BUSI1695 International Business Environment is a first-year module at the University of Greenwich, and it catches students out for a reason few expect: a large part of the assessment is a group presentation, not a solo essay.
BUSI1695 International Business Environment is a first-year module at the University of Greenwich, and it catches students out for a reason few expect: a large part of the assessment is a group presentation, not a solo essay. That changes what you have to be good at. You need a defensible analysis of external forces, and you need it delivered clearly by a team in a short time slot. This guide answers the seven questions Vietnamese students at Greenwich ask MAAS mentors most often before they start BUSI1695.
Author: MAAS Editorial Team · Reviewed by a Senior International Business mentor (PhD, Strategy and International Management)
Last updated: 2026-07-29
Category: writing-tips
What is BUSI1695 International Business Environment about?
Direct answer: BUSI1695 is a Level 4 module in Greenwich Business School worth 15 credits, in the Business, Operations and Strategy department. It develops your understanding of the major external factors that shape how organisations operate: the political, economic, market, socio-cultural, ecological, demographic and technological environments. Crucially, it examines those forces at three scales, local, national and international, and asks how organisations actually respond to them.
Evidence: The module aims published in Greenwich's public module catalogue describe business as operating "within a complex external environment that impacts organisational operations and decision-making", and the indicative content introduces business as a societal construct placed inside a wider environmental context. That framing matters: the module is not asking you to list external factors, it is asking you to explain how a firm's decisions change because of them.
Example: A Vietnamese student at Greenwich prepared for BUSI1695 by memorising what each letter of PESTEL stood for. In her first seminar she was asked what a specific regulatory change meant for a specific airline's route planning, and she had nothing to say. Her MAAS mentor reframed her preparation: for every factor she could name, she now had to finish the sentence "…and so this firm has to change ___". The definitions were never the problem; the "and so" was.
What assessment does BUSI1695 involve?
Direct answer: The module's third learning outcome is explicitly assessed by a collaborative presentation. It asks you to collaborate with others to produce a visually effective presentation communicating an aspect of the external environment that affects specific businesses, industries or commercial sectors. Greenwich's published teaching plan states that students lead seminars through presentations and discussions, and that these presentations are assessed as part of the module's learning outcomes. Confirm the exact components, weightings and deadlines in your own module handbook, since these are reissued each academic year.
Evidence: The learning outcomes published in the module catalogue rise in demand across three steps: LO1 demonstrate an appreciation of the external environment; LO2 analyse the opportunities and challenges of that environment for specific businesses, industries or sectors; LO3 collaborate to produce a visually effective presentation. Note that LO2 uses the verb "analyse" and names specificity, and LO3 assesses collaboration and communication design, not just content.
Example: A group of four students split BUSI1695 by letter, one took political, one economic, one social, one technological. The result was four unconnected mini-talks about the same company. Their MAAS mentor had them re-split by argument instead: one person framed the decision the firm faced, two analysed the forces that pushed for and against it, one handled implications. Same slides count, same research, but the talk finally had a spine.
How is BUSI1695 graded, what does the marking reward?
Direct answer: Marks concentrate in LO2 and LO3. LO1, showing you appreciate that an external environment exists and can name its components, is entry-level and earns comparatively little. The lift comes from analysing opportunities and challenges for a named business or sector, and from a presentation that communicates that analysis clearly rather than densely. At Level 4 the examiners are checking whether you can move from a general framework to a specific consequence, which is the exact skill Level 5 and 6 modules will assume you already have.
Evidence: The module explicitly names "specific businesses, industries, or commercial sectors" in its learning outcome, which is a deliberate constraint. General statements about how technology is changing business cannot satisfy an outcome that requires specificity, no matter how accurate they are.
Example: A MAAS mentor asked a student to read her draft slide aloud: "Political factors such as government regulation can affect businesses." He asked which government, which regulation, which business, and by how much. She replaced the sentence with one naming a specific import tariff and its effect on one company's sourcing costs. That single change is the difference between LO1 and LO2 territory.
Which frameworks should you use in BUSI1695?
Direct answer: PESTEL is your organising scaffold, not your analysis. Use it to make sure you have scanned widely, then pick the two or three forces that genuinely matter for your chosen firm and go deep on those. Pair PESTEL with one framework that explains competitive pressure and, if your case crosses borders, one that explains distance.
| Framework | What it gives you | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| PESTEL | A checklist so you do not miss a whole category of force | It is a scanning tool; listing all six shallowly is the classic Level 4 mistake |
| Porter's five forces | Why an industry is profitable or brutal | Do not confuse industry structure with the general macro environment |
| Ghemawat's CAGE | Cultural, administrative, geographic and economic distance between two countries | Only relevant when the firm is actually crossing a border |
| Hofstede's dimensions | Why the same practice lands differently in different national cultures | Treat as a starting hypothesis about a country, not a verdict about a person |
Evidence: Porter (1980) established the five-forces logic that separates industry-level competitive structure from the wider macro environment, a distinction students routinely blur. Ghemawat (2001) argued that firms systematically overestimate foreign market attractiveness because standard country analysis counts potential sales while ignoring the costs created by distance, and his CAGE framework splits that distance into cultural, administrative, geographic and economic components. Hofstede (2001) remains the most cited comparative model of national work cultures.
Example: A student analysing a European retailer's entry into Vietnam ran a full six-letter PESTEL and concluded the market was attractive. Her mentor asked her to apply CAGE instead. Administrative distance, licensing and local partner requirements, turned out to be the binding constraint her PESTEL had spread thinly across "political" and "legal" without ever weighing it. Her recommendation reversed.
