The global business you study
What "global context" means in this standard
- Both 91379 and 91380 are set in a global context — the standard defines this as a business operating in an international environment.
- The typical learning context, in the Ministry's words, is a New Zealand-registered business operating in a global context.
- That is a wider door than it sounds. A business qualifies if it does any of these:
- exports a good or service to offshore customers
- imports materials, components or finished stock
- operates sites, staff or subsidiaries overseas
- sells to international visitors in New Zealand, or competes here against imported products
Why the exam makes you study one in depth
- The paper prints a business context you can answer on. It also lets you answer on the business you have studied — and the 2026 assessment specifications confirm that one part of the question will require the actual business you have studied.
- That part cannot be bluffed. You need, for your chosen business, a working knowledge of:
- what it makes or does, and which markets it sells into
- how it manages quality, and what system it uses
- one innovation it has made, and roughly when
- one change it has been through, and how management handled it
- one thing it owns and protects — a brand, a recipe, a process, a design
- one strategic response it has made to something outside its control (for 91380)
- Two named specifics beat five vague ones. A marker can tell the difference between a candidate who has studied a business and one who has read its home page.
What counts as an example
- Examples in this standard means "relevant information from a business operating in a global context studied in depth".
- A usable example does three things:
- names something concrete — a product, a market, a system, a site
- is relevant to the exact question asked
- is worked into the explanation, not bolted on at the end
- Compare:
- Weak: "Fonterra is a big New Zealand dairy exporter."
- Usable: "Fonterra exports dairy products to more than 100 markets, so a quality failure in one production run can be held at a port on the other side of the world, weeks after it was made and long after the batch could be traced back to a shift."
The four key concepts
- The assessment specifications name the key concepts that sit under the whole subject: enterprise, globalisation, citizenship and sustainability.
- They are not separately examined, but they explain what the examiner is looking for underneath the questions:
- enterprise — spotting an opportunity and taking a risk on it
- globalisation — the interconnection of markets, so an event in one country moves a business in another
- citizenship — the business as a member of a community with obligations to it
- sustainability — the ongoing focus on economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes together
- Sustainability at Level 3 has four legs, not one. When a question says "sustainability", check which one it means. Economic sustainability is about the business surviving financially; environmental sustainability is about its effect on the natural world; social and cultural sustainability are about its effect on people and their values.