Unit 20 Organisational Behaviour Section B Academic Poster Sample 2026

For information and reference only – not to be submitted as your own work. Use this extract to see how a Section B poster can be structured, then build your own from your own retail example, your own reading and your centre’s brief.

This model extract answers Section B of Unit 20 Organisational Behaviour Management (Pearson BTEC Higher Nationals in Business, RQF Level 5) for the Management and Personality Portfolio assignment. Section B asks for an academic poster of 1,500 to 2,000 words that evaluates how power, politics and culture shape employee behaviour in a multi-country retailer, then recommends actions. The extract below follows that order and uses Harvard referencing.

Poster scenario and approach

The scenario is a Sri Lankan-based retailer with stores in several countries, selling fashion, beauty and homeware, with value pricing and a fast, family-style culture. The poster author is a Graduate Trainee Store Manager. The three performance targets are sales, customer interaction and visual merchandising.

A poster is not a shortened essay. Markers look for a clear visual path, short evaluative blocks and visible links between theory, evidence and recommendation. Aim for roughly 250 words per block, with one table or diagram per block.

Block 1: Aim and context

Aim: to evaluate how power, organisational politics and culture influence employee behaviour in a value-led, multi-country retailer, and to recommend changes that support sales targets, customer interaction and visual merchandising.

Context sentence for the poster: store teams work long shifts, face difficult customers and often do repetitive tasks in isolation. In that setting, who holds influence, who gets heard and what is considered normal matter as much as pay or training (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2023).

Block 2: Power in store teams

French and Raven (1959) identified five bases of power: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent. A later sixth, informational power, is often added, but cite it only if you have read the source.

Evaluation: a retailer that leans on legitimate and coercive power gets compliance at the till but weak customer interaction, because staff do only what is checked. Expert and referent power are slower to build and cheaper to sustain. Be careful to say this is an argument from the literature, not a measured finding from the retailer.

Block 3: Organisational politics

Politics here means informal influence: lobbying for favourable shifts, controlling information between head office and stores, and forming alliances (Mullins and Rees, 2023). It is not automatically negative.

Illustrative issue: head office sets a visual merchandising plan, but store teams adjust it quietly because the floor space differs by country. A manager who punishes that adaptation signals that compliance beats judgement. A manager who invites it converts informal influence into useful feedback.

Evaluate both sides. Political behaviour can protect a team from unrealistic targets, yet it can also hide poor stock levels or favour friends in rota decisions. Your poster should state which risk is more likely in a family-feel business, where loyalty is high and challenge can feel disloyal.

Block 4: Levels of culture and national culture

Schein and Schein (2017) describe three levels: artefacts, espoused values and basic underlying assumptions. Use them as a quick diagnostic.

For national culture, use Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (2010) and the current country comparison tool on Hofstede Insights. Compare Sri Lanka with each other country where the retailer operates, and quote the scores you actually see on the tool on the day you write. Power distance and individualism versus collectivism are the dimensions most relevant to store behaviour.

Scores describe national averages, not individual employees. Say so on the poster. A manager who treats every Sri Lankan employee as deferential, or every employee abroad as individualistic, is stereotyping, and a marker will read that as weak evaluation (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, 2010).

Typical argument: where power distance is high, staff may expect direction and avoid challenging a manager in public. A global motivation scheme built around open staff suggestions may produce silence, not ideas. A store in a lower power distance country may read the same scheme as normal.

Block 5: Combined effect

This is where most posters lose marks, because they present three separate boxes. Show how the three interact.

1. High positional power plus a high power distance culture means staff rarely raise problems about display layout.
2. Rarely raised problems push issues into informal politics, such as quiet workarounds.
3. Workarounds become hidden artefacts and then assumptions (“we always fix it ourselves”), which weakens consistency of visual merchandising across countries.
4. Meanwhile, repetitive, isolated tasks lower engagement, so customer interaction becomes minimal and sales conversion suffers (Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman, 1959, on hygiene factors and motivators).

A small causal diagram works well on a poster. Draw it as a loop, label each arrow with a theory and keep every label under six words.

Block 6: Recommendations

Each recommendation needs a target, an action, a theory link and a risk. A table keeps it tight.

Fairness matters too. If rotation or recognition looks uneven, employees compare their input and reward with colleagues and effort falls (Adams, 1963). State how you would check perceived fairness, for example with short monthly pulse conversations, not an invented survey result.

Distinction-level work (D3) justifies each recommendation against an alternative. One sentence is enough: “Cash bonuses were rejected because they strengthen reward power without addressing isolation.”

If your poster draft is stuck at the combined-effect block, our BTEC assignment help team can walk through a Unit 20 structure with you.

What markers reward on this poster

Two practical points. First, Hofstede and Schein are both widely criticised, so one sentence of critique on the poster earns M4 credit. Second, if you use a real retailer as a second example, cite its public annual report or corporate website, not a blog summary.

Using this extract responsibly

Do not copy the table content. Replace the illustrative retail examples with your own, check every theory against your textbook, and follow your tutor’s rules on poster layout and word count. For the full Unit 20 brief, see the Unit 20 Organisational Behaviour Management question page. For how to approach the Section A reflective portfolio, read our guide to the Unit 20 reflective portfolio. A different unit on the same topic is shown in the BTEC Unit 44 Organisational Behaviour sample.

Students taking related HND units may also find our HND assignment help page useful for subject-specific support.

Need a Unit 20 poster checked against the criteria? Send your draft and brief through management assignment help for model-answer guidance and feedback.

References

Adams, J.S. (1963) ‘Towards an understanding of inequity’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), pp. 422-436.

Buchanan, D.A. and Huczynski, A.A. (2023) Organizational behaviour. 11th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

French, J.R.P. and Raven, B. (1959) ‘The bases of social power’, in Cartwright, D. (ed.) Studies in social power. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, pp. 150-167.

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B.B. (1959) The motivation to work. 2nd edn. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J. and Minkov, M. (2010) Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. 3rd edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Mullins, L.J. and Rees, G. (2023) Management and organisational behaviour. 13th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

Schein, E.H. and Schein, P.A. (2017) Organizational culture and leadership. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Vroom, V.H. (1964) Work and motivation. New York: John Wiley and Sons.