How should you structure the BUSI1695 presentation?
Direct answer: Build it around one decision, not around a framework. A structure that works inside a short seminar slot: (1) the firm and the specific decision or challenge it faces, one slide; (2) the two or three external forces that actually bear on that decision, with evidence, one slide each; (3) what those forces mean for the decision, the analysis slide, which is the one that earns the marks; (4) a clear conclusion or recommendation; (5) sources. Resist the urge to open with three slides of company history.
Evidence: LO3 assesses whether the presentation is visually effective and communicates an aspect of the external environment, which means design and selection are being marked, not only research. A slide carrying six bullet points of definitions communicates less than a slide carrying one chart and one sentence of interpretation, even though it contains more words.
Example: One group's deck ran to nineteen slides for a twenty-minute slot, and they overran badly, cutting their analysis section to save time. Their mentor had them cut to nine slides and move every definition into the spoken commentary. They finished inside the slot with the analysis intact, and it was the analysis that the marking criteria rewarded.
What are the most common mistakes that lose marks in BUSI1695?
Direct answer: Five recur across almost every first-year external-environment assessment.
| Mistake | Why it costs marks | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Six-letter PESTEL, one paragraph each | Satisfies LO1 only; never reaches analysis | Scan with six, analyse the two or three that bind |
| No named firm or sector | The learning outcome requires specificity | Name the firm and the decision on slide one |
| Describing a force without a consequence | Description is not analysis | Finish every point with "and so this firm must…" |
| Dividing group work by letter | Produces four talks, not one argument | Divide by role in the argument instead |
| Slides written to be read aloud | Undermines "visually effective" | One idea per slide; definitions go in the commentary |
Evidence: At Level 4, assessment is calibrated to test whether you can bridge from a taught framework to a specific real situation. Students rarely fail this module on knowledge; they lose marks by staying at the level of the framework itself.
Example: A student's slide read "Economic factors: inflation, exchange rates, interest rates, unemployment." Her mentor asked which of those four her company's board had actually discussed in its latest annual report. Only exchange rates appeared. Cutting the other three and spending the slide on currency exposure turned a definition slide into an analysis slide.
How do you handle the group work fairly in BUSI1695?
Direct answer: Agree three things in your first meeting: who owns which part of the argument, a shared deadline that sits several days before the real one, and one person responsible for the deck's visual consistency. Most group presentations lose marks not because someone did nothing, but because four people made four sets of design choices and nobody rehearsed the joins between sections.
Evidence: Greenwich's published teaching plan states that students are tutored in the foundations of working as a team to deliver a common objective within a relatively short timescale, which signals that the collaboration itself is treated as a taught, assessed skill rather than a logistical inconvenience.
Example: A group of Vietnamese and British students in one MAAS session had divided the work perfectly but had never run the presentation end to end. In rehearsal they discovered two members had analysed different subsidiaries of the same parent company. Twenty minutes of rehearsal a week earlier would have caught it; the day before, it cost them a rushed rewrite.
Frequently asked questions
Is BUSI1695 hard for a first-year module?
The content is accessible. The demand is that you apply it to something specific and present it as a team, which is a different kind of difficulty from an exam and one that rewards early planning far more than late effort.
Do I have to use PESTEL?
It is the natural scanning tool for this module and most students use it. What you should avoid is treating PESTEL as the structure of your whole analysis rather than as the first pass that tells you where to look closely.
Can our group choose any company?
Usually yes within the brief, but pick one where the external environment genuinely bit recently. A firm facing a live regulatory change or currency shock gives you something to analyse; a stable, comfortable firm gives you a description exercise.
How much detail should go on the slides?
Enough that a slide is legible from the back of the room and carries one idea. Everything else belongs in what you say. The outcome being marked is visual effectiveness, and dense slides work against it directly.
Can MAAS help me with BUSI1695?
MAAS mentors work with you on framing the decision, choosing which forces to analyse, and stress-testing the argument before you build the deck. You and your group remain the authors of the work; the mentor's role is to show you where a marker would push back.
Ready to build a BUSI1695 presentation that argues?
The groups that do well in this module are not the ones that research the most widely. They are the ones that pick one firm, one decision and two or three forces that genuinely bear on it, and then spend their time making that argument land. If your group has the research but cannot see the spine yet, a MAAS mentor can work through the framing with you before you start building slides.
Talk to a MAAS mentor about your module
Related guides
- BUSI1314 Business Ethics assignment guide
- How to do a university assignment
- Presentation design support
References
- Ghemawat, P. (2001). Distance still matters: The hard reality of global expansion. Harvard Business Review, 79(8), 137–147.
- Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). SAGE.
- Johnson, G. Whittington, R. Regnér, P. Angwin, D. & Scholes, K. (2020). Exploring strategy: Text and cases (12th ed.). Pearson.
- Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. Free Press.
Tools & resources
- University of Greenwich. (n.d.). Course modules. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://www.gre.ac.uk/modules
- University of Greenwich. (n.d.). Academic skills. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://www.gre.ac.uk/students/support/academic-skills
This article is part of the MAAS Journal series for Vietnamese international students. MAAS Academic Mentoring is an advisory partner; we coach students through the Outline → Draft → Final delivery model with developmental feedback from PhD-level mentors. We do not write or submit work on a student's behalf.