EXTERNAL PROGRAMMES

School of Management and Languages

Examiners Report

Course: Organisational Behaviour / Human Resource Management

Examination Diet: June 2014 Stage: Two

Part I Overall Comments must be completed by EACH examiner

Timezone 1:
Overall, a very disappointing set of results. The majority of the answers were weak on every count i.e. language,
structure and content. A point that is stressed time after time is the need for students to reference their answers. The
failure adopt even basic academic conventions means that the vast majority of answers amount to a series of
unsupported assertions and generalisations and this is not acceptable at level 8. Students seem unable to
distinguish between what is relevant and what is not. There is a tendency to set down as much as they can
remember on a particular topic and this failure to draw selectively from the text is a major weakness. On many
papers my comments amounted to unclear and unfocused and lacking sufficient depth and detail.

Part II Section Comments

Question A1:
Fairly popular question average marks reasonable

Question A2:
Comparatively few students attempted this question, and those that did scored badly. This suggests that the topic
was not covered during the session/revision.

Question A3:
Most popular question. Slightly better average mark

Section B Overall: A poor set of answers that were weak on every level. Too much unnecessary background detail
was included and this was the case with all three questions.

Question B1: This question was almost completely misunderstood by the vast majority of students. Most saw it as a
question on the differences between personnel management and HRM and broke it down even further into a
comparison of hard and soft HRM. The question was asking what the significance of commitment is within HRM.
Many answers focused on the strategic nature of HRM and again, this was not what was being asked of students.

Question B2: The majority of students who attempted this question outlined various elements of training such as the
need for training. What students seemed to be focused on was what organisations should not do i.e. imitate
competitors, follow fads and fashions and adopt a sheep-dip approach. Not enough stated what organisations
should do in the area of training and its evaluation. Very, very few answers outlined the systematic training cycle
and even a plan, do, review approach would have been acceptable. The better answers detailed aspects of
evaluation and mentioned the work of Kirkpatrick et al.

Question B3: Far too many answers set out in detail the stages of HR planning and many saw that as an end in
itself. Unfortunately, that was not the point of the question, which asked students to account for the gap between the
theory and practice of HR planning. The majority focused on the process rather than the outcomes of HR planning.