In courses above, InThinking will be hosting two IB-approved workshops in early 2025.

Exam Questions - Topic Tracker (updates from M24 and N24 exams)

The Exams Topic Tracker has been updated following the recent completion of the November 2024 exams.

Some interesting data emerging from the updated SL Exam papers - Topic tracker on InThinking, based on the May 2024 and November 2024 exams are highlighted below:

• Unit 2 (Human resource management) topics have rarely been assessed in the SL examinations thus far.

• Fixed costs (Unit 3.3) have been assessed four times so far.

• The phrase "Recommend a plan of action" has been used in the SL P2 (N24 exam session).

• The only Unit 5 topic assessed for SL students so far is Unit 5.5 break-even analysis. There have been six questions in total for this topic assesses in the exams.

• There has been comprehensive coverage of descriptive statistics for SL students (mean, modal, median, standard deviation, and bar charts).

• SL candidates were assessed on the following aspects of the BMT: STEEPLE analysis, Decision trees, and Descriptive statistics.

Some of the notable highlights for HL include:

• Features of a cooperative (Unit 1.2) appeared in both the M24 and N24 exams.

• Knowledge of interest rates has been assessed twice so far - in relation to the impact on NPV calculations (Unit 3.8) and in the context of STEEPLE analysis (BMT).

• In May 2024, the straight-line depreciation method (Unit 3.4) was assessed in both Paper 1 and Paper 2 exams.

• The stock turnover ratio (Unit 3.6 HL only) was assessed in both the M24 and N24 examinations.

• Of the five structured question in Question 2 of P2 TZ2, and out of the 10 marks available, 6 marks were based on variances (Unit 3.9 Budgeting) and 4 marks for capacity utilization (Unit 5.6).

• The calculation of the stock turnover ratio (Unit 3.6) was assessed in both the M24 and N24 exams.
• The payback period (Unit 3.8) was assessed in both the M24 and N24 exams.
• The average rate of return (Unit 3.8) was also assessed in both the M24 and N24 exams.
• Variance analysis (Unit 3.9) was assessed in both the M24 and N24 exams. It was heavily assessed in N24, with a total of 4 calculations, worth 6 out of the 10 marks.
• Market share (Unit 4.1) was assessed in both the M24 and N24 exams.
• In May 2024, target markets (Unit 4.2) was assessed in both Paper 1 and Paper 2 exams.
• Break-even analysis (Unit 5.5) has been thoroughly examined in both the SL and HL 2024 exams.
• HL candidates were assessed on the following aspects of the BMT: STEEPLE analysis, Descriptive statistics, and Critical path analysis.

The Exam Topic Tracker can be accessed on the InThinking site here.