‘Hooks’ in BUSS4 Essays

How to identify and use 'hooks' in BUSS4 essays

During the recent Tutor2u online revision clinic for BUSS4, many students asked for clarification about the meaning of essay 'hooks'. These are words within the essay question which can be identified by students and brought into answers to strengthen application and analysis skills.

To illustrate the point, I've chosen a past-paper essay question with many of these 'hooks':

“BP is a multinational energy business that has 92,000 employees and operates in 100 countries. When a new chief executive was recruited internally at BP, he promised to improve the company's disappointing performance by quickly changing its culture to become more innovative and more responsive to its customers. How easy do you think it is for a new chief executive to change the culture of an organisation quickly? Justify your answer with reference to BP and/or other businesses that you know"

To identify the 'hooks', students can highlight or underline key words in the question and then consider how they may change the way the answer may be approached. The question here is asking how easy it might be for a new chief executive to change the culture of a business quickly, but there are many pointers in the question that can help to plan the answer. The following could be seen as 'hooks' in this case:

-Multinational business - This could make it more difficult to change the culture, as there may be many different cultures involved
-92,000 employees - This could mean the chief executive has a more difficult task as they will need to convince a large amount of people to change
-Recruited internally - Might mean he is familiar with the business and staff which could make it easier for him to change/or more difficult if he is part of the 'old' culture
-New chief executive - The fact that he is new to the role may mean he is more determined to change the culture and promote his own vision for the business
-Disappointing performance - There could be shareholder pressure/support for a change in culture
-Quickly changing its culture - Culture is usually very difficult to change 'quickly' as it is often historical and based on many years of doing things a certain way
-More innovative and responsive to customers - Students can consider how difficult this may be if the business has fallen behind rivals in this area, and consider other examples where Chief Executives have (Steve Jobs) and have not (Stephen Elop) been able to change the culture of a business in this way.

By simply identifying these 'hooks' and considering their importance to the business and question, the essay plan starts to become very clear and there are many points that can be discussed to help maximise application and analysis skills.