This document provides guidance for teachers on the use of command terms in Business and Management exams. It explains that questions will be structured from lower-order to higher-order tasks using Bloom's Taxonomy as a framework. Lower-order terms like "define" and "describe" test basic knowledge and comprehension, while higher-order terms like "analyze", "evaluate", and "recommend" require more complex application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Sample exam questions are presented to illustrate how the command terms guide students on the expected approach and complexity for each part of a question. Overall, exams will have a roughly equal split between higher and lower-order skills tested across the whole paper.

1. Business and Management: For first exams 2009
New command terms: Guidance for teachers
Introduction
It is the intention to move towards using a standard paper structure so students will expect
question papers to form a consistent pattern from year to year. Where there is a choice of
questions, students can be assured that there will not be “easier” or “more difficult” questions
ensuring that all areas of the syllabus, where choices are available, are examined with the
same degree of rigour.
Command terms
Command terms provide the student with an indication of the way they should approach
answering the question as well as a guide to its complexity. The examples of command terms
in the table below are taken from pages 74–76 of the Diploma Programme Business and
management guide (March 2007).
Level and description Examples
Calculate, classify, comment, compare,
Lower Knowledge and complete, construct, contrast, describe, define,
order comprehension distinguish, explain, formulate, identify, outline,
prepare
Advise, analyse, apply, discuss, evaluate,
Higher Application, analysis,
examine, interpret, justify, recommend, to what
order synthesis and evaluation
extent
Each command term has been assigned a level. It can be assumed that answering a question
with a lower order command term will be less demanding than one where a higher order
command term is used.
Questions are designed with lower order tasks at the start to provide relatively easy entry and
higher order tasks at the end. The order of task is closely linked to Bloom’s Taxonomy. The
following websites are useful sources of information.
http://www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htm
http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom1.html
http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/researchskills/dalton.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
P:New_command_terms_busm.doc

2. Gradation of questions
The following examples are all taken from the specimen papers published with the teacher
support material (TSM) in September 2007.
Questions will be designed so that the lower order tasks are at the start so students may be
required, for example, to define a word relevant to a topic within that question. The command
term has been underlined.
1. (a) Describe one advantage and one disadvantage of SunGen Ltd
recruiting a significant proportion of their staff internally from [4 marks]
Electrical Solutions Plc (line 102).
HL paper 1
(a) Define the terms economies of scale and franchisee.
[4 marks]
HL paper 2
The question will then develop with students being asked, for example, to explain the effects
of a policy or by performing a calculation.
(b) Explain the effect on motivation of offering high performing staff
significant financial bonuses (line 122). [4 marks]
HL paper 1
(b) (i) Construct a decision tree and calculate the predicted outcome
for each expansion option. (Show all your working.) [7 marks]
HL paper 2
(iii)Explain two possible effects on Mrs Chen’s Chinese medicine
business resulting from worsening economic conditions in
[6 marks]
China.
HL paper 2
P:New_command_terms_busm.doc

3. The final part(s) of the question will focus on the students’ ability to use higher order skills.
This could be, for example, to analyse the effects of a policy, to recommend/justify a possible
future course of action or to evaluate the relative merits/demerits of a range of options.
(c) Analyse the costs and benefits of changing the organizational
structure of SunGen Ltd to a flatter structure (line 105). [7 marks]
HL paper 1
(d) Using the Ansoff matrix, evaluate the strategic growth options
available to Yum! [9 marks]
HL paper 2
There will be a roughly equal split between the percentages for the use of higher order and
lower order skills over the paper as a whole. In some questions where there is no element of
choice the command terms used may not be as balanced, providing the percentages of
higher order and lower order skills across the whole paper are balanced.
P:New_command_terms_busm.doc